The Curious Case of Tara
No one knew…or cared…
It was March of 2020, when Kuba, friends and I hit a day rave at out local club Printworks for Eolanda’s final birthday party before the first lock down. The sheet-metal cathedral to the beatified saints of rave was noticeably sparsely populated due to people’s caution around the coronavirus. We enjoyed literally being able to skip around between the pillars of the industrial edifice to industrial EDM.
Days later not only would I meet Brazilian bestie Bruna on Tinder as described in my upcoming memoire, In the Wake of Her (2026), but I also matched with a gorgeous desi called Tara. Our first drink was at her flat in Angel. I don’t think she knew what Feeld was but this was certainly a dynamic that would have been better suited to that dating platform. It was definitionally sexual first. All of the encounters, which turned out to be approximately monthly thenceforth, involved her telling me to free up my afternoon and come and relax her into a state of nudity before taking charge of her body.
Tara had sad sullen eyes that had a natural shadow about them that made her seem designed to entrance and ensnare men. Her straight obsidian hair was thick and tough but flowed like water over her spine. It configured her smooth back, the lightness and brownness of which matched her accent that lead me to correctly guess that she was from Delhi. During sex she closed her eyes and surrendered. Loss of agency caused her legs to rattle and her voice to quiver as it left her body. She tasted as sweet as she was kinky. And she was nearly more suggestible whilst naked as she was forthright whilst clothed. If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t seem interested in my life, tolerant of open relationships, or modest in the slightest, I would have leapt at the opportunity to date her romantically were I single. But she would summon me. And I would enjoy being her gentleman-caller.
TARA: Can I see you tomorrow?
ME: I was just thinking about you yesterday. I’m going to come and play with you
TARA: When? When when when?
One of the most memorable escapades involved a stroll down the canal-adjacent streets of Islington, too excited to sit and drink, too early to go back to Tara’s. I noticed her summery plimsols.
“Cute shoes,” I said. “Do they match the panties?”
“What panties?” Tara threw back, hiding her North Indian mellifluity behind her cheeky smile.
“Oh my god, baby. Don’t tell me that!” I grew excited looking for evidence of her exclusion under the flowing floral skirt she was wearing. “Otherwise I’ll have to check.”
“Go on then,” the twinkle in her dark eyes beckoned me closer.
“Not with my hands,” I squared up to her. “With my tongue.”
Before she could say, “What?!” I was on my knees and burrowing under her frock not unlike my dog as he envelops himself in his so-called ‘pita bed’. Her pussy was indeed uncovered, and so that spurred me to tuck my tongue inside her, reaching with my chin to be able to taste everything she had been producing for me over the last hour. Her protestations lost their edge as quickly as her legs lost their structure. Her unstable trunk was soon sitting on my hip-high face in the middle of the road, quivering and wettening faster with every passer by that noticed us. I emerged from her skirt, took her by her limp hand before her eyes reopened, and dragged her south and around the corner. I effected an air of having just helped her with tying her shoelaces, not that any onlookers would have imagine that I was performing cunnilingus in the middle of the street in broad daylight, and certainly wouldn’t have intervened if they did believe.
We found a spot on the water’s edge, in a strip of grassy park, complete with kids’ playground and a lone fisher. We found cover behind a wide tree and the mood took us. I undid my trouser buttons and hiked her skirt, and entered her from behind. Her vocalisations were drawing suspicion so I slowed it down. As the angler side-stepped closer, his eyes on the water, we understood that there’s no way he couldn’t have known what we were doing, but instead of granting us privacy, he shimmied closer still until he was about 4 metres from us. Naturally we slowed and Tara turned to face me. After a bout of giggles, it was go time again. I wanted to kiss her lips as I entered her against the tree. She let me. The fisher cast his line again.
We decided to take it back to hers. On the outdoor covered steps up to her 1st floor flat I pushed her down onto the stairs and fucked her again a la A History of Violence (2005). Sex in her bed seemed tame after that.
When a summer of “Come take care of me”s and “I need you between my legs”s had had its time. She asked if I knew any strapping single gentlemen that she might be set up with. I connected her with my tag team partner Marco in October. They saw each other a bunch of times which made me glad that I could connect them but also gave me pangs of jealousy. Until one day she wanted to do another ‘first’.
TARA: I want you and Marco together
ME: You. me. Marco. Eolanda.
