Behka’s Love Gone Wrong, Part II

Well kids, last week I decided to share one of my Love Gone Wrong date stories.  I said there was a little more to it than that, and I thought I'd share it here. 

First of all, let me say, I am not knocking this dude at all.  I had a good time on our... well, interesting first date.  Enough that I decided to go out with him again that same weekend.  We went out to dinner the first night, and then either that next day or that Sunday we went out for lunch.  It was a good time, and the conversation was interesting.  He was nice, handsome in a working man sort of way, and had a good job. He was very sweet and complimentary to me.  I was willing to overlook the stuff from the first date.  After all, nobody's perfect, certainly not me, and it could've made for a funny story.  So this guy is really nice, I swear, he just... wasn't too good at the dating thing, or at least with me.

So he and I had communicated mostly through text messages during the week, previously.  Just a message here and there, a little hello, things like that.   Then, after our lunch date... I heard nothing.  I texted, no response.  I heard nothing for three weeks.  After the first couple of messages got no response, I figured, he's not interested.  Oh well.  I let it go.

Then, I heard from him again out of nowhere.  He said he'd been out of town. I thought, "You couldn't have said something to me before you left?  You couldn't have given me a heads up, a 'I'll get back to you as soon as I can', nothing?"  But, he seemed genuinely apologetic, so we started talking again.  Then, about the week after that, we set up another dinner date.  This time, I had him come over to my apartment, and I made dinner (very domestic of me, I know).  We had dinner, and it was nice, and then we watched a movie, and he went home.

The next day, I had put my cell phone down in another room and didn't get these series of messages until about an hour after they had been sent.  Now in all of these messages keep in mind that I'm paraphrasing, except for one particular part.  Here's the jist of what was said:

• 10:34 a.m.  "So, I guess you don't like me very much.........."
• 10:58 a.m.  "I guess I have my answer.  Be well."

I picked up my cell phone at 11:30 or so.  I sent back, "What?  I didn't have my phone next to me... why do you think I don't like you?"

Here is, I swear (admittedly paraphrased), the conversation that happened after that.  I'll differentiate between him and I with H and M, for Him and Me.

• H:  I don't know, you just didn't seem very affectionate.
• M:  I'm sorry I gave you that impression.   I guess it takes me a while to warm up to people.
• H:   I got the feeling you're not into me.
• M:  It was a big gap of time between when we saw and spoke last. I guess I need to get used to you again, maybe.  What were you expecting?
• H:  I guess I was expecting more vertical attention.

Let's stop right there. That part right there is the one line that stood out in my mind all this time.  I want to emphasize that that is what he said.  VERBATIM.

I wanted to believe that he was not implying that I should have slept with him.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a person who judges that kind of thing, but I am also not someone who subscribes to the "rules" of dating, where you have to kiss at a certain time, etc.  So, I asked for clarification, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

• M:  What is that supposed to mean?
• H: If I have to explain it to you, you'll never understand.

Let's interrupt again.  Now I was sure that this guy was saying that he had expected something physical and I hadn't met his expectation.  Not only did that annoy me, but he also had, well, talked down to me.  He had assumed that I was somehow inferior intellectually and that I wouldn't possibly understand how "worldly" and "mature" he was or something.   I thought to myself, "Geez, if you're going to condescend to me, can you at least be correct in the terms you're gonna choose?"  I mean, the dude says he likes me, says he wants me to be more affectionate, but also thinks I'm stupid?  And what grown adult doesn't know the difference between horizontal and vertical?  Maybe I'm a little harsh there, but I just think if you're gonna condescend, you should be actually right when doing so.  That's like a listener calling me here at the station and hollering at me for something someone on another station said (which has happened, by the way).

So, after that, even though I'd given him some slack previously - the slack was officially cut off. There was no more slack to be given.  I was, if you will, slack-free.  I was going to go ahead and confront him about it.

• M:  Are you saying we should have slept together?  Because that's horizontal.... not vertical.  And to demand physical activities at all is not something I'd be okay with, on any time frame.
• H: I don't know, I just really like you, and  I'm just the kind of guy who lives for affection.......

I'll cut it off there. I won't go into much more about it.  But, I did tell him that we had obviously misunderstood each other.  Texting can sometimes be a bit hard to communicate over, and I thought maybe if we spoke face to face that might clear things up.  So I said that to him, and told him to let me know if he could get together this weekend, and we'd talk about it.

I heard nothing.  For months.  He just fell off the face of the earth.  In fact, I didn't hear anything from the guy until after the Mark Twain apartment fire, which was months afterwards.  Then, it was just a quick phone call and that's it.   I can't say I was too disappointed.

He was a nice enough guy, and I would have liked to be friends, but he wasn't good at the whole "dating" thing.  Here's hoping he's got something better going.  I wish him all the best, even though I haven't seen nor spoken to him in almost six months.

I'm in a good relationship now with a good guy, so I got a happy result after all.

Wrongily,

Behka