The situation in a (simplified) nutshell:
I meet a girl – let’s call her M – online; we trade interesting, articulate, lengthy e-mails over a couple of weeks before deciding to get together for dinner.
Dinner is awesome. Easily one of the best first dates I’ve ever had. Lots of chemistry, great banter, comfortable dynamic, similar dispositions and senses of humor…it lasts around five and a half hours, all told. She seems to enjoy it as much as I do.
We e-mail back and forth again over the next week before agreeing to meet up for brunch that Sunday (a week and a half ago, I guess). Second date is even better than the first. After brunch, we hang out at my apartment for a bit, then go play Scrabble at a local bar. While we’re at my apartment (just drinking and chatting), she tells me that she likes me enough that she wants to make sure we take things a little slowly, so she’s comfortable with the pace. She says she knows herself, and that when she rushes into something, it has less of a chance of working out. This makes sense to me, somewhat vaguely couched though it is, and I’m happy to oblige. Mostly because I think she’s awesome and I feel like we’ve got the kind of connection that doesn’t come along very often.
During Scrabble, she spontaneously invites me to join her at her good friend’s house that evening for dinner and to watch the Golden Globes. (I’m pretty sure she surprised herself when she extended the invitation.) I accept, because I’m having a blast, and after another game of Scrabble at my place, we head over. Dinner is fun, her friend and her friend’s boyfriend are great and apparently like me a lot, everyone has a good time. Ten hours or so after we meet for brunch, we call it a night and M drops me off at home.
As we’re driving back, I ask her what her plans are over the next week, and she says that the only day she’d be free to get together would be that Tuesday – so, two days later. (As an aside, and not super-important to the story, but: I’m about 85 percent sure, for various reasons, that she wasn’t/isn’t actively seeing anyone else. At least at that point.) I tell her I can do Tuesday if she wants to, and immediately caveat that, as a boy, I can’t be depended upon to know what “taking it slow” means in practice, so I’m relying on her to tell me if the pace doesn’t work for her. She agrees; it’s copacetic. Great couple of dates.
The next day (Monday the 12th) she sends me an incredibly sweet and – as far as I’m concerned – genuine e-mail telling me that she’s thought about it and decided that it probably isn’t a good idea in the long run for us to see each other again so soon. She reiterates how much she likes me, tells me she wants to make sure we have a good shot at turning this into something, says she hopes her e-mail doesn’t make me run for the hills (and is overtly self-conscious about saying something like that after only two dates), and suggests that we plan our third date after she’s figured out her schedule following inauguration weekend. Uncharacteristically for me, I view this e-mail with optimism, take it (I hope) as intended, and respond in an agreeable and understanding way while underscoring that we’re on the same page, that I like her a whole lot, and that I (like her) think there’s potential here that’s worth exploring. Around this point we also start a Scrabble game online.
She sends a brief and appreciative email on Tuesday, I respond on Wednesday, she e-mails on Thursday night, and I e-mail back late Friday evening after a particularly long day at work. She makes her move in our Scrabble game Saturday morning, and that…is the last I’ve heard from her. At least via Scrabble or e-mail.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, we don’t talk. Yesterday afternoon, knowing that she had a ticket to Obama’s swearing-in, I send her a super-brief text message expressing my general amazement about the inauguration. A few hours later, she sends a couple of perfectly friendly (and perfectly punctuated) sentences. She also makes a joke. I reply via text with a comment and joke of my own.
…And that’s it. No further e-mail or text. And as optimistic as I was about this last week, considering the excellent dates and the seeming mutual interest, tomorrow it’ll be six days since the last e-mail between us, by far the longest stretch we’ve had since starting to talk at the end of December. I can’t help but be a little baffled by the silence, and it’s starting to make me wonder if something important got derailed somewhere along the line in the past week, or even if I’d severely misjudged her level of interest to begin with.
So, I guess my question is this: At what point would it be appropriate for me to write again, assuming I don’t hear from her? And when I do, what sort of thing should I say? If possible, I’d like to rekindle the momentum (I love mixing metaphors) to the extent necessary, or at least find out what’s up, but I’d also prefer not to run the risk of alienating her or striking the wrong note. Any plausible explanations for the recent lack of communication, given the facts laid out above, would also be welcomed.
This sort of sucks a lot. My optimism is still here, albeit a bit battered, but if it turns out that she’s no longer interested, I’m going to be at a bit of a loss as to what might have gone wrong.
At six days silence you have sufficiently established your masculine aloofness and non-neediness.