THE GUY YOU LOVED TO HATE

When has attraction ever collided with your unfinished business and forced you to decide who you really want to be? In How to Date the Guy You Hate, Julie Kriss argues that real adult love doesn’t erupt from banter or chemistry alone—it’s forged in apology, consent, boundaries, and brave choices. The novel contends that desire can be a powerful accelerant, but you get something durable only when you pair heat with honesty: owning your past, speaking your fears, and choosing a partner who chooses you back in the open.

You meet Jason Carsleigh—former high school golden boy and Marine—at rock bottom: fired from a bank, bouncing at a college club, living in his mother’s basement, and nursing a bruise on his cheek (and a bigger one on his self-worth). You meet Megan Perry at her breaking point: juggling yet another low-wage job, dreading a genetic consult about her late mother’s cancer, and staring down an invitation to her cousin’s Cape Cod wedding where the groom is Megan’s teenage ex who broke her heart. Neither wants romance; both need a grown-up reckoning.

What the story really argues

Kriss’s core claim is simple and subversive for an enemies-to-lovers romance: it isn’t enemies who become lovers—it’s wounded people who practice repair. Repair shows up everywhere: in Jason’s unqualified apology for a night he forgot but she can’t, in the way they negotiate sex openly and play by stated rules, in their willingness to call out family cruelty, and in how they walk back from missteps (like Megan’s defensive “It’s just a blow job” speech) with direct asks for what they want next time.

What you’ll learn in this summary

We’ll unpack how consent, apology, and clarity make desire safer and hotter; why road trips and neutral spaces act like truth serum; and how reframing masculinity—from performative "good guy" to dependable, boundaried partner—makes room for intimacy. You’ll see how walking out of the wrong rooms (Cape Cod’s judgmental wedding, toxic jobs, manipulative exes) creates space for the right relationship to breathe. You’ll watch two careers—Megan’s styling, Jason’s EMT training—become identity anchors that stabilize the couple, and you’ll meet the friend-net (Holly, Dean, Edie, and even Dr. Pfeiffer) that helps them turn individual grit into durable support.

Why this matters for you

If you’ve ever told yourself you could “handle things alone,” Megan’s story shows the limits of lone-wolf coping. Her anxiety about inherited cancer risk, plus complicated family dynamics, can’t be solved by another shift at Drug-Rite or a perfect dress. She needs someone who holds her fear without trying to manage her (Jason: “There’s always an us”) and a self who chooses career purpose, not just survival, to feel like a match for the love she wants.

If you’ve ever tried to be a good guy by overfunctioning, Jason’s arc shows a better path. He quits the image-polishing bank job and the soul-sucking bouncer shifts, stops letting an ex-fiancée manage his narrative, and instead sends a clear signal with action: EMT classes, boundaries with Charlotte (“There’s nothing to talk about”), and a rescue that isn’t about savior theatrics (leaving the wedding early) but about dignity and consent. Only then—grounded, not grandstanding—does he have the strength to say, “I want all of it.”

The book’s emotional engine

Kriss uses classic romance fuel (sexual tension you could cut with a butter knife) but keeps pumping the brakes with ethical friction. The book’s hottest beats—Megan on a dressing table in a B&B, texting each other to climax from separate rooms, an athletic layup turned grass-stained make-out—work because they ride on explicit permission, curiosity, and care. The contrast with Jason’s quartet of sexless years with Charlotte (only seven times!) illuminates a thesis you can use: when someone loves your desire—asks for it, laughs with it, makes room for it—you feel seen, not used. That feeling outlasts pretty weddings and perfect résumés.

Key takeaway

Heat is simple. Healing is earned. Adult love happens where those two finally meet—through consent, repair, and the courage to leave the wrong rooms so the right one can open.

The pages that follow translate this into eight vivid ideas you can use: how to repair after a bad beginning, why big conversations come easier on the road, what healthy masculinity looks like up close, how to set boundaries with families and exes, how to fight fair and flirt filthier, and how anchoring work choices can strengthen a relationship. You’ll finish with practical insights, not just a happy sigh—though you’ll get that, too.