TARA: No no no I’m not into that sorry
ME: You don’t have to play with Eolanda. Like I’m not going to play with Marco. Stop being shy
TARA: I’m not shy, I’m just not turned on. It’s ok you guys play with Marco. I’ll find someone else for what I’m looking for! Why are you forcing me?!
ME: Obviously I can’t force you. I’m encouraging you to take just one more step
TARA: I know I won’t feel weird. But I want this to be about me, and that’s just what I want. I’m sure she’s lovely and I have no problem with her being there or seeing me naked it’s just not what I want right now. Let me think about it. Can I leave if I’m not into it?
ME: Yes of course
TARA: OK why not
ME: It’s the beginning of a new you. Proud of you angel 🤗
Tara and I found a rhythm with each other. If she had any other intentions or feelings then she didn’t voice them. The bratty behaviour kept me coming back. It wasn’t something I gravitate towards, and her hot and cold behaviour was incompatible with the regularity of my monthly desire for her. But I like watching my own charm and gentle consistency break down girls’ protestations and be rewarded with a sexually charged meet-up within hours or days.
TARA: Come and fuck me. Also I need you to come over and feel my boob and tell me if it feels weird.
ME: Omg that’s how close we are huh
TARA: just need someone who’s not me to do it. and then we have to buy me a pregnancy test because my doctor scared me. I’m not pregnant 💯 but I want to check anyway
ME: You’re hilarious. I’ll have a look inside you for babies.
TARA: 😂
ME: I want you to have my child
TARA: You’re funny
ME: I’m as funny as I am sterile. But maybe if we pray together
TARA: Children and prayer? What’s gotten into you? I want my Ryan back!
ME: There’s a queue at boots! You can pee on me instead if you want? Or maybe there’s an app you can download and pee on the phone to tell.
She lived alone. And never spoke of friends let alone introduced me to any, and that worried me that she was happy. Her dating too was filled with a lot of dismissive remarks about men who fell by the wayside, their bodies strewn about the road that Tara walked. Her air of corporate ruthlessness that served her well in her business consultancy role but was present in how she spoke of dates and men. When I had enough of an ‘abundance mindset’ to risk losing her by helping her navigate dating by talking tactics, she would shut me down. Knowing that if someone describes several ex-friends or partners the same negative way, there’s a high likelihood I too would fall under that same label in due time. If only I were close enough to her to invite her to slow down that thinking and with or without help, step through the delicate facts of the matter around what situation, intent, action and impact were being missed [See — On IPRO Theory].
A year into our relationship she moved by chance to Bermondsey which made it even more convenient to meet up. And over the coming months I’d give her her first supervised orgasm. She came well on her own using her Womaniser toy but not yet with a playmate until I suggested she hold me in her bum as she focused on her front with her toy. Her orgasm ran through her, and my loins responded in kind.
“Come to the pub with me,” Tara suggested one day before we played. I embraced the opportunity to treat her to a beer, and talk about more than how she’d like to be fucked that afternoon. I didn’t know however that she’d also summoned another guy from tinder to meet us at the King’s Arms too. He introduced himself as Clive. He was slim and quiet. I daren’t ask how he met Tara just in case I wasn’t meant to pry or Tara didn’t want to divulge too much detail about her and me. But it was clear that their relationship was younger than was ours. One round down and Tara invited us both back to her place for another drink. It must have been whilst Clive was in her toilet that Tara told me her intention for the afternoon. She also shared that she highly suspected that this guy’s name wasn’t actually Clive, and that he was in a monogamous relationship already.
As Clive entered the bedroom to join us undressing each other, I felt a war of emotions. Instinctual mate-guarding made me immensely protective of Tara. But overriding it, I prioritised her comfort, and had her whisper her desires to me so I could direct the interaction. Clive needed to understand that Tara was a liberated sexual soul, and I wasn’t a threat. If the dynamic phased him, then he didn’t show it. I interpreted his quietness as being incredulity and nerves. But it didn’t slow him nor soften him. Together we managed to achieve Tara’s first DP. Satisfied with her safety with him, I left the 2 together and jogged home.
