First off, I must apologize for my bad administrative management here — WordPress isn’t the most intuitive, and I’m having problems responding to comments with this account. If you left a comment and I haven’t approved it/responded to it, I greatly apologize! I’m working on moving this blog to my own space… more soon!
Until then, this “In the Trenches” segment will discuss real dating stories from real people — namely my experiences, my friends’, or my clients’. Names will be changed to protect the innocent — except when it’s my own. I’m no innocent. 😉
A man I’m dating, “Bob”, lamented to me a couple weeks ago about a woman he met before me with which he had a great first date but it quickly went awry. She invited him to her place to play some sort of board game — yes, we see where this is going! However, other than the board game, no great moves were made, so he was beginning to think he was the victim of some mixed signals…. until just about the time he had to leave and she invited him to her bedroom. He had to get up early for work the next morning, but being a typical red-blooded American male, um, he obliged. They had a great night together.
And then she disappeared.
I wondered if something had happened to her, but he said he’d seen her online quite a bit on one of the popular dating sites.
Now, at this point, if it were me, I would have just let it go after not getting a response the first time. This is where I think Bob took the more difficult path. He followed up with a message to the effect of: “Did I offend you? Was my dick too weird? I’m not sure why you didn’t get back to me.” He said he just wished she would have said SOMETHING, even if it was, “oh yeah, I just used you for sex.”
Eeek! I cringed. My darlings, no matter what, protect your pride and never appear needy and pushy. Sometimes we just have to suck it up and find our own closure. How do we do this? By focusing on ourselves and our needs. Do you really want to give this one-night-stand power over your emotions? So not worth it. Learn from it. Relish the good moments. Then change your thought patterns, and go do something you love. There are so many other wonderful people out there for you!
On the other side of the coin: admittedly, what she did was crappy. What’s so difficult about being honest? Technology today — for all its benefits in bringing people together — can make us truly lazy. And even cruel. At the end of the day, we’re all human. Can we please just treat each other as such? The truth shall set you free.