This is a love song as self-sabotage tutorial. The narrator wants commitment badly enough to confess every reason they'll ruin it, but the confession itself becomes another dodge. Offering sex as the solution to intimacy problems is peak deflection disguised as honesty.
Never needed a man / Tatay died when I was like ten / I turned out to be just fine / I just cheat every now and again
The whiplash from 'just fine' to 'I just cheat' is the song in four lines. Independence claim immediately undercut by the pattern that proves otherwise. Casual 'now and again' makes it worse, not better.
Or we could fuck, bust a nut, t-talk it over on a date
Sex positioned as conflict resolution, which is exactly the avoidance he claims to want to stop. The stutter on 'talk' gives it away. Physical intimacy is easier than the conversation he's supposedly building toward.
Being vulnerable is exhausting, babe / Can we get naked instead of talking, babe?
He names the problem and immediately runs from it in the same breath. Vulnerability exhausts him so he offers nakedness as the easier substitute. This might be the most honest moment because it admits the whole song is structured around that escape hatch.
I don't wanna cheat no more, be no whore / I would rather be the one that you tell your mom about
The shift from 'whore' to 'mom' is jarring on purpose. He wants domesticity badly enough to say it plainly, no cleverness. Meeting someone's mom is maybe the realest commitment marker in the song because it's outside the relationship itself.
Is it cool? Do you trust me? / Am I a fool if I love you? / Is it cool? Can I get ugly / Next to you?
SZA finally speaks and she's asking the questions he never let the partner ask. 'Can I get ugly next to you' lands harder than any confession in the verses because it's what vulnerability actually costs. Not sexy, just raw.
The song ends on 'maybe I should trust myself' like that's a revelation, but trusting himself was never the issue. He knows exactly what he's doing. The real question is whether he'll stop doing it, and the song deliberately doesn't answer that.