Julie Kriss takes an unconventional route into a love story: she makes you start with the worst possible origin story and then shows you how to repair it. Megan and Jason once made out—naked—at a high school party he barely remembers because he was hammered on vodka. Years later, she still carries the sting: every time she sees him, he’s naked in her mind, and in her chest is the quiet scream of a girl who wasn’t fully seen. When she finally tells him in a rainy strip-mall moment (“That girl was me”), the book refuses amnesia or melodrama. It gives you apology and action.

A real apology, not romance cover-fire

Jason’s first move isn’t a grand gesture. It’s eye contact and an unqualified, really fucking sorry. That matters. He doesn’t minimize, joke, or get defensive—even when shock makes him blurt “We were naked.” He absorbs the truth that Megan has lived with the memory he lost. That apology clears a path from “accidental harm” to “informed consent.” You can use this: when a past version of you screwed up, apology without self-exoneration is the floor everything else stands on. (Compare to Harriet Lerner’s Why Won’t You Apologize?, which emphasizes non-defensive repair.)

Setting rules that make desire honest

Repair isn’t a TED talk; it’s new practice. When they decide to have sex, they negotiate rules in her kitchen: no staying over, no strings, Jason makes the rules during the act—and Megan says yes. Those boundaries don’t cheapen the heat; they structure it. Later, on the hotel balcony, they communicate again: “I’m going to fuck you later,” he says plainly, giving her power to opt in. Then they escalate with playful, explicit dirty texting from separate rooms—an incredible example of consent-by-words that punctures shame and adds oxygen to desire. (Note how this aligns with Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are: desire thrives with safety and specificity.)

Fighting fair when fear flares

Not every choice is brave on the first try. After a mind-melting encounter at the B&B—that glorious dressing-table scene—Jason says the R word (“wrong woman” for four years), and Megan panics. Her fear yanks her back to control, and out comes the most defensive sentence in the book: “It’s a favor. One weekend. Some sex. A blow job. That’s all.” It crushes him. But instead of sulking or retaliating, he channels the pain into clarity. He holds a boundary with himself (no more being used) and, more importantly, he holds a boundary on her behalf: he packs their bags and leaves the wedding that’s degrading her. Repair looks like this—own the rupture, then act in alignment with dignity.

A new language for closure with the past

When Jason’s ex, Charlotte, resurfaces (via a friend who plants the seed that she’s having “second thoughts”), the book declines a retread. Jason sends exactly one text: “There’s nothing to talk about. It’s over.” Later, Megan sends Charlotte a comedic but crystal-clear boundary from Jason’s phone (“he is super HOTTTTTTTTTTTTT… and now he’s all mine”). It’s hilarious, but it’s also reparation: the boy who felt like someone’s project is no longer reportable. The girl who felt invisible is now visible, even to a jealous ex. Closure isn’t promised; it’s made—with one decisive sentence and a refusal to re-litigate.

Try this

If something early went wrong in your relationship (a misunderstanding, a missed signal), name it plainly, apologize without caveats, then ask: “What rules would make you feel safe to try again?” Put them in play, then check in mid-scene. That’s how this book makes heat ethical—and unforgettable.

By the time Megan calls him late one night—“I’m tired of you not being in the same room with me”—you see the repair complete itself. Jason says the line that is the book’s lodestar: “There’s always an us.” It’s not a promise to fix; it’s a promise to stay.

Place shapes honesty. By yanking Megan and Jason out of Eden Hills and into cars, coffee stops, and unfamiliar rooms, the book turns a fraught history into a moving conversation. Think of the drive to Cape Cod as a third space—neither home nor workplace—where you can set down your pose. Kriss uses this liminality like a skilled therapist uses a walk: when your eyes are on the horizon, your mouth opens.

The car as confessional

From the first highway miles, the dialog lengthens. They banter about the X-Men (Jason’s stress relief during deployment) and turn it into a metaphor: “It’s better than reality,” he says—mutant healing powers when your life is shitty. That throwaway nerd talk primes the pump for real disclosure. Megan soon tells the truth about her appointment with Dr. Pfeiffer—her 50/50 genetic risk for the mutation that fueled her mother’s cancer. The timing matters. Not over dinner, not in bed; on a roadside table with traffic hissing in the background, where eye contact can break safely. He says the only right thing: “Holy shit, Megan. I am really fucking sorry.”

