Boys in Theory

I’ve learned that I tend to love people most before they become real to me. Before I notice the things I’ll eventually pretend not to care about.

This isn’t really a page about healthy relationships. It’s about disaster stories, projections, bad timing, unanswered texts, people who changed me accidentally, and the strange art of turning human beings into theories inside your own head.

Some of these stories ended badly. Some never started at all.

Either way, they made it here.

(latest entire always at the bottom of the page)

We were never official but everyone knew

We’ll call him James, mostly because if he ever somehow finds this, I’d like to preserve at least a little bit of my dignity.

Though honestly, the story is specific enough that he’ll probably know anyway.

I was 15 when I met James, although technically our paths had crossed before without me realizing it. He was 18, freshly leaning into the kind of reputation high school boys mistake for personality. Among girls, he was known for two things: being charming and being absolutely incapable of belonging to one person.

A dangerous combination for a sheltered sophomore with low standards and access to Instagram.

Looking back, I didn’t even like him at first. I liked the attention. This was before people considered me publicly pretty, before I figured out how to dress myself properly, before I understood the difference between being wanted and being valued.

So when James noticed me, it felt less romantic and more like social validation wrapped in flirtation.

And because I was 15 and stupid in the very specific way only teenage girls can be, I confused attention with affection almost immediately.

Now, to be fair, I wasn’t completely brainless.

After months of hallway eye contact, embarrassing Instagram stories clearly aimed at him, and conversations that somehow always felt more intense after midnight, he finally asked me to hang out.

Everyone hated it.

Teachers warned me about him. Upperclassman girls gave me looks that practically screamed good luck. Even my friends, while fully entertaining my delusions knew exactly what kind of boy he was.

But nothing kills a teenage girl’s curiosity faster than being told a boy is bad news.

James wanted everything kept quiet. “Lowkey.” “Private.” “Just between us.”

At 15, I thought secrecy meant intimacy.

Now I know secrecy usually just means someone is trying to avoid consequences.

Still, I played along. Right up until the day I caught him making out with a freshman who genuinely looked like she should still be asking permission to use the microwave.

And listen I knew he talked to other girls. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I was the only one. But there’s something deeply sobering about realizing the guy you romanticized has the moral range of a raccoon digging through trash.

Since apparently I couldn’t keep things “hush hush,” someone sent me a picture of him with his arms wrapped around the new victim of the week.

So, I walked directly up to the group they were standing in, smiled sweetly, and pretended I was just running into friends.

Then I looked him dead in the eyes.

The kind of eye contact that says:

I know exactly who you are now.

He ignored me for weeks afterward.

Until, of course, he came back.

Because boys like James always come back. Not because they love you, but because they need to know they still can.

By then, though, I knew more about his reputation. The pattern became obvious- intense attention followed by disappearance, breadcrumbs mistaken for affection, just enough validation to keep a girl emotionally invested before vanishing again.

And embarrassingly enough, I still liked him.

Not because he treated me well he absolutely did not but because I had fallen in love with the version of him I created in my own head. The version that texted me at 2am like I was the only girl in the world. The version that looked at me in class like there was something worth seeing.

That’s the dangerous thing about almost-relationships. Your imagination fills in all the missing pieces until the fantasy becomes more real than the person themselves.

Eventually, we said our goodbyes. Or at least something close to it.

I figured that would be the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

A year later, he was still lurking in my DMs trying to get my attention like nothing had happened. And honestly? Part of me loved knowing he still thought about me. Even after I’d moved on emotionally, there was something weirdly satisfying about being the girl he could never fully close the door on.

We stayed loosely in contact for almost three years after that.

Mostly he talked.
Mostly I ignored him.
Occasionally I liked the message just to remind him I still could.

And maybe that sounds toxic.

But after spending years being treated like something temporary, there’s a certain kind of satisfaction in becoming the one thing they can’t quite forget.

—

House of Laine
my girlhood, unfiltered

The dangers of my boredom

There is something truly dangerous about a teenage girl with too much free time and unrestricted internet access.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, that girl was me.

