readiness redux

[behold the dialgoue between me (j) and one of my formerly affianced suitors (e)...]

e,

i'm mad at you. (just realized this of course.)

i'm mad at you because i think you'd make a great father and i'd love to see you in action.

i'm mad at you because i only have two free nights this week and i know i should use those evenings to go on dates with other people but i really want to see you.

i'm mad at you because in 5 months of dating and being intimate with me, your feelings about what you want relationship-wise doesn't seem to have changed in the slightest.

i'm not really mad at you. just mad that i still find myself in this incredibly tough situation where i think i should probably stop seeing you but i really don't want to. mad at myself that i don't want to stop. mad at myself for not being strong enough to stop.

not sure what to do at this point. maybe if you confirm for me that what you want hasn't changed at all i'll get more mad and realize it's not fair for you to be getting pretty much everything you want while I'm not getting everything I truly want. maybe then i'll find that strength and move on.

but i have a feeling you will really miss me if that happens though.

what say you?

- j

-----------------

j,

i want to call you now, but I know you are at work.

I don't blame you for being mad at me. you're right,
our relationship is not fair. it wasn't fair the moment
we revealed to each other we wanted different things
and decided to continue to spend time together
anyway.

I've been fully expecting a day when you
decide that what I'm willing and able to
offer is not enough for you.

I look at you and see a woman who is beautiful,
brilliant, driven, together - marriage material
of the highest order and a great catch for
any man who is ready for exactly what you want.

but nothing but more time and more experience
is going to get me to a point when I can
honestly consider offering anyone the rest
of my life.

it's because of the respect I have for that
level of commitment that I know I'm not close
to ready for it.

You're absolutely right. when you do decide
(if you haven't already) that you're done
spending time and energy on me - I will miss you.
A lot.

But suppose I let that sway me, suppose I let
myself get caught up in a passionate, romantic
moment, and convince myself I'm ready, before I
truly am, (and I'm able to convince you of the same).

Is that a path that will lead to happiness for anyone?

You're wonderful, and you deserve someone who,
when he meets you finds it hard to imagine living
without you. You deserve that and much, much more.

And for what it's worth, I believe you will find
that person sooner rather than later. I'm surprised
you haven't already.

I care about you. I care about what happens
to you. And I will respect whatever you decide
you have to do.

-e
---------------

hi e,

i apologize for doing this over e-mail...i know it's
not the most sensitive way of handling intense stuff like this. but
i've been thinking about you and me and us all day and needed to put my
feelings out there for you. i appreciate your honest and thoughtful
response -- knowing more about where you are at helps me tremendously
and also helps lessen my sense of "rejection" in all of this -- while
intellecually I know it's not about you rejecting me, in my heart it
still feels that way when i can't get what i want. ; ) i haven't made
any decisions yet, i guess i need some time to think. i don't know,
perhaps you'll get tired of my pulling you close and then pushing you
away and the decision will be yours. but know that i do respect where
you are coming from even though i wish things were different.

i'll call or write soon. xo, j
------------------

j,

the fact that you feel compelled to apologize to me
for anything, let alone your rightful hard feelings...
plus your worrying about my experience of being pushed
and pulled by you (really, exactly what I knowingly
signed up for from the beginning) are just further
testaments to the quality of person I am dealing with.
(you are loving, nurturing,sensitive, thoughtful -
wonderful and awesome come to mind, too)

(if this were a movie, the audience would be wondering
how am I letting this chance pass...and why you're
so attached to me, anyway)

but the truth is, I love spending time with you. 
and I'll waste exactly as much of your time as you
let me...as you lover and as your friend, in that
order, until you tell me different.

-e

cross-referencing

there has been some rather interesting cross-referencing...or shall i say "cross-blogging" lately. what, with DT's ode to women in their 30's (loved it!), fellow blogger tortaluga's highly relevant musings on dating guys who are in their 30's and MS's self-revealing posts and comments (look for the zombie squirrel), i suppose we're all in the same boat, though some of us are more like the coxswain up front calling the shots, and others of us feel like we are toward the back, having dropped our oar in the water, saying "what the hell am i supposed to do now?"

one time i joked to my good friend JS that we are like a controlled experiment in dating -- we're about the same age, have similar interests, similar backgrounds, etc. whereas i've been known to take a more "proactive" approach to dating, she has taken a somewhat passive approach. well, from the looks of it, she is faring better than me at all of this. perhaps i should rethink my strategy...

but the whole point of this post is to show that as i navigatated from blog to blog, i came across a passage from the very lucky, very sweet man who is currently making my friend smile. and it somehow perfectly addressed the flurry of blogging that i referenced above....without even trying.

not that there is any "recipe"...but it sounds to me like for us thirty-somethings to actually find happiness with each other takes equal parts wanting the same things, getting over our fears, feeling the chemistry, and some plain old good luck. it can't be forced if one of those key elements isn't there, and it sucks if two or three of them are there but the other one or two aren't. if you really like someone, it's probably worth sticking around for a little while to see if the other elements materialize, but i've learned from experience that change doesn't come easily, so at some point you need to just cut ties and move on. i think i'm about to get movin' again, but in the meantime, behold the sweet words of someone who seems to have figured this stuff out (edited slightly to protect the innocent):

