Back in January, the IG and I had a conversation about her future plans, and where and how and if a boyfriend would fit into them. She was tempted and torn by the notion, and the man who was postulating it, but she'd only been single for a couple of months at that point, and hadn't been happy with how her last (and previous) relationships had gone. She felt she was too busy with full time school and two part time jobs, and that she couldn't fit a boyfriend into that, at least not with the quality of relationship she wanted. She'd felt like her previous boyfriend was almost a long distance relationship, even though he only lived 15 miles away and they often saw each other at school, and she didn't want that again.
She rescinded that rule for about a week around Valentine's Day, and we had a lovely date and a lovelier follow up date at my apt one day, but she came to her senses before March began, and held her ground through the rest of the spring. We saw each other all the time, and traded phone txts and emails and talked now and then, but it was purely as friends. (Obviously she knew I had ulterior desires, if not motives, and we'd joke about it from time to time, but it wasn't as if I was actively trying to seduce her or pressure her into anything.)
In early summer, before she went away for 2+ months on an internship, we had a conversation much like the one we'd had in January, with a similar outcome. I really couldn't argue with her logic; she was going to be out of the country from late May until early August, when she got back she was going to do some other traveling, she had to help her younger sister move down south and get set in college, and then her own fall semester started in late August. At that point (now) she'd be back where she was in the spring; full time student, working at least two part time jobs, with a lot of friends to find time for, and no realistic time for a boyfriend. (And that's how things have turned out.)
She wasn't leading me on or stringing me along; she never asked me to wait for her, or flirted and then shied away, etc. Quite the opposite; she kept encouraging me to find a woman who
was looking for a boyfriend, and offered me advice on good ways and places to meet women. I didn't take her advice, but I did make some efforts to meet women over the summer. I even met some, but none that worked out. I think I mentioned it on the blog at some point, but mostly on a lark, while semi-drunk late night on my June 20th birthday, I posted
a personal add on Craig's List. It didn't go well.
I didn't get a ton of weird spammers and scammers, as I'd expected. That would have been better. What I got were several replies from women who were around my age or "a few years older," and while two of the four were fairly interesting to talk with via email, when they got around to sending me pictures I was, frankly, horrified. Thrown for a loop, as they say. I never met any of them in person, or even talked to them over the phone, and I disliked myself for simply ending the conversations as abruptly as I did, but the pictures... *shudders at the memory*
I'm not going to post any of the photos here, and I never told them my real name or used my regular email or mentioned my blog, so I'm sure none of them are reading this now, which is why I can honestly say that the experience made me question my heterosexuality. Not that it almost turned me gay; more like, "If all women looked like that, I'd just be celibate."
I've never been unhappy alone, and I hate hanging out in clubs or bars, and I'm not into spending time with people I don't enjoy spending time with. As a result I haven't dated that much or had that many girlfriends, but by chance or design, I've been pretty fortunate in the quality of women I have ended up with. No Victoria's Secret models, but none who weren't at least "pretty" by any conventional scale, and none who were anywhere above "plump." Usually closer to "slender." More importantly, I realize in retrospect, they all were young, and looked it. I've dated women older than me, but I was in my early 20s then, and in more recent years they've been younger, if only by a few years. On the whole though, I've never dated a woman who didn't get carded any time she went near a bar. I still get carded, for that matter.
The women who replied to my CL personal were not ugly, and they might even have been pretty. But they were clearly nowhere near slender, and most crucially, as I discovered to my surprise, they looked old. Not elderly, probably not even past 40, but when I received emails with photos, I immediately thought, "I'd be dating my mother." Which isn't a plus, in my judgment.
My reaction was way off base, of course. My mom is over 60, and while she was a beauty pageant winner in her youth, and she looks good for her age, these women were clearly decades younger than she. But after spending half a year hugging, occasionally kissing, and regularly looking into the face and eyes of the beautiful, size zero, 22 y/o IG -- that after spending four years with the beautiful and typically youthful-Asian-looking Malaya, I couldn't make the jump to secretary-haired, soccer mom type white women in their late 30s. It was day to night. Or at least day to very late afternoon/early evening.
It was partially my fault; I'd neglected to include a desired age range on my post and hadn't lied about my own (very much), so women within hailing range of it felt within their rights to try their luck with a hunky younger man. *cough* They just happened to be women who looked their age (or perhaps they were well-preserved 45 y/os?), while I look well under my own, (I never felt out of place ferrying the coed IG around the Bay Area) and (apparently) look for even further under my own, when it comes to picking women.
That realization, I think, is part of what made the CL personal ad experience so traumatizing. I hadn't really thought about age when placing the ad, and hadn't considered that an issue of importance in picking a girlfriend. I just assumed that if I got any replies, they'd come from youthful, possibly-attractive women in their late 20s or early 30s, and that the deciding factors for us dating would be compatibility, conversational aptitude, hobbies/interests, appearance, etc. Instead I wound up talking to a couple of women who seemed fun and youthful and lively (and a couple who did not) and when I saw their pictures I reacted like the evil businessman who
drank from the fake Holy Grail in Indiana Jones 3. Or, to be more accurate, I reacted like Elsa did in that scene, when faced with the evil businessman after he'd sipped from the fake Holy Grail.
I didn't just take it as "Oh well, bad luck on the personal ad replies. Better luck next time, and for good measure, use a more reputable, user-vetted service than CL." I took it as an existential dilemma. Was I supposed to be attracted to that? Is that what I had to look forward to? After all, even if I married one of the IG's classmates, in 10 or 15 years, they'd be that age. (And girth. And looks.) Was I doomed to a pathetic, Hefner-like existence, using my fame and fortune to trade up through a decades-long parade of interchangeable, 25 y/o dipsy blondes, while steadily transforming into a Crypt Keeper-esque homunculus?