What started as harmless boredom slowly turned into a strange cycle of late night conversations, fake confidence, emotional chaos, and becoming far too comfortable talking to grown men who absolutely should’ve known better.

Now, I’ll take accountability where it’s due: yes, I lied about my age sometimes. Sixteen year old me figured eighteen sounded “safe enough” online. Which, looking back, is horrifying for multiple reasons. Because even then, some of these men liked the fact that I seemed barely legal. Like eighteen wasn’t just an age to them, but a category.

Disgusting.

Honestly, I can’t even remember all the men that lived in my phone at that point. Their recycled trauma dumps. Their failed athlete backstories. The way every single one somehow thought telling me I was “different from other girls” counted as emotional depth.

But I do remember a few of them.

I remember Thayne.

Twenty-six. Navy. Stationed somewhere in Italy… I think. Honestly, the military details started blending together after a while. The thing about Thayne is that he was actually sweet. Or at least sweet compared to the others. He wasn’t creepy in the obvious way. We talked for a long time, mostly because the distance made it easy to romanticize him into something softer than he probably was. I blame the time difference for why things fizzled out. And by “fizzled out,” I mean I eventually realized it wasn’t as fun to mess with someone who was clearly doing the same thing to me.

Then there was Cam.

Thirty-two. Private investigator. Which honestly should’ve been enough information for me to leave immediately, but unfortunately boredom makes you ignore survival instincts. Cam was deeply strange in the way only men with too much information and too little therapy can be. He owned a house, had a dog, a stable career, and meanwhile I was still asking my mom to sign field trip permission slips. The contrast should’ve disturbed me more than it did. And considering his profession, it’s not shocking that he eventually figured out I wasn’t actually eighteen and blocked me immediately.

Which honestly? Good.

Then there was Liam.

A Marine, which honestly should’ve been the first warning sign. Liam was sweet in the painfully uncomplicated way some men are. We actually became friends eventually because I started feeling guilty for emotionally toying with him. But gosh, that man was boring. No thoughts. No opinions. No survival instincts. The conversational range of drywall. And he left the military after like a year because he “didn’t like authority,” which remains one of the funniest things anyone has ever told me.

But Ryan?

Ryan was by far the most concerning. Ryan was twenty-six, blue collar, emotionally unstable, and one badly timed joke away from planning our future together. At one point I jokingly told him I’d make him lunch every day if we got married. Apparently that was enough. Three months later, after me casually telling him exactly what he wanted to hear for entertainment purposes, this man informed me he was MOVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY. For me.

That’s when the situation stopped being funny.

Because while I was still in high school treating the entire thing like a game, Ryan had apparently started building an actual future around a girl who couldn’t even legally rent a car. I tried backing out gently. His response?
“I already took the job.”

Horrifying.

I ignored Ryan after that. Which probably makes me sound evil, but in my defense, he absolutely should not have been emotionally investing in a teenager to begin with. Ironically, Ryan’s life actually turned out pretty well afterward. Stable job. Nice house. Thriving business. Every once in a while he still updates me, and honestly? It’s weirdly comforting knowing at least one person I accidentally emotionally ruined got something out of it.

Like I said, though, these are only the stories I can remember.

There were more.

A lot more.

And honestly, the craziest part is how easy it all was. Give a teenage girl WiFi, boredom, and just enough attention to feel interesting, and suddenly she’s emotionally managing men with mortgages between chemistry homework assignments.

Terrible decisions were made.
And somewhere across America there are at least three grown men who still think they almost married a girl who was literally asking to use the bathroom during second period.

But I guess that’s the thing about boredom.

It convinces you chaos is character development.

And somehow, despite all of it, my last boyfriend came from the exact same place- a random message, a late night conversation, another “stranger” living inside my phone.

So maybe teenage boredom isn’t just dangerous.

Maybe it’s the reason I have stories worth telling at all.

—

House of Laine
my girlhood, unfiltered