This week has been a wreck for me. I shared in my last post about how I had connected with someone online and we had a nine hour date...but I was concerned about some of the physical chemistry.
I also had my life get crazy in other ways this week - my kids started school and there have been a number of schedule adjustments.
Through all of this, I managed to get together with the new guy, Vince three more times...and each time I became more and more convinced that he just doesn't do it for me.
This then became a source of major anxiety for me. Actually, I kind of freaked out, because not only was I not really feeling it, but Vince started referring to me as his "girlfriend" and talking about how he told his friends about me and they want to meet me. Whooa. It was all way too much, too soon.
So it became apparent that I needed to disengage from things with Vince - even though I do like talking to him and he can be fun to hang out with. The problem is HOW? What do you say? He so clearly likes me a lot and it pains me greatly to think that I might hurt him.
My friends encouraged me to act quickly - I wasn't being fair to him by not saying anything. And they were right. I am just a big coward. I wanted to run and hide versus face Vince to tell him the truth.
But what version of the truth does he NEED to hear? Does he need to know that physically he doesn't do it for me? That just seems cruel for some reason. There were other things that came to light over the past week (which is nowhere near enough time to get to know someone anyway). Like the fact that he's a bit of a slob and he tended to gripe a lot about work-related things. Add it all together and I knew for certain I wouldn't be happy trying to have a relationship with him.
Given my missteps in the situation, like letting things take off so quickly, I began feeling like I have no business dating anyone or trying to meet new people. I'm trying too hard and making a mess of things. Therefore, my inclination is to step back from trying to meet people and just take a break.
So that's what I told him. I told him I wasn't ready, it was too much and I felt overwhelmed by how intense things seemed to be getting. I told him I enjoy his friendship and I'm open to that.
He wanted to know if there was someone else and I was able to tell him honestly that there isn't. He indicated that he feels he somehow did something that caused all this, but there really isn't anything else I can say about the matter that won't be borderline hurtful.
And I was honest with him - just not forthcoming on all my reasons.
T his brings to mind how we all must practice some level of white lies when meeting people. Unless you are someone who is just brutally honest and doesn't care about hurting other people, it's pretty hard to be honest about things like how attractive someone is or isn't - or even about their personality quirks. I think the exception to this if people have misled you first. For instance if someone you meet online portrays themselves as fit and has pictures posted that show that they are skinny and they show up on the date 50 pounds overweight - I think they deserve to be told that there is no attraction there because they were deceitful in their portrayal of themselves.
I'm taking a step back from things for a bit. I have turned my profile off for now on one site and am laying low on the other. I have one person I'm still in touch with that could have some potential, but at this point, I'm not putting any stock into anything. I need to regroup a bit and find a better approach. It is my intent to focus in on friendship first with people, but it seems to run away from me quickly when someone is really interested. I have to find a way to keep things at that level until I am comfortable that I want to move forward or not. I'm not doing a bang up job of that right now. So rather than be forced to hurt anyone else or have to come up with any more white lies, I'll just lay low for awhile...
