Kind of sad

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yeah yeah, I know, get a blog. Fuck it, this is my blog. Get over it.

I’m really not interested in relationships right now. Love means little to me. I can take or leave sex. And seriously, I’m enjoying the single life like never before.

But my short-term mission is to go on lots of dates. As many as I can get, whatever it takes to get them. My mission: Date the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in mass quantities. I even have a kind of standing deal with a friend – For every date that I don’t go on, I have to send her a certain amount of money, and she’ll match it and send the total to the NRA. (She’s as leftist as I am.)

So I’ve been doing some kind of crazy shit, taking chances that I wouldn’t normally take. It’s almost like I’m daring women to slap my face, just to put myself out there more. And it’s been working. I’ve been getting a lot of dates. The Bad aplenty, and more than my fair share of The Ugly.

But out of this came an unintended consequence – I accidentally met The Good.

I met an amazing, beautiful, smart, kind, educated, articulate, wonderful woman. It was weird, the morning after we met, I knew that it was a relationship already. She knew it too. We e-mailed each other every day, and things grew more intense. On our second date, things grew even deeper. We were at a stage that most couples don’t get to in ten years, if ever. The e-mails grew more frequent, and the deep emotional sharing got to a level that I’ve only experienced once before.

We decided to make a date for Columbus Day, but then we decided we couldn’t last that long. We both moved heaven and earth to get together before then. The next few days were a heady mixture of incredible contentment and hellish impatience. We were both counting down the hours until we could see each other again.

Finally we met for lunch together yesterday. It was incredible. We spent a little too long together, and both of us almost missed our meetings. When we said goodbye, some passing stranger told us to get a room.

I eagerly awaited her next e-mail. I finally got it last night. She told me that I awakened such attraction in her, and so much connection, that she came to a sorry and ironic realization: She’s not ready to date yet. She’s still getting over her last relationship. She never knew that while she was going out with a bunch of her own personal Bad and Ugly people.

Wow. What a kick in the stomach. I aroused such passion in her that I made her realize that she’s not ready for such passion yet.

In the end, I’m going to be less sad that I lost her than happy that I had the opportunity to meet her at all. I’m really very lucky.

But I’m having a really bad morning.

2

Welcome to the friend zone! Pull up a chair! There’s coffee and donuts in the back.

3

It was definitely anything but friend zone!

4

Well, if you got your piece, you can move forward with no regrets! Perhaps it’s best - the whole “I’m so attracted to you that I can’t be in a relationship with you” seems like kind of a cop out to me.

5

Indeed. This was the old “It’s not you, it’s me” taken to extremes.

If I read your OP correctly, you saw her in person exactly three times. Am I right about that? You can’t really know somebody after three dates and some e-mails. I’m not saying it’s impossible that you’ve lost the potential love of your life, but it’s at least equally likely that you filled in a lot of blanks with imagined idealism, and reality was doomed to intrude sooner or later. Sooner was probably better.

As shitty as you feel right now – and I’m not discounting that, believe me – this girl sounds like she’s saddled with more baggage than you need right now.

Keep going on those dates, and good luck!

6

I’m sorry you are dealing with this.

My 2 cent advice is to wait it out. This probably a case of cold feet brought on by things moving too fast, and she’ll come around.

That said, it could be that she wasn’t feeling exactly what you were feeling. She might have realized that what she really misses is that passion with ex-boyfriend. That happens, too.

7

Obviously you’ve never had this sort of encounter before. I have and I’m sorry that you have to go through it,** tdn**.

However, I do agree with this point, you’re better off in the long run. If she’s not ready then she’s not ready. It sucks mightily, I know. :frowning:

8

Thanks. Yeah, it’s hard to convince someone on the outside that it could possibly be real. If someone else had posted the OP, I’d be skeptical. But I have reason to believe that she was feeling everything I was. We seemed really in tune on that.

Of course, if she weren’t feeling that way, and it’s all in my head, that doesn’t exactly make it hurt any less.

