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Dating: to play the part of the one who doesn't wait


Datepalm

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Hive mind, I am a little confused. Last weekend my friend invited me out to a bar along with some other people. A couple of days later, one of the guys I talked to a bit there got in touch with her and asked for my number. We texted a bit, met up for coffee on Saturday afternoon. I assumed this was sort of a casual date.

Sunday morning, he texts about how he really enjoyed talking, that he's busy until his girlfriend - whose existence has at no point been mentioned up to this stage - gets back in a few weeks but we should meet up again at some point.

Am I crazy for thinking that this really seemed like a date? I'm totally fine with being platonic friends, but I'm a bit perplexed by his behaviour. If my boyfriend were tracking down random women from bars to hang out over coffee, I feel like I would at least want him to mention that I exist at a fairly early stage.

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On the whole, yeah, it's usually pretty straightforward to mention one's SO in conversation if that's important information to convey. That said, I've actually been in situations where it felt really awkward to just throw that information out there -- for whatever reason, that's just not how the conversation ended up going, and it would be one of those "yes I'd like a glass of water DID YOU KNOW THAT I HAVE A PARTNER" *deathlike silence*  And then there are situations where they're in an open relationship, and discussing that aspect of their lives isn't applicable until the second date or whenever it becomes apparent that there is some chemistry and it becomes an informed consent situation. 

So, I generally don't judge someone for not mentioning SOs right off the bat. 

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Relationship status aside if someone I didn't really know asked a mutual friend for my number and we met up one on one for a coffee/drink/whatever I'd probably assume it was a date. Given that from his point of view I'd probably be pointing out it wasn't (if it wasn't) at an early stage.

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Can't believe I'm commenting in the dating thread, but as a completely objective outsider who happened to have stumbled in here, I just have to point out the bleedin obvious in the scenario painted above.

Was it a date: Yes. The guy was interested and went to the effort of arranging the follow up meeting.

What happened thereafter: After the one on one meet-up he lost interest for some reason, and came up with a nice story which does enough to present the approach as if it had been totally non-romantically intended (due to the somehow previously unmentioned fact that he has a girlfriend already), and that a follow up meeting can't happen until said girlfriend is back in two weeks time. (Right. As if anything romantic is possible once the girlfriend is back again).

And as if (should you make contact again) something else isn't suddenly going to "come up" to snuff out any further interset, if things haven't fizzled out naturally in any case during the convenient two week break. That's if you haven't by yourself been justifiably rebuffed by the otherwise downright weird revelation that there is already a girlfriend in the picture.

So in short. He was fishing. Now he is withdrawing the bait, in what he hopes is the least offensive way possible.

Anyway, that's my reading of it, based on the facts presented. Now, I'm about as far from a dating expert as you are likely to find, but the facts seem to support the above scenario quite clearly in this case. To me at least.

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5 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

On the whole, yeah, it's usually pretty straightforward to mention one's SO in conversation if that's important information to convey. That said, I've actually been in situations where it felt really awkward to just throw that information out there -- for whatever reason, that's just not how the conversation ended up going, and it would be one of those "yes I'd like a glass of water DID YOU KNOW THAT I HAVE A PARTNER" *deathlike silence*  And then there are situations where they're in an open relationship, and discussing that aspect of their lives isn't applicable until the second date or whenever it becomes apparent that there is some chemistry and it becomes an informed consent situation. 

So, I generally don't judge someone for not mentioning SOs right off the bat. 

Oh I totally get what you mean because sometimes I've had people say to ME "oh yes I have a girlfriend" or totally shoe in YES MY GIRLFRIEND (completely unrelated thing) and I'm like....oohhh kaaaayy? We were just talking about movies anyway? :lol: but I think if you were chatting to someone in a pub in the evening and then met up again and had a coffee date and then only on the phone afterwards they mention their gf it is a little odd - or odd enough to warrant the initial "am I going crazy" question 

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Yeah, that's the thing - all in, it's quite a lot of talking in which to not mention someone who is probably a pretty significant part of your life. There were plenty of moments where it wouldn't have been necessary to shoe-horn in an awkward mention of her, it could have come up naturally.