Neutral rooms, maximal clarity

The Finger Lakes inn is gorgeous, a honeymoon trap with two beds. It turns them into co-conspirators, ordering sandwiches on a balcony, both keyed up and alone. Sex here isn’t escapism; it’s chosen with eyes open. The next morning at a diner, Jason asks practical questions (suits, schedules), stakes the trip’s rules, and even offers to drive to her doctor visit (she refuses). You see how neutral rooms make pragmatic logistics feel intimate, not transactional—a rehearsal for living together before they admit they want to.

Texting as courage prosthetic

Later, the book gives you a masterclass in digital desire. In side-by-side rooms at the wedding B&B, they sext in real time. It’s graphic and playful (“Take those off… Imagine I’m doing it”), with neighbors in thin-walled rooms and an orchestra warming up outside. You feel how text creates just enough distance to let a shy person be bold. They fall asleep with glowing screens, the ache reframed as promise, not punishment. (This echoes Esther Perel’s observation that eroticism needs distance as well as closeness; texting can create safe, sexy distance.)

Making an exit when a place is wrong

Cape Cod is beautiful—and corrosive. Aunt Janice’s lawyer-network politeness hides suspicion: “the model and the hippie,” she sniffs about Megan’s parents, and then questions what Megan has “done with her life.” Kyle, the groom, gets drunk and waxes nostalgic about being Megan’s first (gross). The space itself demands a mask Megan can’t breathe in. Jason reads the room, packs the bags, and says, “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.” This is a thesis in motion: places that degrade you don’t earn your presence. You get to leave weddings, jobs, and family scripts that eat your dignity.

What to borrow

If you’re stuck, change geography. Have the hard talk in a car at dusk, on a walk, or at a diner at 8 a.m. If a room makes you small, leave it and regroup somewhere you can stand up straight.

By the end of the trip back—the Charlotte texts dispatched, the map shared, the silences companionable—you can see how two people became honest simply because no room asked them to perform. The road tripped their defenses. The truth moved in.

Jason starts as the archetypal “good guy” gone numb: former athlete, Marine, dutiful son, a bank job he hates because it looks respectable, and a bounce gig that pays bills while slowly scraping his soul. He’s polite even when kicked out of a life he never chose. Kriss rebuilds him from the inside—less golden boy, more grown man—by giving him three challenges: name what he wants, draw boundaries, and do good where it matters, not where it’s visible.

From performative nice to principled kind

Watch him at Zoot Bar: he protects bartender Edie from creeps, hauls out a belligerent ex in front of a crowd (humiliation with a lesson: “If she wants you to fuck off, you fuck off”), and yet drinks too much tequila to survive “Puke Patrol.” He’s high-functioning, not happy. When his mother confronts him—are you depressed? alcoholic?—he drops the act, admits he got fired, and refuses to be Charlotte’s project anymore. Kindness becomes less about optics (bank job, perfect engagement) and more about integrity (honest work, honest no’s).

Boundaries with exes and image

Charlotte’s reentry is a pivotal masculinity test. Rather than defend his worth to the woman who rationed sex (seven times in four years), he withdraws supply: “There’s nothing to talk about.” That sentence is a boundary, not a tantrum. He doesn’t need Charlotte’s gaze to feel like a man. He sends his attention instead to the person in front of him—Megan—where his desire is reciprocated and celebrated. (Compare to bell hooks’ writing on men choosing love over domination—he opts out of control games.)

Doing good work, not good optics

The EMT path is a genius narrative choice. Jason half-jokes at dinner about being an EMT “for the relatives,” then turns the lie into a decision. He signs up for classes, trades shifts, and quits bouncing mid-puke in a starry back lot: “I quit.” EMT work re-roots his competence in service, adrenaline, and teamwork—the healthy versions of what the Marines once gave him. It also lets him come home to Megan with purpose, not just exhaustion. Masculinity here is provision and presence, not performance.

Decisive without domineering

Jason’s most controversial move—packing up and leaving the wedding—isn’t about control; it’s about reading harm and acting when your partner has gone mute. He gives her 15 minutes, packs respectfully (okay, he does toss a ratty bra), and drives. Later, when she calls in the night, he refuses to be a scratching post (“I’m not scratching your itch”), but when she says the brave part—“I want us”—he’s in the car. Firm no’s, fast yes’s. That’s the masculine profile this book rewards.

What strength looks like

Apologize without flinching. Protect without peacocking. Work you’re proud of. Boundaries with anyone who confuses love with management. Then say the simple line that takes guts: “I want all of it.”

