My horny, teenage, never-been-kissed self would be appalled by what I’m about to tell you, but it’s true: I’m sick of being a sex buddy.

I am a sexually adventurous woman who has dabbled in BDSM and enjoys a good sex party here or there, but I also want a partner I can share a deeper emotional connection with as well. Unfortunately, I have constantly found myself stuck in relationships with emotionally unavailable men.

Which is why I got so excited when I saw Jon’s profile. It was on Feeld, the alternative app for kinky, polyamorous or sexually curious people — people like me. What I love about it is that people are explicit about their physical and emotional interests.

So, Jon wrote that he was interested in exploring his kinky side and that he ultimately wanted to find his forever person. I mean … samesies!

Jon was super cute. A very sexy, boy-next-door, Glen Powell type. But as I studied his photos, I realized I knew him. I racked my brain trying to figure it out, and then I remembered that we had sex 10 years ago.

We met on Tinder and got together a couple times for sex. This wasn’t rare for me back then, but the reason I remembered him so well was because he had this weird mystery hip problem, which made it difficult for him to walk and move his hips in certain ways.

When we had sex, our positions were limited, and I constantly worried that I was going to hurt him. I know people say they’re going to “blow your back out” during sex, but I didn’t want to literally break Jon’s body.

It was a bit of a buzzkill, so I just gave up on him — and ghosted him. Ten years later, there he was again, and I couldn’t help but feel like this was a sign. That the universe knew we weren’t ready for each other back then, but we were ready for each other now. We were getting a second chance to start fresh and go for it.

So I swiped him right, and we instantly matched. I messaged him saying, “Hey, so not to sound stalkery, but I think we’ve done this before. Like forever ago.” He wrote back saying, “If by forever ago you mean 2016, then yeah, I think so too.”

I thought, “Ohmigod, he remembered me too! How cute are we?!”

We caught each other up on the last 10 years of our lives. He said he had become a therapist and that he had his hips replaced. Nothing was gonna stop us this time!

We exchanged numbers, and he texted me. “Jon (Tinder)” showed up on my phone. I still had his number saved after all these years. I was even more convinced this was destiny. It’s like my past self knew this thing with Jon wasn’t over.

We made plans to hang out that week, and I was super anxious about it. I mean, my expectations were dangerously high, but as soon as we saw each other, there was this level of comfort and familiarity that made it all so easy.

We spent that entire day together reconnecting, and then the enthusiastic vibe continued. He texted me all the time and wanted to hang out — and not just to have sex! He wanted to hike in Griffith Park, hit up Thai Town for dinner and cozy up with some Nintendo “Mario Party.” I was getting more excited and hopeful about where this could go.

Then one night, we were talking about our kinks and other sex stuff. I didn’t say much other than I was generally down to try new things, but it wasn’t a priority for me. He, however, emphasized that he really wanted to “explore his kinky side now before he settled down in a relationship.”

I paused wondering, “Does he think those two things are mutually exclusive? Does he not think you can have an exciting sex life and a committed relationship at the same time? With the same person? Were we still doing Madonna-whore complexes? I thought those died out with low-rise jeans. Guess not!”

I wanted to talk to him more to get clarity about what he meant, but I never got the chance. A few hours before our next date, he texted me to say that he had hung out with his ex and they were going give it another go. He couldn’t see me anymore.

I was totally blindsided. I knew he had been with his ex for five years, but I didn’t know they were still talking or on the verge of getting back together. There was nothing I could do except say the calm, mature things you’re supposed to say and wish him luck.

Three days later, he came back. It didn’t work out with the ex. And you know, there are fewer things in life more vindicating than a guy dumping you and then crawling right back.

I had a million questions, so we had a long conversation about what happened, and the two most important things I learned were: 1. This ex wasn’t the five-year ex. This one was a new, more casual ex he briefly dated earlier in the year. 2. She was virgin. The Madonna-whore complex got literal really fast.

He kept apologizing and asked if we could start over again. Again, I was tempted. The fateful way this guy kept coming back into my life was compelling, but it became so clear that he only valued one side of me. I couldn’t wait for him to care about the other side. A partnership isn’t an “either/or.” It’s a “both/and.”

The sign from the universe, I realized, wasn’t to keep holding onto him. It was to let go. Of him and every guy who only saw me as a fraction of a partner.

