I wanted to get this out of my head before I Iost it completely… as in went nuts. No, no, no, as in I’d lose this train of thought… anyway, this all went down in THE CITY…

I recently met several people, male and female, who made me rethink both how I presented myself and what my expectations were when dating. In one case my expectations were immediately exceeded. Meaning things went ok when we met at random and although the evening ended oddly that had to do with some other folks that were around, nothing to do with me. We clicked right off the bat the second time after remaining in contact. Turns out our backgrounds were similar to a degree and she was typically the kind of person I get along with fairly quickly. Click, click, click. We had a pretty great evening and I walked away feeling pretty lucky for having met her and already knew she felt the same way. Definite mutual beneficence.

At a completely different time and place (may as well call it another universe) I met a woman, in a much more prearranged fashion, when I was in a different mood and although I thought the evening went well I didn’t deliver on her expectations and as a result got mysteriously cold shouldered for a few weeks. That was pretty perplexing and I like feedback so I persisted until I got some useful information. Also I knew she wasn’t a hardcore NYC chick where maybe I just hadn’t made the cut and unseat one of her top five guys in rotation – as one of my female bff’s cynically, yet accurately, put it.

Funny thing, in discussing this with a much younger dude (who’s still probably dated much more than I have) he imparted some pretty typical NYC wisdom to me. There are plenty more fish in the sea so if she’s unfathomable there’s no need to get caught up in whatever game she’s playing. Just roll and go? What about that girl right over there… his girlfriend concurred. Another friend within earshot had already given me the same advice and although I wasn’t looking right at him I’m sure he was nodding along vigorously. And rolling his eyes. And for other reasons making a spectacle of himself. He’s funny like that… They’re all in their mid to late 20’s. That’s significant. Then I gave him my particulars and told him I was inclined to date, not exclusively but inclined, women closer to or at my age in addition to being desirable, to me, and single ones were kinda’ hard to come by, blah, blah, blah. I keep thinking they’ll get where I’m coming from and conversations would go a lot smoother but… damn, if I think about it all the anecdotal evidence has been to the contrary… He immediately changed his response to, in that case there are no rules! We’re talking apples and oranges and I was going to have to make my own rules. This was the single best piece of information I’d heard since I’ve been dating!

So it’s actually been up to me whether I should roll and go when one or both of us is being a little too battle weary or thinks the other is running a game when they’re not. The certainty of being played is removed. In this case I persisted because that’s just me and the outcome could’ve gone either way but this time it actually went ok. Obviously the next question is, was this person worth the effort? Depends on what you want. For me there was a lot of food for thought that sprung up as a result so the takeaway trended positive. Otherwise, well, I never close a door on anybody anyway unless I see that they’re up to no good. Ya’ never know when they might be useful to you or vice-versa and really folks, sometimes no one’s trying to steam roll ya’ and it’s just bad timing. Shrug.
🙂