By the epilogue, when he tiptoes in from a bloody shift, changes the calendar to create a day together, and crawls into bed in quiet worship, you see it: the good guy isn’t back—he’s better. He’s a partner.

A throughline of the book is the courage it takes to stop auditioning for people who won’t clap for you. For Megan, that means family rooms and career cubbies that shrink her. For Jason, it’s the bank desk and the ex’s surveillance. Together, they practice the spiritual discipline of exit.

The Cape Cod crucible

Cape Cod is a pastoral trap. Aunt Janice, a high-powered attorney, greets Megan with professional warmth but private judgment, and relatives murmur about “the model and the hippie” parents—a dig at her late mother’s bohemia and her father’s incense shop, The Mind Meld. Kyle (goatee, one earring, app developer) is polite but tipsy, and in a moment of gross nostalgia tells Jason he was “Megan’s first.” This is not family. This is an audience that consumes her story for sport. Jason’s snap decision—“We’re leaving”—isn’t romantic flight; it’s moral clarity.

Career exits that unlock identity

Back home, Megan quits the Drug-Rite grind and the web gigs that drain her, and re-approaches Janine, the tough photographer she once walked out on. She persuades her to give styling another chance. The work demands improvisation, detail, and stamina—the very traits the Cape Cod room refused to see in her. Her dad (scatterbrained but loving) names it: you were happy doing this. Choosing styling is another room exit—the move from self-protection to professional pride. Jason’s EMT pivot is its mirror.

Boundary scripts you can use

You can borrow their one-liners. Jason to Charlotte: “It’s over.” Jason to the wedding: “Fifteen minutes.” Megan to herself: If I’m not welcome, I won’t beg. And their recurring strategy—leave now, explain later—undercuts the paralysis that keeps many of us in rooms too long. (This aligns with boundary experts like Nedra Glover Tawwab: clarity and brevity are kinder than prolonged justification.)

Permission slip

You don’t owe your ongoing presence to people who make you small—family, bosses, even former selves. Pack the bag. Walk out. Build the room where you can breathe.

The payoff is large: by the epilogue, their home is full of calendars, shifts, and mutual pride. The rooms they built for themselves now hold them up—no audience required.

Two communication channels power this romance: conflict and play. The book models how to do both without weaponizing either. If you’ve ever wondered how to reconcile bluntness with seduction, watch these two switch gears without losing respect.

Clear, direct conflict

Megan’s hardest truths don’t stay swallowed. She tells Jason about the party, her mother’s cancer, and her dread of the wedding. He answers questions she actually asked: “Why did you take me to the wedding?”—“For you. You asked me to.” When their wires cross—her defensive minimization in the B&B; his wounded pullback at the reception—they pause, recalibrate, and try again. There’s no scorecard, just a pattern: name it, decide, move.

Play that builds instead of blurs

Kriss is unapologetically sexy. But the filth is clean—consensual, enthusiastic, precise. The hotel-room sexting isn’t throwaway; it’s practice for speaking up (“Spread your legs wider,” “Are you stroking yourself?”). The now-classic line—“I’m going to fuck you later”—isn’t pressure; it’s a respectful heads-up. By the time Megan drops a knee in front of him at the B&B or rides him at home saying “Take me to the bed,” you know the script they wrote together.

Repair in real time

The couple’s best moment may be the late-night phone call. She names the heart of it—“I’m tired of you being there while I’m here”—and asks for what she wants: come over. He tests for old patterns (“I’m not scratching your itch”) and then says yes to the relationship, not just the act. The next morning he formalizes it with the simplest contract ever: “You’re my girlfriend. Family dinners, dates, the whole thing. I want all of it.” Ambiguity ends. Desire doesn’t.

When jokes serve intimacy

Humor strips shame. Jason’s deadpan “Not enough megapixels, man” when she sees Charlotte’s name on his phone deflates anxiety. Her wicked “Miss Seven Times” text to Charlotte cements them as a unit. Even their nerd riffs (Wolverine’s healing powers) become a shared language for stress and resilience. (As John Gottman’s research suggests, couples who maintain playfulness through conflict repair faster.)

Use this duo

When you need to fight: be specific, short, and brave. When you need to flirt: be specific, playful, and sober. Same ingredients; different spices. Both build trust.

