Last weekend, I decided to treat myself to a haircut, highlights and a blowout. Valentine’s Day was the only day Robby, my hairdresser, had an opening, and it didn’t matter much to me considering that my husband and I are estranged. In fact, I really just wanted to sit back, be pampered and pretend it was any other Saturday. But when I walked into the salon, the first thing I noticed was a glum, dejected look on Robby’s face. Fighting back tears, he told me his girlfriend had dumped him a few days prior. I felt a burning in the pit of my stomach. Don’t cry, I silently begged him. Please don’t cry, because if you cry, I’m going to lose it.

He didn’t cry, and somehow I managed to listen to his tale of woe without the dam in my own heart breaking. “It’s just so hard, because she was good people, you know?,” he said. “It takes so long to find a quality person because everyone else is lost in The Matrix.” I nodded knowingly, automatically thinking of MPJ’s now-famous Matrix metaphor for addiction. He explained further, “It’s like the dating world is basically fantasyland—virtual reality. It’s a bunch of people getting loaded, pretending to be someone they’re not, getting involved with other people who buy into the fantasy, and then making a big awkward mess out of everything when illusion wears off.” I nodded again, this time in deep contemplation.

As I was working the steps this past year, I had a really hard time answering the questions about my sexuality. Attempting to make sense of my husband’s sex addiction was still consuming most of my energy, and I wasn’t in a place where I could see how my own attitudes toward sex and intimacy might have contributed to the situation. But something about Robby’s Matrix metaphor combined with what I had already learned from MPJ’s finally got the gears turning. What’s made it challenging to even start examining my sexuality is that I’ve always considered myself a “good girl.” I’ve never had a one-night stand, I haven’t had loads of sexual partners and I haven’t engaged in any acts that your average person would consider particularly freaky. However, before I met my husband, I was lost in the dating Matrix.

My high-school experiences were pretty innocent. I’d meet a boy through classes, mutual friends or extracurricular activities, we’d gradually get to know each other and then we’d date. But when I went to college, I found myself in the middle of the ’90s hook-up phenomenon, which was later immortalized and exposed for its ickyness in Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. At first, I watched in shock as my classmates got decked out in hoochie gear, went to a fraternity, got wasted and then proceeded to make out with someone they had just met. But after a few months, when I felt like I was being regarded as a weirdo or a prude for not hooking up, I started engaging in the same activities. When I was drunk and swapping spit on a beer-soaked sofa with Joe College, I’d revel in how “cool” I was. But the next day, as I joined the rest of my classmates on the walk of shame or steered clear of last night’s hook up in the cafeteria, I’d feel broken and empty.

Not much changed when I moved to New York, which seemed to be a real-world albeit more sophisticated version of the college frat party. I’d have stupid, meaningless conversations with some hipster at a loft party and end up letting him kiss me ten minutes later. I made out with a guy I knew professionally at a trade show. I got into sexual relationships with men I was dating way too soon. I basically had very few boundaries, and I was afraid of setting any for fear that I would upset someone or look like a loser. I was searching for intimacy, bought into the notion that I could have it instantly, and then I’d wonder why my love life was a glamorous disaster.

However, I think the reason it’s taken me so long to realize that these behaviors were unhealthy is because, in so many social spheres, they’re considered completely normal. Movies and TV programs have been creating the myth of immediate intimacy for decades. And now, “reality” shows like Rock of Love or The Bachelor, which so many people are convinced are truly real, depict instant makeout sessions, sex with multiple partners, and even proposals of marriage at the end of the two-month season. The Pick-Up Artist teaches a group of slightly dorky but refreshingly sincere men to mask their true selves with canned pick-up lines, rehearsed conversations and backhanded compliments. Trawling cheesy bars and clubs, their goal is to get their unsuspecting “targets” into bed at the end of the night. With pervasive attitudes like these, it’s no wonder porn is normalized, sex addiction is on the rise, and so many of us find intimacy illusive.

But that’s the insidiousness of The Matrix—you don’t know it isn’t real until you get the wake-up call. And who knew that Robby, the master of highlights, would also be my Morpheus? Needless to say, I gave him a generous tip.