But yeah, I need to just get back out there and flirt my ass off. I’ve already been doing plenty this morning. :slight_smile:

9

Do that. When she’s ready, it sounds like you’ll be the first one she tells. And if she never is, then you won’t have spent your time sitting around pining.

10

Excellent point. And really, it’s best not to let her take me off of my mission. Time to concentrate on the other three billion women out there.

11

OK, I’m feeling mostly better about this. I’m still a little disappointed, but I’ve found my smile again.

Really? This is something that is sort of screaming for a poll.

Not commited to a lifetime or moving in together or anything, but how many dates does it take to establish a monogomous relationship? I’m sure it varies from person to person, but for me three has always been the magic number. With only one exception (now two), I have never gone on a third date with a woman where it wasn’t pretty well understood that we were officially a couple. The third date is usually the sex date too, or at least it includes some pseudo-sexual activity with an implicit promise of ensuing sex.

In each of those cases, things progressed to the point where the woman would start bringing up the M-word eventually.

Is that unusual?

12

Really?

13

It sure felt like it.

The whole thing was eerily reminiscent of the beginning of my last relationship. And in that relationship, neither of us had ever before felt anything that intense. And we used to get comments all the time. It seemed like people constantly noticed that we were on some different level.

Or maybe it was in our imaginations. (Which is the only place it counts.)

14

She’ll be back, doll. Or she’s crazy.

15

Or maybe just yours? Because after two dates, she said she didn’t want to date anymore.

16

You are so good at making me feel better. :slight_smile:

17

Please don’t get me wrong, tdn. I was in no way trying to invalidate your feelings or minimize the pain you’re experiencing.
If you think I’m saying “No big deal, you couldn’t possibly have had real feelings for her after three dates,” then I apologize; that was not what I meant to get across.

I don’t know the specifics of your recent relationship, but I don’t deny that, after knowing somebody for a very short time, it is undoubtedly possible to feel a very strong infatuation, to discover things in common, to feel comfortable with somebody – essentially to have all the trappings of a long-term relationship, just without the “long-term” part.

And if you’re at this point by your third date, you might very well indeed be on your way to years of blissful harmony.

But it’s still new – you still have that heady giddiness and sense of discovery that accompanies the beginning of a relationship. It’s wonderful, but it’s not always sustainable, and while you’re in such a state you’re not necessarily the best judge of whether there’s something real underneath.

The newer the relationship, the more potential deal-breakers could be lurking around every corner. In this case, it sounds as if the deal-breaker was that she wasn’t in a proper emotional state to handle a serious relationship. Maybe that was just an unfortunate accident of timing, or maybe she’s a serial drama queen who’s not comfortable with stablity. My point is, right know you can’t know which, because you didn’t have enough time to see all sides of each other.

None of this makes the breakup any less sucky for you. I get that, I really do. But I think you’ll gain a little more perspective down the road a ways. Hang in there.

(And by the way, yeah, I’ve been on plenty of third dates on the way to going nowhere. But I went on my last third date 16 years ago, and that one stuck.)

18

Wheelz is very wise.

I have been on two First Dates that I thought created instant connections – and was led to believe those feelings were reciprocated.

In one case I was told “it just can’t be right now.” I still don’t know what that means. In the other case, I was told that I would be called the next day as he was so excited to see me again. I never heard from him again.

We get over these things although it has changed my dating practices considerably. (i.e., I don’t date.)

19

Thanks for the explanation, and for “getting it.”

It really could be any of those things, sure. I’m going to go with the first one, because that would be taking her at her word. She didn’t strike me as someone who’s anything other than a straight shooter.

20

Relationship Pain.

About 10 years ago, I used to have a formula for dealing with that sort of pain.

[spoiler]Do 300 sit-ups.

And everytime the pain in my head was worse than the pain in my stomach, it was time for 50 more. Every. Single. Time.

Ok, so it took just as long to get over as it did w/o the sit-ups.
(But I got in pretty good shape felt a lot better about myself once I did.)[/spoiler]