I'd certainly considered that, Free Northman Reborn, but when you have a date with someone and don't want it to go any further, who sends an enthusiastic text less than 24 hours later mentioning a made-up girlfriend but alluding to future plans? No normal person does that. You just don't contact them again (I should know, I've done it a fair bit, and I was on the fence about whether I was going to do the same to him). It's possible, but given he's initiated contact at every step of the way it would be a very weird way of going about it.

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I would say that the strategy of pathetic duplicitousness as outlined by Northman is pointless and ridiculous and clearly no one would ever do that, but then I remember that I've met people.

 

Apropos,

What is wrong with me?

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Oh, if only it had happened.

No, this is a thing I did. Predictable, same old. Geographical proximity lacking but annoyingly tantalizing. Communication awkward. Biographies updated. (Helpfully: he's a professor now, apparently. To be very immature about it - eww, gross. I can't believe I had a crush on a professor.)

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  • 4 weeks later...

I moved to a new city, and joined a graduate program, and have enjoyed a nice uptick in dating, but am kind of devastated by my own stupidity.

Had a classmate start aggressively pursuing, and we ended up regularly hooking up and going on a few dates. For some reason, I convinced myself initially that a couple extremely nitpicky things were dealbreakers for me. When we had a three week break from school where we were both travelling to different cities, I consciously made almost no effort to get in touch with her, and had convinced myself that I could do better. When we got back and were around each other again, I realized that she was actually pretty damn great, and started pursuing her actively as a more serious "couple." While she was still flirty and we hooked up again once after the bars, she was avoiding my invitations to things and acting a bit odd.  When I finally called her out on it (not in a rude way, but in a "hey, you've been avoiding me, let's talk about it" way), she essentially said that she liked where we were heading , but wasn't sure where we stood when we got back from Spring break and she had started dating somebody else, and by the time she realized where my head was at it was too late.

 

Really just kicking myself for my bizarre behavior. I mean this girl was aggressively pursuing me, was very in to me, was way out of my league, and I just lit it on fire for essentially no reason. I was for some reason overcome with this grand idea that I was going to play the field, despite the fact that I am neither good at nor enjoy playing the field.  Ugh.

 

Just wanted to rant a bit about my irrational behavior. Oh well, onwards and upwards I guess.

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I hosted a dinner/party (distinctly not a dinner party) the other day, and the next day had one person text me to ask a second person to possibly to pass along their number to yet a third person...and, upon inquiry, second person was indeed entirely happy to have her number passed along to third person and had been contemplating similarly following this chain of contacts herself had third person waited much longer.

I really can't explain my total astonishment at this just happening, like being in an odd tunnel of gentle electronic signals of social competence wafting around.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is odd and irritates me to no end. Excuse me the digressing introduction, but you have to understand my current state of mind to see why I'm so confused.

You see, I've reached rock bottom at the moment. After a hellish school time that effectively destroyed any shred of social competence I might have, I went to university to rush through my studies while bearing the constant onslaught of my parents' messy and neverending divorce. Now I'm writing my master-thesis on a great topic that is a lot of fun to delve into its research, which should be awesome, if not for a multitude of annoying last semester courses and insane (as in: bafflingly impossible) time-limits to finish them all. This all after my 'practice semester' in which I worked as a teacher and grew really comfortable with my profession, effectively erasing the last doubts seeded by, well, plain everyone who doesn't happen to be another student who has seen 'professional' me in action. Returning to university, I fell into something of a black hole caused by the dreading feeling that everything I still have to do there is just a bothersome waste of time that I could spent doing my fucking job instead. The end of my practice semester also coincides with certain political insanities in the US that threaten the very future I worked so hard for, which may be a reason why I threw myself so desperately into my work in an attempt to get it all off the table to at least get a fear years in service before the world goes fully apocalyptic wasteland.