At the 2 year mark though, Tara’s normal communication went from being positively playful and demanding to negatively sharp and reprimanding:
TARA: If I ever just need to get fucked desperately I will call you x
ME: Yes please gorgeous. Give me a call when you want me. Can always do drinks or meal or whatever if you need to rant about Hinge
ME: No urges huh? 😚
TARA: At the moment they’re being fulfilled 😉
ME: I just didn’t want you to go hungry after making such bold statements about how sex is a distraction for ya
TARA: You think you’re the only person I have sex with? You can’t be serious 😂 I’m never hungry for long
ME: Want to go for a wander this evening and have sex outside again?
TARA: No not really 😂
TARA: [This message was deleted]
ME: mmm yesss??? Needing assistance?
TARA: Too late
ME: I could actually have done with clearing my head and coming to have a drink with you yesterday. Eolanda is driving me nuts
ME: I want to go a running in case you want to… mess around in the heat
TARA: No
ME: Want to….? I’m nearby soon
TARA: No. I’m bored of fucking the same people. And for me the same people are you, Marco, and half a dozen other guys I also stopped fucking in the last 6 months
The flip from clamouring at my door to stonewalling stung like whiplash. Especially when I became single in November 2023. And so when fellow Indian Maya bravely told me that she loved me in February 2024, Tara had long since de-escalated our relationship. In Summer 2025, coming up to a year since Maya discarded me and . My Punjabi friend Vidya and I bumped into her in Borough Market. She blanked me. I messaged her on WhatsApp later that day and she blocked me immediately.
Now it’s April 2026 and I messaged her about the upcoming controversial ‘India-themed’ Fox & Badge party on text message, which I suppose we are now calling RCS:
ME: Guessing you blocked me after Vidya and I saw you at Borough Market and it reminded you of a past you’d rather run from than manage
TARA: I have nothing in my past I’m running away from. And if I did it definitely isn’t you 😂 I don’t like how you speak like you know me because you don’t. And you never listen. That’s why I blocked you. Because talking to you is exhausting and you don’t get it.
ME: A good start. Inaccurate though
TARA: Get off your high horse and leave me alone please.
ME: I don’t know you. And that’s my fault. I should have invited you to more things. So I’m making amends for that. Hence inviting you to Fox & Badge. Get a drink with me next week.
TARA: I don’t really want to get a drink with you. Please can you accept that? I don’t want to go to events either. I’m not keen on that stuff.
As part of my reading and practice I’ve garnered enough insight into what’s going on with Tara so that the only remaining curiosity, as with Maya, was what Tara would measure, interpret, think and say (all guaranteed to be an incongruent chain) about our relationship from start to finish. She thought it would be a waste of time to reconvene, even if just for an hour, a failure in seeing the shared value. She thought the effort of meeting far outweighed whatever benefit she would gain. Any lack of thought about what I might gain was multiplied by her woefully lacking altruism coefficient, which is a key symptom of disorganised attachment [See — On Expected Utility Alignment].
“Don’t we stand to learn a lot just from a coffee together?” I asked Bea when I got home.
“Some people just born-a to ran-a,” she said in her thick Italian accent. “Like Bruce-a Springsteen-a.”
Now is the time to look more clinically at the strained dynamic being exhibited.
MISALIGNMENT
Let us hold in our minds the truth that people are allowed to detach, disconnect and remove themselves from situations. They can say “no” to proposals. They can refuse to give reasons. They can run. Their prerogative. But let’s analyse this in the context of what would we suspect would have been best for the loving, thinking, feeling, parties involved that they might arrive at a state that is best for all in summary. Or if not finding the optimum configuration, finding some other config that is arrived at in a way that manages hurt.
If alignment on a relationship dynamic isn’t possible, then we must next align on how explaining our suspicions ‘why not’ should be withheld, why the relationship history shouldn’t explored, why our curiosity is best quashed rather than entertained. In other words, when one party doesn’t ‘show their working that lead to the decision to de-escalate’.
Tara’s declination to explain beyond “I’m bored of you” comes across as a refusal in exploration, reflection, or co-processing. Attempts to “teach curiosity” with avoidant attachers will be experienced as pressure to grow, as they instinctively run from concepts such as rekindling closeness, being ‘wrong’ in their judgement, and looking internally, or at least sharing what they discover within.
PEOPLE LIKE ME LIKE PEOPLE LIKE ME
There are a few clinically relevant dynamics here in my own behaviour:
Pursuer–distancer pattern: Ryan increase bids for understanding → Tara experiences that as intrusive → Tara distances further → Ryan intensifies (interpretations, invitations, reframes).
Epistemic authority conflict: Ryan asserts interpretive openness → Tara rejects that invitation → rupture deepens.