The author is an actor, writer and public policy advocate based in Los Angeles. She shared a version of this essay at the L.A. Affairs Live storytelling event in April. She’s on Instagram: @ratigupta.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.

L.A. is proof that sometimes all you need is a car, a streetlamp and that orange light to make something really special happen. Jonathan Anderson presented his first Dior Cruise show in L.A. under the fluttering shadows cast by Peter Zumthor’s new Brutalist building at LACMA, and the whole thing felt like the equivalent of sending a text after hours of getting ready, buzzing with anticipation: “I’m OMW.”

At the base of the David Geffen Galleries, anchored by classic American cars in colors like bubblegum and butter, where models sat inside sucking lollipops and talking close, was “an illusion of L.A., in L.A.,” so say the show notes. The scene mirrored the energy of a film set, all drama and specific lighting and smoke billowing from mysterious corners, honoring the house’s relationship with cinema. The show notes also came in the form of a film script — titled “Wilshire Boulevard” — opening with the “No Dior, No Dietrich!” of it all and followed by Anderson’s thoughts on escapism and dreaming. Today’s Hollywood stars — Taylor Russell, Greta Lee, Anya Taylor-Joy, Alison Oliver, Jisoo, Maude Apatow, Jeff Goldblum, Sabrina Carpenter, to name a few — were in attendance.

The looks that walked down the runway also called upon the dream, soundtracked by a score that included blues icon John Lee Hooker and beloved French band Air. A new iteration of the Dior Saddle bag was car-inspired, sharing DNA with John Galliano’s 2001 Dior Cadillac bags, featuring car paint surfaces and motor key charms. There were the bespoke Philip Treacy hats that revisited a technique the milliner has honed for years, with feathers forming typography in words like “Buzz” and “Flow,” worn with some of the men’s looks. There was Anderson’s take on the bar jacket that Christian Dior made for Marlene Dietrich to wear in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Stage Fright,” white with a geometric black collar. A grey flannel coat was inspired by film noir, featuring a stripe detail that took inspiration from Venetian blinds. A red velvet dress with a rosette was Anderson’s way of playing with Christian Dior’s practice of putting a red dress partway through a show “simply to wake people up.”

As polished-glam and old-Hollywood as the references were, there were moments that also felt sleazy and fun in the way that Hollywood in 2007 did, when getting photographed pouring out of a car on the way into the club was a rite of passage and full of its own twisted promise. Denim was intentionally pilled and embroidered with fine silver chains in the rips, replacing frayed strands of cotton (“the everyday becomes couture,” the show notes say). Leather pants were worn with oversized rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses. A fuzzy coat in almost a wood grain-like pattern was worn slipshod over a shoulder with a black dress. Shirts were made in collaboration with L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, worn by models with messy long hair and hands in their pockets, sporting the kind of attitudinal walk that the skater boy-actor-model working at your local coffee shop has perfected. “When I think of L.A., I think of Ruscha’s work, which has a fascinating sense of the mundane and how it relates to the city’s grandeur,” Anderson wrote in the notes.

A resort collection is all about the destination, and in L.A. a destination can be the most quotidian, normal-ass place. For example, even the rarest piece in your closet is first experienced by your car, or your backyard, or the courtyard of a county museum. L.A. people get that the mundane is the destination because our version of mundane is anything but.

Cut to the afters at the Chateau Marmont. It was a blur of champagne, full sized In-N-Out cheeseburgers, chic ushers wearing Dior uniforms with snug grey sweaters and slacks that pooled perfectly at the leg. Oh, and also, a collective fear that someone would slip and fall into the gleaming turquoise pool (but isn’t that the intrusive thought that hangs over every Chateau party?). Faces like Teyana Taylor, Mikey Madison, Paul W. Downs, Role Model and Dominic Fike, all in Dior, were soaking in the ambiance.

As the night waned and we piled into big black SUVs with an emblematic “CD” on the windows that were there to take us home, one couldn’t help but call to mind a Hollywood trope, where in L.A., the journey was the destination all along.

Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Taylor Russell and Mikey Madison.

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Malcolm McRae and Anya Taylor-Joy.

Greta Lee and her parents.

Steven Yeun and Humberto Leon.