The end of that song is obvious: A minor physical breakdown, something of a burnout. I'm still shuffling onwards, but currently trying to not put so much pressure on myself. And even though I'm improving, I'm still exhausted, moody and plagued by constant aches and illnesses.

In the middle of all this, I happen to have ended up in a semester-encompassing group project with a few acquintances and a girl I... well, it would be too much of a stretch to claim any more than that I kinda noticed her before. We never talked much with each other, I just once before accompanied her to the bus and that's about it. It also isn't helpful that she is just as introverted as I am, which, objectively, really isn't a good combination. And it is really silly to think anything into her words when I barely know her at all. Now I happen to have ended up sharing her trip home once again, which ended up in us bonding over our mutual post-practice blackholes and her suddenly livening up quite a lot, which ended in an awkward overly cheerful declaration of how much fun working with me (yes, specifically me, despite the fact that we both barely contributed that day) had been. I was a little stumped at such a blatant (if considerate) lie and still think that I'm projecting way too much into it. I'm likely just unfamiliar that people can try to be nice when you feel miserable instead of kicking you further down. Hell this is the same reason I once developed an ill-begotten high-school crush that made the theatre courses quite awkward and shows that I haven't learned anything at all. Thankfully it hasn't become so bad this time, right now it's just confusion about my own social incompetence and how someone can still be appreciative of me when I have made quite a few steps backwards in my attempt to step out of my shell. Might be the wrong thread for this rant. Just another hint that my unfamiliarity with human interactions is the one big point for why I shouldn't bother people with me.

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26 minutes ago, Toth said:

In the middle of all this, I happen to have ended up in a semester-encompassing group project with a few acquintances and a girl I... well, it would be too much of a stretch to claim any more than that I kinda noticed her before. We never talked much with each other, I just once before accompanied her to the bus and that's about it. It also isn't helpful that she is just as introverted as I am, which, objectively, really isn't a good combination. And it is really silly to think anything into her words when I barely know her at all. Now I happen to have ended up sharing her trip home once again, which ended up in us bonding over our mutual post-practice blackholes and her suddenly livening up quite a lot, which ended in an awkward overly cheerful declaration of how much fun working with me (yes, specifically me, despite the fact that we both barely contributed that day) had been. I was a little stumped at such a blatant (if considerate) lie and still think that I'm projecting way too much into it. I'm likely just unfamiliar that people can try to be nice when you feel miserable instead of kicking you further down. Hell this is the same reason I once developed an ill-begotten high-school crush that made the theatre courses quite awkward and shows that I haven't learned anything at all. Thankfully it hasn't become so bad this time, right now it's just confusion about my own social incompetence and how someone can still be appreciative of me when I have made quite a few steps backwards in my attempt to step out of my shell. Might be the wrong thread for this rant. Just another hint that my unfamiliarity with human interactions is the one big point for why I shouldn't bother people with me.

I am sorry you are going through a tough time, that does sound like a stressful mess.

On the topic, this is generally an advice thread, and I'm not sure what you are asking.  It sounds like you've met someone in your program that you have generally limited interactions with professionally.  When you got a chance to talk together, things went well, and you seemed to hit it off.  Then she cheerfully expressed that she was enjoying working with you. 

How is this a lie?  Even if you work together only in a very limited capacity, it is still true.  I would have no problem saying "I enjoyed working with you" to any of my colleagues in my grad program back in the day, even people I never shared a specific project with.  Seems like a very normal, friendly thing to say.

It sounds like she might be interested in seeing more of you.  And you sound amenable to that as well, so I would talk with her some more and try to set up a meeting in some setting that would be low stress for both of you.  It seems like this would be very low risk and potentially a big reward given that you sound like you would really appreciate some human intimacy. 

Does that help?

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