Dating Meta

[plumtreeblossom]

I'm getting very mixed signals from A, and I don't like it.

What's happening is this: About once a week, he sends an e-mail or voicemail wanting to see me, oh-so-badly see me, misses me, yadda yadda. But he's been consistantly declining every date suggestion I make. 3 date suggestions in a row, just this week, have been declined. Then last night at 10:30 PM (a school night, mind you) he left a tipsy sounding voicemail missing me so very much, wanting me to come down to Christopher's grill right then and there (ironically, I had just been at Christopher's an hour earlier for dinner with Daniel and Matt).

One thing I am not in the market for is a compartmentalized at-his-convenience relationship wedged into his occasional last-minute windows of time.

I'm also not willing to settle for a weeknight-only relationship. He never has availability on the weekends. But weekends are when I do my dating. I have to be up at 5:30 AM or 6:00 AM for work every weekday, which precludes late nights out except on weekends. For that same reason, I don't do mid-week overnights (unless I'm living with said lover). I want companionship on weekends, when my time is free and my energy abundant. He says he always has prior plans with friends on the weekends, but he never invites me along.

For weeks now, I've been telling myself to write him off and that "He's Just Not That Into Me." But then come the calls/e-mails, regaling my shining beauty, longing to see and hold me, etc. Then I'm ignored when I suggest a date. Does this man have split personality disorder?

My mom strongly believes he is married. I don't usually take her dating advice because she's been off the dating scene for 30 years, but I'm starting to wonder if, this once, she might be right...

If A wants to continue seeing me, he has got to:

1) Make some time for me on weekends
2) Answer my e-mails and accept at least some of my date suggestions
3) Not treat me like a service he can order last-minute at his whim

My responsibility in this is to communicate these feelings clearly to him. I just wrote it out here to get it straight in my head before speaking to him.

Comments

[goat.livejournal.com]

Yep, he needs to do all of those things. If he can't or won't, cut him loose. He's not worth it, and you're worth more.

*hugs*

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Agreed! I've learned my lesson about dismissive and generally bad treatment from a partner. We don't get fooled again, dammit.

[goat.livejournal.com]

Damn skippy!

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you've got a good grip on things. Good luck with that email.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I sent it, and I actually has a short phone conversation with him, too. I brought up weekends and simely suggested we both look at our schedules and agree to find a time next weekend. He said it "looked good," but nothing has been committed to. Basically, either he sees me next weekend or he can color me gone.

Deep down I really do want to make this work. But not on his terms exclusively.

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

i don't know if you realized it, but this post isn't friends-locked.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I know. I've been keeping my friendlocking to a minimum, or trying to. It's nothing I didn't express to him in my e-mail. And, it's my life, and my blog. If he sees it, then he'll know more about me, and that's okay with me. He'd have to dig pretty deep in google to find it, but I try to keep as much of it public as possible.

[a-chara.livejournal.com]

yeah, he's definitely jerking you around. don't put up with it. I'd dump him. cause even if he does what you want him to, there's still something odd going on there. he doesn't sound trustworthy at all.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'd really like to see it work, because it's so rare that I'm ever attracted to someone. But, the best I can do is make my needs clear, and he can either meet them and I stay, or not meet them and I go.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I think he could be very good for me, and I for him, if we can get this scheduling and weekend-vanishing nonsense ironed out.

Here's what is good.

Both of us are all of these things:

Childfree
Liberal
Urban (he says he wants to move to the city)
Extremely young looking and acting for our age
Somewhat countercultural
Light smokers
Theatrical
Travel buffs
Agnostic with Jewish backgrounds (half for me, whole for him)
Looking for a life partner

On paper, I couldn't ask for a closer match. It's almost a male/female twin thing, and I guess I'm vain enough to groove on my male twin. And, there's no getting around it -- I'm not an easy person to match. It's so very rare for me to be attracted to anyone that when it happens, I feel it's important to try and make it work if I can.

It's also no secret that I think it would be nifty to get married, or a reasonable facsimile of marriage. Finding a childfree man who is looking for a lifemate is a true needle in a haystack, so I consider it worth the effort of exploring whether it can work.

As for what he's contributed to my life, well, a number of good dinners. And a reason to shine my shoes and put on that miniskirt instead of slacks. But really, I haven't contributed more that that to him. How can I when he's never around on weekends?

So, yes, I wouldn't have picked him if there weren't potential. But I need weekends. We'll see if I get them, or keep looking.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Good for you for getting your thoughts together. I will be VERY curious to hear if your mom is right...!

And until you work this out to your satisfaction -- no sex!! right??

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

No sex, definitely. I don't even really desire it yet -- I haven't gotten to that emotional place where affection is breaking out and wanting to be expressed. I do think that I would feel that desire if some more of my needs were being met, but for now, I'm not even tempted.

( I love when I have a user pic that perfectly illustrates my feelings on something :-))

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

Dating meta, eh? I second what everyone else said. Good for you! And when you're done, you can write a ten-minute play about it!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

And I will set it in an impossible-to-stage setting like a fully stocked biodome or a room inexplicably filled with 50 snowmen, and there my characters will meta with the force of hurricanes, and it will contain many inside jokes, insulting stereotypical dialects, poorly veiled memoir, and mutiple use of the word "fuck."