If you adopt one habit from this book, make it this: text the desire you’re too shy to say yet, then show up in person and keep your promise.

Great romance rarely stands up without two sturdy individual stories. Kriss gives both leads meaningful work arcs and shows you how purpose steadies passion. The lesson is practical: you love better when you’re also living well.

Megan’s stylist rebirth

After years of floating—web coding gigs, a drugstore cash register, a trail of firings she wore like punk badges—Megan admits what her dad saw first: she loved styling. She phones Janine, the exacting photographer she once quit on, and asks for another chance. The work is merciless and energizing: pinning sleeves, troubleshooting sets, shaping images. Her competence returns in muscles she forgot she had. By the time she updates Holly’s shop site and curates those vintage Rita Hayworth vibes, she can walk into any room without begging it to like her.

Jason’s EMT calling

What starts as a cover story for rich relatives becomes a vocation. EMT training demands discipline, team trust, and a tolerance for blood that redeems rather than hardens. The epilogue shows the rhythm: shift rotations, paramedic coursework, a late-night crawl into bed with the woman he built a life with. This is the opposite of his earlier “good optics” bank job. It’s also an echo of healthy military service without the burnout tailspin.

The health plot that deepens everything

Dr. Pfeiffer isn’t a melodrama device; he’s a wise clinician who models patient-centered care: clear genetic risk education, structured decisions (test now, counselor after), and advice to recruit support. The result matters less than the method (Megan’s results are normal): she practices telling scary truths, accepts help, and discovers she wants Jason there for the big doors. The night she learns her results, he’s the one waiting in the lobby. That’s the working definition of partnership.

Application

If your love life feels wobbly, check your work life. Are you doing something that uses you up or builds you out? Pick one concrete pivot (a class, a project, a bold ask for a second chance) and notice how it stabilizes your relationship energy, too.

You finish believing what many romances only claim: two people who are proud of the lives they’re making bring more than sex to the bed. They bring ballast.

No one heals alone. Kriss surrounds the couple with a compact, memorable cast who embody different kinds of help: the sibling who believes in you, the best friend who tells the truth, the bartender who sees patterns, and the doctor who sets a path. You’re reminded that the shortest way to romance is through a community that holds you up to your best self.

Holly & Dean: proof of concept

Holly (Jason’s sister) and Dean (his best friend) are a successful “bad boy meets brilliant maker” love story already in progress. Their apartment is Megan’s sanctuary; their comments are her mirror: “If you like him, snap him up before someone else does,” Holly says, dead right. Dean—whose advice is usually comic—lands a bullseye when Jason calls from the reception: “Give her space, smash things in private, then wait. And get your own shit together.” Their City Hall wedding later gives the series its own counter-wedding: small, sincere, waterworks. That’s the future model.

Edie and Mrs. Carsleigh: intuition and steadiness

Edie, the no-nonsense bartender with a nose for human weather, clocks Jason’s post-trip glow instantly (“You got laid; it made you hotter.”). It’s funny, but it also nudges him to notice he’s different after intimacy that respects him. Mrs. Carsleigh worries about her son’s bruise and bar smell, but when Jason finds honest words—no bank, bouncing for cash, a trip with Megan—she shifts from alarm to support. Dignity without denial. That’s a parent cameo worth keeping.

Dr. Pfeiffer: calm in the medical storm

The doctor’s office is where the book models adult scaffolding: he delivers bad-news-maybe with plain language, sequenced steps (bloodwork now, counseling booked), and a gentle directive to tell one trusted person. Megan feels seen—and she passes that seeing on. Later, when Jason shows up to wait for her results, you feel the ecosystem working: professionals help you stand; partners help you walk.

Dad Perry: imperfect love that counts

Megan’s father is a scattered, patchouli-scented oddball who lends his car out for weeks and buys kale chips, raisin bread, and mayonnaise, but he’s a lodestar in one way: he keeps telling his daughter she’s worth the life she actually wants. “You were happy styling,” is the right sentence at the right time. His love isn’t managerial; it’s permissive in the best sense—permission to return to herself.

Build your net

List one truth-teller, one practical helper, one pro, and one unconditional cheerleader. If a slot is empty, recruit. Romance thrives when the net is woven tight.

By the last page, you don’t just believe in Megan and Jason; you believe in the small village that made them possible. That’s not extra—it's the secret engine of their HEA.