"now, every now and then i'll get a little nervous around [her], probably because it's been a while since i've dated anyone more than a month and i half expect me to get bored and say, 'see ya'. but i don't feel that with [her]. with her i don't have those feelings of boredom. i look forward to the days that i see her, and on the days that i don't see her i look forward to night time, when we'll talk on the phone, usually for an hour or so. with her i've never felt like i've had to be more than me. i don't feel any pressure of any sort. i don't have the desire to stop seeing her, you know, before things get serious. running, fleeing; it's a feeling i've had in the past, and maybe it's because i wasn't dating the right person, or maybe it's because i don't have the best dating track record, or maybe it's just because i have a Y chromosome, but with [her], those feelings aren't there....after thinking for quite a bit, i think i may have grown up and i realize i have a good thing with her. and things are good. we have inside jokes. we talk a lot, and there isn't any pressure to find stuff to talk about. we laugh at each other. we have good chemistry."

good luck, you guys. xo, j

confusion sets in...

i've somehow found myself in the middle of a peculiar dating phenomenon. guys in their early- to mid- to late 30's (32, 33, and 38 to be specific) who are anywhere from 4 months to 6 years out of an engagement or serious cohabitation situation who are really scared. afraid of committing (again), afraid of opening themselves up (again), afraid of letting their guard down (again). now mind you, i've pretty much disqualified one of these formerly engaged fellows due to an apparent gambling problem -- he left me (alone!) midway through a street festival to "check his bets." (um, can you say red flag?) another (also formerly engaged) fellow, whom i've written about many times, i've written off as far as anything serious goes because in 5 months of knowing me his party line on not wanting marriage or kids hasn't shifted a bit. but the most recent one, who i spent some time with this weekend, is the most confusing. from what i gather, he's about 4 mos out of a cohab. sweet guy, cute, funny, smart, tall, likes cool music and movies, etc. etc. wrote to me online. first date went well, second date went well, third date went great...but still no smooch or expression of interest other than wanting to hang out. which is cool, hanging out and getting to know someone is the right place to start. but i've been in more than one relationship where the physical part never materialized, though both of those fellows wanted to hang out all the time. this situation is looking a little too much like those situations, and i find it perplexing. is it a lack of attraction? is it a fear of getting involved/things becoming serious? is it a fear that i too will break up with/move out on/call off an engagement with them, so then it's self-protection? honestly, i don't know.

a very nice friend-of-a-friend in his late 30's once told me that men have two, maybe three good loves in their life -- that's all they can handle. that may well be true, and generally the type of guy i'm interested in has (hopefully!) had at least one serious relationship by the time he's thirty...thus, if he's single again, has experienced at least one Big Breakup. the other piece of advice he offered is that it takes a guy 6 months to fall in love, when it takes a woman about 6 dates. some may argue with that, but i think there's some truth to it. so if that is the case, i'm meeting appropriately aged men (say 32-40) who tend to be a bit gun shy due to prior experience...but what if i don't want to wait 6 months to see if they are going to come around? in general, i'm not a big subscriber of the whole "men are from mars women are from venus" type of thinking...i think men and women are more similar than different. yet these recent experiences are making me think women in their 30's may approach dating (or, specifically, the pursuit of a partner) very differently than men in their 30's. we know we are beginning to play russian roulette with our fertility; men believe they have until their 40's to really get serious about settling down. women in their 30's are less inhibited about sex and are more interested in it; guys in their 30's (for the most part) have a slightly decilining sex drive and are more reserved about getting in the sack with someone they might actually be interested in. (i do believe that where there are no stakes or low stakes, men and women in their 30's are just as likely to hop in the sack with each other -- the differential comes when there is potential, in my opinion.) so i don't know where that leaves me...for now it seems i'm in the strange situation where there is a desirable guy who wants to see me and/or talk to me every day but yet he doesn't seem to want to kiss me. hmmmm. i'm all for having friends of both sexes, and i have many and i love them. but at this point in my life, i'm not sure i'm trying to rack up a whole new set of male friends, especially ones i'm attracted to. but maybe that's just it. if i interact with these guys as friends, and then 6 months down the road one of them decides to fall in love with me (and i'm game), then maybe it's a matter of reaching the same end just doing so by different means.

or maybe it's just not this complicated and when i meet the "right" person and he thinks i'm great and i think he's great, all of this hyperanalytic nonsense can just be thrown out the window.

stay tuned.

the heart is a hungry hunter

ok, random title, i know. but this evening i had the pleasure of driving (after a 10 hr day) about 1.5 hrs to lovely riverside, CA for a meeting tomorrow. as i was driving, i passed one of those Hungry Hunter restaurants, and i don't know if it is the Bruce Springsteen reference ("Everybody's got a hungry heart") or the Carson McCullers title ("The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"), but somehow i mashed these ideas together and made myself laugh in the car.

not much to report...been traveling a bit and working a lot...i have a date scheduled for this friday so we'll see how it goes.

~md