I’m not going to say it’s impossible to read it that way, but I think it’s highly unlikely, just based on human beings being who they are.
I hear ya. People rarely fail to disappoint. I guess I’m just in an unusually charitable mood today. Most days, I’d help gather the wood for the public burning.
Guy has a FB page that says he’s in a relationship.
Sends old GF a friend request.
Next correspondence he says he and present GF are not really cozy.
Says that old GF was first love, still fond of her, keeps momento, write back etc.
There’s just too many clues there. The guy is making a move.
Okay, okay… I’m with the rest of you… it does have that stench of desperation.
I’ll get the kerosene.
Well, stench of desperation, sure. He’s unhappy. Maybe he can’t talk to any of his friend if they’re all mutual friends with his current SO. He remembers the happy times you used to have. Still, it’s no crime. It’s only human nature. I see no reason to defriend him just for being sad, lonely and nostalgic. I mean, it’s up to you if you want to be facebook friends. But he didn’t try to grope you or anything, it’s only facebook ferchrissakes.
He totally did try to grope her, just the cyber-version. If he’d been there in person she’d be trapped in a corner, smelling mothballs because he’s wearing a 20 year-old sweater he dug out of storage because she said she liked it one time. Do you not realize he’s talking to a realtor about buying something in her area, based on an exhaustive analysis of her first response?
My analysis: he hit 40 recently, and she’s not the only ex he’s tracked down (probably all of them, and there won’t have been many). In addition to Facebook, he’s also joined Classmates.com recently. He’s entering a dark time…
I have heard from a third party that a woman I knew in college (30 years ago…) still has a poem that I wrote for her. Haven’t seen her sine college.
She had it framed.
She has it memorized.
Welcome to the club.
What? Everyone still uses Facebook. Unless you’re using Google+, like all the really cool people.
I once had an old boyfriend unfriend me because, I think, he was waiting around for this kind of message from me and it never happened.
I think this because of the history of our previous relationship. He got into an Evangelical, nondenominational, speaking-in-tongues kind of church. So he was married and we were friends on Facebook?!?!?! OMG obviously I was going to try to arrange a clandestine meeting right?!?!?!
I friend anyone who wants to be my friend, including ex boyfriends, but I don’t get into off-page dialogues with them. I think that crosses the line of trust I have with my husband. Be glad that this guy didn’t lure you in with platonic talk before very subtly getting more personal. That’s how it usually happens.
She’s been looking at it for 30 years - I’d’ve hoped it stuck by now.
She may just like the poem. I dated a talented artist 20 years ago and I’ve got some of her work, as it’s good and I like it. You’d have to have been around 20 years ago to realize she’s an ex, as I sure as heck don’t mention it. Doesn’t mean I’ve got lingering feelings - I’ve rebuffed her attempts to reconnect many times, in fact.
Wasn’t someone bragging on here a few years ago that pretty much every woman he went to highschool with (he was in his late '30s I think) had done the same to him on facebook. I can’t recall who said it though.
Well, thank you all for sticking up for my intelligence (or at least, my relative lack of stupidity), but seriously, I was dumb. I don’t mean in the sense of doing something dumb or dangerous, but rather, dumb like the guy who says, “I think this stripper is really into me!” I mean, yes, that happens now and then… but, no, she’s not. That’s how I was dumb, or I suppose I should say hopelessly naive: I had the idiotic notion that this guy might just be saying a friendly hello, with no romantic intent, which is certainly possible… but no.
And to be clear, I don’t think he did anything really wrong, just hilariously predictable. Any one of us could have written his response for him. (Oh man! That’s what I should have done! Post about it before he replied and have people predict the outcome. Extra points for calling key phrases like, “rough patch” and “first love”. Oh, well; next time.) I guess if I really wanted to get pissed off about something, I could take umbrage at the idea that he saw I was married and thought he might have a shot anyway… but meh. Initially, I did experience a little frisson of squicked-outedness from the aroma of mothballed sweater emanating from his message, but mostly I just kind of feel bad for him. Of course, not bad enough to keep me from presenting him here in all his predictable, sad-sacky glory for your amusement.
But it’s easy enough for me to just not respond, and it’s not like I’m worried about him pulling some crazy stunt…
Ah, crap.
I did this, too, only I was the contactor. I contacted my Ex strictly to apologize and bury the hatchet. We had parted very badly. I apologized, he apologized, and that was the end of it.
Or so I thought.
He strated stalking my LJ ooooold posts. (I had friended him, but I don’t write anything really personal on it.)
Then he started e-mailing me about old posts, and talking to me about visiting him (which I put the kibosh on toot-sweet) and talking about all kinds of things.
I post stories on a website under another handle. Erotic stories. He found the website, which admittedly wasn’t too hard. Read the stories, ok still no problem - I put them out there, didn’t I? Then he e-mailed with a question from one of them. :eek:
Up until now I had thought like Quicksilver - I’m making too much of it, he is happily married, has children, no big deal. But to not only be semi-stalking me but to admit it and be so bold as to ask questions, therefore letting me know that you have been doing so? Colossal bad taste and I was made to feel super uncomfortable.
I cut him off and haven’t written back since. I don’t even know if he wrote me, since I blocked his e-mail. No loss.
At least yours went right to the point! Mine dilly-dallied for so long I was lulled into a sense of security.
I don’t know who it was but it has happened to me a bunch of times. The last time was last night in fact. I just told her to call me and we talked for over an hour with her using many of the same themes as the guy in the OP. My response? Fly up and see me for the weekend if you want and bring your female friends too but don’t bring your husband he sounds like a dick. She is seriously considering it. Nothing is going to happen if she does besides everyone having a good (innocent) time.
I don’t think the guy in the OP did anything especially wrong or said anything unusual. I always thought people were just harmlessly reminiscing when they do things that. Hardly anyone in a long-term relationship or marriage is perfectly happy so there is always room for favorable comparisons between you and their current parent. It doesn’t mean anything until you see an odd car parked on your street at night or your pets go missing.
parent = partner above. No need to brings other weird things into this.
You know, it occurred to me that it’s entirely possible this is exactly what he was trying to do. He’s sweet, but not suave. I can just picture him carefully crafting his response, thinking to himself “Okay. I can’t ask her for sex right off the bat. I’ll just hint in a very subtle way that I might possibly be open to the idea. I’ll just play it cool, and then reel her in. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Poor guy.
Out of curiosity, do you share this stuff with your husband? And if so, was he more amused or more annoyed?
Doesn’t sound like you’re the cliche. Sounds like HE is.
I disagree. The guy who thinks the stripper is into him is deluded and stupid. On facebook, though, I think *most *people who haven’t dated for more than a decade really are just looking to be friends again.
I’m facebook friends with a few old girlfriends, and none of them even filtered me with a message before approving like you did (I honestly don’t remember if I initiated the friending, or they did, for most of them). I haven’t hit on any of them, nor they on me.
Now that I think about it, though, I wonder if some of the other old girlfriends are blocking me.