I pick you and Dave to read it aloud. :-)

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I hope there are lots of overly specific props! I'm sorry, scratch that, lot's of overly specific props.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Oh, there definitely will be! Also, very tiny props that don't read from the stage. And much reminiscence -- in fact the whole play will be an arguement about fights previously had about the Man not having time for the Woman on weekends. And there will be more stage directions than dialogue. But they stay on the same couch the whole time. And cigarette smoking, lots of it. And several live cats will be required, and I'll include very specific blocking for the cats. And the cats can't be holograms, but the ghostly child character who enters for no reason can and should be a hologram. And it will be called:

"SEE YOU ON THE WEEKEND. NOT!"

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Forgive me if I am overstepping my bounds here; say what you have to say to him and then I hope it ends asap. He has many traits of a textbook abuser; someone who abuses *or* neglects you and then showers you with things they think you want you to hear like how wonderful you are to keep you coming back. Might take some work, but you can do better than this problem child.

When I need to release someone, sometimes it helps if I ask myself what I might have been putting out to draw this into my life and meditating on what the answer is. Having the answer can help me decide if it is time to let it go or not. Sometimes, however, the correct thing for me to do is to ask no questions at all and say to myself "no, this will not do" and dismiss the situation. Really, the former technique comes in handy more if, after doing the latter, I find myself in the same situation again. Make sense?

[goat.livejournal.com]

This is a bit of a worry for me, as well. I'm wondering what would happen if he did give plumtreeblossom what she needed for a while, and then pulled away again, after she's more emotionally attached. It's a bad, bad cycle.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is definitely something that I need to consciously watch out for and avoid if I see evidence of that sort of cycle about to begin. Also, thank you, oneagain for your input. It's something I'm definitely on the watch for, but it happened to me fairly recently.

Right now I'm not emotionally vulnerable -- I'm not in love, and not in any way emotionally committed. So I'm coming from a safer vantage point that I would be if my feelings were more advanced. What I hope is to be able to lay my needs on the table, and see if they are met before letting emotions grow to the level of vulnerability.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

You sound like you know what you are doing. Sometimes people do change; I wouldn't hold my breath, but if I was looking for a female primary partner, I could see myself changing for a fun, gorgeous cutie like you. Just remember that if he does not change, you are still a fun gorgeous cutie and there are others out there despite evidence to the contrary.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

I agree. I myself have gone through things like this and endured the pain when I had to break away. I can honestly say I was better off for having let the person in even though it did not work out because at the time of letting them in I was not in a good place and happy for the love they offered (also, they had some unusual qualities that helped me so much that, in retrospect, it was worth the pain it cost at the end). By the point at which it was clearly time to end, I was in a much better place to do so. Plumtreeblossom seems far more poised than I was, however, and it makes much more sense to be choosier.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

Sounds like all your thoughts are perfectly reasonable. Good for you for deciding to let him know. That takes some courage.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I've found that expecting someone to second guess my feelings always backfired. So I'm spelling it out for him.

[jimmystagger.livejournal.com]

Don't take any crap, Mare! If he doesn't start changing (i.e. making tim for you on the weekends or at least inviting you along) then cut him.

Thus speaketh me.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Not only that, I'll send you charge him like a Celtic's footballer and take him out. ARRRRRRRR!

[jimmystagger.livejournal.com]

This can be arranged!

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

My first impression from the description of the situation was "He sounds married". However, you mentioned mid-week overnights, so unless his wife travels that doesn't make sense, unless he's got a non-married relationship that demands his weekend time.

Your list of demands sounds reasonable, though as well as communicating it clearly, you might want to consider how to express it in a way that doesn't sound like an ultimatum (even if it is.) "Do this or else" almost never works and you probably don't want to be with anyone for which it does.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Yep, though I don't think he's legally married, there could be someone else in the picture.

The thing is though, I'd be open to discussing poly possibilities, provided that he didn't have a primary and wanted one. If there's a seconday somebody out there, I could probably work with that template. I brought up poly at our date 2 weeks ago -- not poly about us but just a discussion of the theory -- and while he's familiar with it, he claimed not to practice it.

I avoided ultimatums in my e-mail. And everything I asked from him, I agreed to give the same. So, we shall see...

[http://users.livejournal.com/urban_faerie_/]

Stick to your guns!


Wanting to see him at a mutually convenient time is not too tall an order.

worse case scenario: He's married or in a relationship.


best case scenario: he's just a selfish weenie who wants a relationship on his time.

Either way, ew.

If it helps, I think I've date the scruffy, pseudo poet 20 something version of this guy before. It did not end well. Women like men like this at first because they seem able to show their emotions, but that doesn't end up to be worth a damn in the end if he's not considerate of yours.

men can be so fucking entitled sometimes.

Okay, rant over.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

He says he always has prior plans with friends on the weekends

I'm curious as to how he thinks he's going to find a life partner who doesn't mind that he never has weekends available to spend with her.

[rdcf.livejournal.com]

Good for you - you deserve better.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

You deserve someone who's fully into you. After as much time as you've spent together, he should be consulting you when he makes his plans, not calling you at the last minute.

Hugs.