Trying to move Tara from precontemplative disengagement into reflective dialogue is stymied by her lack of minimal buy-in. Tara is coherent but doesn’t see that she would benefit from finding and naming the core issue. Instead, invitations to sit in a therapeutic space are interpreted as patronising and intrusive. My 8-bit formulation is accurate but it has no therapeutic value unless Tara wants to engage with it. Otherwise it is experienced as being analysed, not understood.
In non-therapeutic relationships, unsolicited interpretation — especially about someone’s past or psychology — is usually counterproductive.
To restate the pitch more philosophically, “we would net benefit from spending time talking about us” is not a shared premise, because the 2 parties’ estimation of ease-benefit product are not close enough. I talk about this more in an article about Expected Utility Alignment.
My value system is in articulation and meaning-making. Tara’s value system at first glance is efficiency and connection shopping but is likely mired in presuming low-benefit, low-ease (poor tolerance for prolonged emotional processing). Neither is inherently more “mature”; they’re incompatible in this interaction.
Tara and Eolanda had the same complaint about me. They both felt as though they were not being understood. But that’s inaccurate. I simply didn’t agree. The chain is definitionally: Hear me, Listen to me, Understand me, Empathise with me, Agree with me, Follow me. I did 4 of the 6 before I countered with my own assessment which they found exhausting. My model involved exploring connection. Tara’s involved assuming no good could come from it and going her separate way forever.
One critical aspect needs addressing and reframing. The invitation for a half-hour drink no longer has neutral connotations for Tara; it’s tied to prior tension. But much like the trader logging on to assess their option positions on the market, a decision must be made to hold or close and the only useful factors to this decision lie in the future or at least our prediction of it. Will it get better? Will it get worse? But unlike the stock exchange, our speculation can be protected by the agreed terms of the relationship, which when violated will trigger a stop-loss of sorts.
EFFECT ON ME
Needless to say, I was hurt, partly by the loss but mainly in the wounding to my saviour complex I continue to work on every day. Tara acted abruptly, and for the moment I perceive her as stuck in patterns that cause her distress and loneliness. The alternative is “I don’t need you now, Ryan; I have a partner”, or better yet, “Do you want to meet my partner to see why I’m going to be okay without you?”. I wasn’t sad at the closing door on our sexual antics, but rather the loss of potential antics and the dismissive lack of warmth around it.
I experience relationships through a lens where I am the sponsor of connection, and when others disengage without explanation, it violates my sense of relational logic. I didn’t understand why people don’t match my type of thinking until I received my diagnosis of autism, my brand of which heightens sensitivity to patterns of social reciprocity, interpretation of intent, and the expectation of explicit reasoning from others. Long absences from people I cared about create a heightened desire for meaning or understanding when relationships rupture. From a psychological perspective, this makes the desire for curiosity and explanation deeply understandable. I seek co-created insight. I want others to reflect with me, name what happened, and acknowledge the relational reality.
WHICH MODEL? WHO WILL BE HAPPIER?
If we strip it down to emotional resilience and sustainability in psychological well-being, approaches like mine are stronger long-term despite the temporary heartbreak.
Piners have self-reflective capacity. They can analyse relational patterns, notice their own tendencies (sponsoring connection, seeking meaning), and learn from experience. They use frameworks and awareness to process disappointment, a strong, internal, non-personal resource. They work ambiguity into the model as best they can. Even when others disengage abruptly, they can eventually integrate the experience into the psychological framework and construct meaning unilaterally.
Cut-and-runners, on the other hand, seem strong in the short term, enforcing boundaries, de-escalating, and acting decisively. But their strength is reactive not pro-active, and long-term it carries costs. Avoidance and abrupt withdrawal preserves short-term comfort but leaves relational regrets and debt. The lack of curiosity or depth in processing emotional interactions compounds isolation or dissatisfaction over time.
In other words, My approach and what I instill in my clients carries more vulnerability, but it also carries adaptive resilience.
CODA
In 2025 I commissioned a tattoo which reminds me that others are illogical or at least unable to explain their logic. They avoid self-reflection, and avoid engagement in relationships. The tattoo featured a jigsaw puzzle design. Only then did I learn, after receiving my autism diagnosis that the jigsaw puzzle piece is used as a symbol for autism.
I want people to be curious about themselves and others, especially after years of separation.