Except that I don't have fame or fortune, or like blondes.
I don't know. Perhaps. I chose not to grapple with that dilemma in June or July, and quite likely it was what drove me to enjoy (so much) my summertime interaction with the IG. She was a thousand miles away, but she had cell phone service and plenty of free time to chat, and we traded numerous txts every day, talked for an hour at a time two or three times a week, and got to be quite close, even though we were far away. One thing we didn't do was flirt, or phone sex, or anything along those lines. It was very platonic; she'd tell me about the crazy people she was interviewing for her summer project and her annoying boss and the small town she was going stir crazy in, and I'd talk about things on my end, and we'd cheer each other up.
I had no reason to think things would change between "us" when she returned, and when she talked about hoping to keep her schedule lighter in the fall, and that she wanted to save more time for socializing and not be dashing to or from school or work every minute, I didn't believe it. I believed that was what she thought, and what she wanted, but I knew her well enough to feel certain that activities would rapidly fill her time, that she'd get another job, and that even if she found a roommate and moved out, as she kept daydreaming, that process would drag on and the end result would (somehow) have her even busier than before.
Nevertheless, when we got together for an evening last week, with dinner and much conversation on the agenda, I felt myself growing ever more enchanted, and eventually had to ask her the same question. Of course I got the same answer, but with even more nuance. She didn't have time for a boyfriend, and furthermore she'd given it a lot of thought and decided that her next relationship would be really special. Not just someone to spend romantic time with, but a sort of trial engagement. Someone she would rearrange her schedule around, focus her social life on, perhaps even live with.
All of which is fine and even admirable, but it's not going to happen for at least another year or two, and what she's looking for then isn't what I'm looking for now. I've never thought she was the woman I would marry (and I'm sure that impression, gender-flipped, is mutual), and even if she wanted that right now, I'm not sure I would be willing to provide it. I don't want to leap back into a full time, living together, pseudo-married situation. I want to have a serious, monogamous relationship, but I don't want to live together, or see each other every day, or not have other friends, etc. I want a fun, intelligent woman to do some cool activities with, talk to regularly and get to know, romance and date, and spend a night (or two) with each week. Basically what I have with the IG now, plus a little more time, and sex. And she wants that with me, minus the sex. In fact, that's basically what she has with me now, minus the sex and plus a ton of other friends pulling on her time.
As a result of that Sunday conversation, and its (inevitable) outcome, I was in a very glum mood Monday, angry and resentful Tuesday, and more or less back to normal Wednesday. I wish things were different, but the IG's answers and desires have been consistent all along, and now that I know where things stand and see that even if she had more free time it still wouldn't work... I can move on. Which brings me to the title of this post.
I was running some errands yesterday, and several times while touring Costco and Target, I saw things I knew the IG would like, and thought about sending her a photo, or a txt, and then realized there was no point in doing so. I still care about her, and want to see her as a friend, but the fact that I'm no longer trying to win her over for romance has entirely changed my attitude and outlook. Why would I make an extra effort to remotely include her in my activities? She's off doing her own thing. I'll text her if something interesting comes up, or I'm stuck in line at Costco, waiting to buy peaches that will turn out to be grainy and inedible; but the urge I felt all spring and summer to keep her apprised of my situation, to send her funny or encouraging txts, to keep track of what she was doing so I could remark appropriately at the end of the day... it's gone. And I find that very odd. How quickly, how switch-flickingly it ended.
It's genetically and biologically understandable; when the sex drive is engaged humans will do effortful things we'd never otherwise consider, but it's weird to see it in myself. Especially when I wasn't consciously thinking of the IG in that way. Sure, I wanted to
fuck commence romantic activities with her, especially when she returned from her summer job 10 pounds lighter and even prettier, but it wasn't like I was sitting around txting her with a boner. (Not literally or figuratively. My phone buttons are way too small, for one thing.)
I knew it was very unlikely that she'd change her mind about having time for anyone to be her boyfriend, even/especially me. And I never consciously thought I was waiting for her, or trying to convince her to change her mind. And I didn't give up looking at and thinking about other women. And yet... my desire for romance with the IG was clearly a substantial motivating factor for most of my behavior over the past few months, given how differently I feel now that that dream is dead.
I still like her and want to spend time interacting with her; we might this weekend see the movie we were going to see last weekend, before we decided that we had too much to talk about and would rather spend our evening doing that. But I've not thought much about her the past couple of days, the idea of her spending her free time with her other friends doesn't give me the feeling of lost opportunities, I've felt no compunction to send her my usual string of chatty and engaging txts, and I'm just not viewing the world through the same prism. Yesterday I looked at the huge homecrafts warehouse store by Costco and my eyes slid right past it. It wasn't until later that I realized that I hadn't thought, as I had every time I saw that barn for the past near-year, "I should bring the IG here sometime -- she loves that girly decorating/sewing pattern stuff."
I'm not really thinking about finding someone else/new/different, at least not yet, but I think that thought will come. It did in mid-June, 4 weeks after the IG had departed for her summmer working vacation, but I don't think it'll take that long this time. Monday evening I spent my 2 hours in the gym sweating and scowling and cursing under my breath and thinking how happy I'd be to never be attracted to another woman ever again. Tuesday and Wednesday's gym sessions I was kind of in a fog and not thinking clearly about much of anything. Yesterday evening though, I was quite aware of two young women treadmilling their way towards fitness, and as I churned up the 20 minutes/120 flights on the stepmill that serves as my warm up exercise, I found myself thinking how much fun it would be to have a fit woman to workout with. Not to mention the enjoyment of sharing a shower and trading massages afterwards. Yes, hope, and erections, spring eternal. Even if chemical assistance is required.
Labels: dating, psychology, the I.G.
