Dating - I love the way you swipe

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Once I figured out she didn't know where I lived nor did she know anyone who would know, I ghosted and blocked her.

Normally I would call this cowardly, but in this case I believe you made a good decision.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, Red Tiger said:

Normally I would call this cowardly, but in this case I believe you made a good decision.

Hey man, you deal with 20 consecutive texts in about 90 minutes. 

[Datepalm]

We're back, folks. Yeah, its that guy, from that time. And that other time. And again, with the other thing. The one I never had anything with but somehow spent a year having an ugly breakup with.

It's been almost five years. We are both older, more professionally accomplished, more competitive, more cooperative, and with newer and more subtly weird power dynamics and imbalances. We still seem to enjoy one another's company and still have an intellectual connection I find difficult to dismiss. He is still, goddamit, attractive (because, not despite, of touches of slightly premature grey).

We are also still both clearly effing bonkers in mutually unhelpful and unproductive ways.

Despite everything - everything - now being rather explicitly out there, we are still for some reason going in on a major project together.

This is already not ending well.

[HexMachina]

3 hours ago, Datepalm said:

It's been almost five years. We are both older, more professionally accomplished, more competitive, more cooperative, and with newer and more subtly weird power dynamics and imbalances. We still seem to enjoy one another's company and still have an intellectual connection I find difficult to dismiss. He is still, goddamit, attractive (because, not despite, of touches of slightly premature grey).

We are also still both clearly effing bonkers in mutually unhelpful and unproductive ways.

Despite everything - everything - now being rather explicitly out there, we are still for some reason going in on a major project together.

This is already not ending well.

I managed to read this entire post in the vein of “Duh!” From Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Bravo

[Datepalm]

Oh, were that we had something of the wit and wisdom of Josh Chan here. We have lit reviews and human subjects research approval protocols, just not, you know, one for ourselves. Apparently there is not a form for acceptable risk and benefit balance for how-royally-will-one-and-ones-co-investigator-cause-lasting-damage-even-though-it-seems-worth-it-now.

[HexMachina]

6 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Oh, were that we had something of the wit and wisdom of Josh Chan here. We have lit reviews and human subjects research approval protocols, just not, you know, one for ourselves. Apparently there is not a form for acceptable risk and benefit balance for how-royally-will-one-and-ones-co-investigator-cause-lasting-damage-even-though-it-seems-worth-it-now.

Sounds like you need to face your fears

[Buckwheat]

(I am just liking all the posts with CXG references in them, not because I like that Datepalm is in such an unfortunate position, in case that was unclear. And also because I like Datepalm's sense of humour about herself.)

[Datepalm]

22 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

(I am just liking all the posts with CXG references in them, not because I like that Datepalm is in such an unfortunate position, in case that was unclear. And also because I like Datepalm's sense of humour about herself.)

Oh, I don't deserve too much pity - a slap to the face, perhaps - I am very much doing this to myself. Well, with a touch of questionable manipulation and just enough breadcrumbs to hang myself with offered by the other party, but also too much curiosity and too much care to just let go of and lose this dude's number as a sensible human being would.

To clarify, nothing is, you know, gone for, just...a cautious but explicit mutual allowance of long-term entanglements to re-emerge. I've accepted being drafted/tempted into his professional life, which offers me some opportunities, but which will also entail a necessary intellectual resistance, and he's agreed to being drafted into my emotional life as an inevitable condition of the above, and with much the same.

In other words, it got weird.

[Buckwheat]

2 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Oh, I don't deserve too much pity - a slap to the face, perhaps - I am very much doing this to myself. Well, with a touch of questionable manipulation and just enough breadcrumbs to hang myself with offered by the other party, but also too much curiosity and too much care to just let go of and lose this dude's number as a sensible human being would.

To clarify, nothing is, you know, gone for, just...a cautious but explicit mutual allowance of long-term entanglements to re-emerge. I've accepted being drafted/tempted into his professional life, which offers me some opportunities, but which will also entail a necessary intellectual resistance, and he's agreed to being drafted into my emotional life as an inevitable condition of the above, and with much the same.

In other words, it got weird.

I think you mean love kernels.

I understand weird. I also understand having trouble separating personal and professional. I sadly have no concrete advice to offer.

[SpaceChampion]

All my romantic fantasies are about muddling the personal with the professional. 

[Starkess]

Hey I met my boyfriend at an academic conference so I can't pretend to judge the mingling of professional and personal. (Although luckily for me he is leaving academia!)

[Datepalm]

11 hours ago, Starkess said:

Hey I met my boyfriend at an academic conference so I can't pretend to judge the mingling of professional and personal. (Although luckily for me he is leaving academia!)

Yeah, maybe one of us will crash and burn (eta - not that your bf did. Iirc, he's in a great place. In this case disentangling academic identity from personality will be carved on a tombstone.) Or not get tenure! One can hope. 

[Buckwheat]

Professional relationship has officially ended today. Hints have been made that there might be interest in continuing it in a private capacity.

Just hope I have not misread those hints, thread!

[Theda Baratheon]

2 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

Professional relationship has officially ended today. Hints have been made that there might be interest in continuing it in a private capacity.

Just hope I have not misread those hints, thread!

Ahhh go for it!! (She says as she never goes for it  ) there’s a guy in work and at this point I’m looking for any kind of hints but I doubt it. Out of my league I think 

[Jen'ari]

9 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

Professional relationship has officially ended today. Hints have been made that there might be interest in continuing it in a private capacity.

Just hope I have not misread those hints, thread!

I hope it goes well, you deserve it buck .

[Buckwheat]

1 hour ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Ahhh go for it!! (She says as she never goes for it  ) there’s a guy in work and at this point I’m looking for any kind of hints but I doubt it. Out of my league I think 

IDK, I am kind of blind as far as hints are concerned, therefore there is a part of me that is scared that I might have terribly misread the situation. Thank you for the encouragement, of course.

1 hour ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I hope it goes well, you deserve it buck .

Thank you.

[Theda Baratheon]

19 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

IDK, I am kind of blind as far as hints are concerned, therefore there is a part of me that is scared that I might have terribly misread the situation. Thank you for the encouragement, of course.

Thank you.

I think if you even get the vague idea that there was a hint then trust your gut...I never trust mine and then regret it! Fingers crossed  

[Buckwheat]

31 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I think if you even get the vague idea that there was a hint then trust your gut...I never trust mine and then regret it! Fingers crossed  

I mean ... the hints that I think I saw were that he always brought me sweets and he invited me along several times to hang with him and other people and was just generally friendly, as in, more than others in his position. And he said now that he would be willing to meet some other time. And he said (to other people) that I was friendly, but that might have totally just been a reference to my behaviour at my job. So I am at least trying to be cautious.

Of course, I am also refreshing Facebook obsessively like a madwoman, as he mentioned that is how he would contact me. Whoopsie.

[The guy from the Vale]

Your chances that he's into you are pretty good. Go for it!

[Datepalm]

12 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

I mean ... the hints that I think I saw were that he always brought me sweets and he invited me along several times to hang with him and other people and was just generally friendly, as in, more than others in his position. And he said now that he would be willing to meet some other time. And he said (to other people) that I was friendly, but that might have totally just been a reference to my behaviour at my job. So I am at least trying to be cautious.

Of course, I am also refreshing Facebook obsessively like a madwoman, as he mentioned that is how he would contact me. Whoopsie.

I say with full knowledge of how difficult it is, but you might even try contacting him.