Fading out?

[seabird1]

A female friend set me up with a great guy 2 months ago. My friend told me this guy was handsome, smart and successful (and he actually is all of these things!), and that he was ideally looking for a relationship but didn't have a ton of time to date as he has a very demanding job (just for some background - I'm 24, he's 27, we both live in New York City).

 

We hit it off great after the first date, and have been on roughly 10 dates total over the past 1.5-2 months. For the first 5 dates, he called me on Wednesday or Thursday to schedule dinner and something after for Saturday night. He gets up very early (he has to be at work by 6:30 am), so he told me he usually prefers to go out on Saturday as he is always exhausted during the week and Friday (this seemed reasonable enough to me). Then, after 5 dates, he didn't call me during the week to schedule date #6 - he called me at 5pm Saturday afternoon to ask what I was doing that night. Since I hadn't heard from him, I had made other plans (I very much wanted to sit around and wait for him to call, but forced myself to make other plans by Friday when I still hadn't heard anything from him).

 

So, I told him I was busy on that night (Saturday), but that we could hang out next week or weekend. He then immediately asked to make definite plans with me during the coming week - on Wednesday. This allowed me to witness (as I stayed at his place) that he does in fact go to bed at 9:30pm and get up at 5:30am to go to work (ouch!)..so it made sense that he would usually prefer not to make plans during the week.

 

However, since then, he has called me relatively last minute (on Friday night to make plans for Saturday night) every time for the past 3 weeks. I told him I was unavailable one of those times, and went out with him the other 2 times.

 

Also, I pretty much don't hear a thing from this guy during the week - no phone calls, texts, emails etc. Although that's how it's always been.

 

So, last week, as an "experiment," I called him on Tuesday night with a funny story to tell him, and as the call was ending, he asked me if I was free on Saturday night, and I told him I'd see him then (but we made no definitive plans). He then told me he'd call me on Thursday or Friday to discuss further. When he hadn't called me back with any specific plans by Saturday afternoon, I called him (somewhat angry) and basically told him I was going to make other plans since I still hadn't heard from him. He seemed somewhat taken aback, and said he assumed I'd get in touch with him (he said he'd call me, and he has always been the one to call me). We ended up going out on Saturday and hung out all of Sunday too, but I imagine this week I will face the same problem - he will call me last minute.

 

I am not sure if he is seeing anyone else (I think it's doubtful that he's seriously dating anyone else, as I have seen him pretty much every Saturday for the past 2 months, and he says Saturday is the night he prefers to go out). Although of course he could be seeing some other girl every Friday night!

 

I'm not sure what's going on here - whether I'm just being too demanding, whether he thinks now that we know each other better he doesn't have to plan in advance, or whether he is just not as interested in me anymore and wants to see if his other, better plans pan out first before making plans with me. Should I bring it up with him? I like everything about this guy (except for the lack of phone calling, of course!), which is why I would like to know sooner than later whether he is not very interested anymore, so I can get out of this now if need be before I have too much invested and care too much.

 

I would really appreciate any advice.

Edited December 1, 2009 by seabird1

[jerbear]

This reminded me of NYC when I was there. New Yorkers view relationships as disposable. It is so easy to fade/drop and get a new one if the old one is not meeting expectations. Very easy to do that.

 

Not knowing what he does I'll go on a hunch that this might be his busy season and with the economy the way it is; he might be working hard to earn his keep?

 

My hunch is that he got tired of doing the chasing and now that you've stepped up, he took a back seat to the chasing? I do have to say he might be busy and you're just not #1 right now. 2 months is long enough to be a little more frank about things. You can tell him that you are interested by doing more of the chasing, which you are, and tell him that you like a call every so often and not last minute.

 

If he keeps on doing last minute events, then you'll have to decide on what to do next.

 

I think he might be busy working and stressed with the holidays coming up.

[New Again]

Agree with a lot of what jerbear said, and would also add that two months is certainly long enough for you to put in more effort (the phone works two ways ya know). I would imagine that at this point he's expecting a little more effort/initiation on your part to show interest, rather than only accepting dates when he initiates contact.

 

If you have a problem with him calling last minute, just say so. Maybe he's starting to assume exclusivity or something?

[jerseyboy]

Sorry, but hes not that into you. But hes being a little selfish and keeping you around to fill the time until something better comes along.

[seabird1]

Thanks for the responses. In regards to jerbear, he works for a wall street firm, and is definitely very busy and likely stressed as it's almost the fiscal year end. That being said, I have a fairly demanding job too, and feel that if I liked someone enough, I'd make time for them, regardless.

 

In regards to New Again, I always felt that during the initial dating, the guy should do most if not all of the initiation. Maybe I was just raised wrong or something, but I was always taught to let the guy do the chasing, until you're in a relationship. I have called him a few times just to say hi, though. And he definitely does not assume exclusivity (we haven't had any kind of talk about that).

 

I am starting to think that jerseyboy is right. The only thing that confuses me, is why would he bother to keep spending every Saturday night with me (taking me to nice, expensive dinners and then out) if he was only mildly interested? Of course, sex could be the answer (I have slept with him), but about half of the times we've gone out, he hasn't even attempted to have sex with me. For example, last weekend, we went out on Saturday night, I stayed at his place (as I always do) but we just went right to sleep when we got back to his apartment...he did not attempt anything physical. The next morning, I was getting ready to leave around 10am, and he asked why I was leaving so soon, insisted on ordering in breakfast, and hanging out with me for several more hours. Also, the times we have hung out during the week, he hasn't attempted anything physical - we just went to dinner, watched a movie, and went to sleep.

 

I could understand a guy stringing someone along for sex..but for companionship? I assume he'd rather hang out with his friends than some girl he's not that into. Also, we live in NYC, he's a good-looking guy with a wall street job..I'm pretty confident this guy could easily get laid regularly by random girls. I'm not sure why he'd want to waste time (and money) having dinner, watching movies, etc with someone just for occassional sex.

 

I understand girls do this (and I'm guilty of it as well) - dating someone until someone else better comes along. But I didn't think men would want to put in so much time and money just for companionship and occassional sex, if they didn't actually like the girl. Of course, I'm not a guy though, and clearly can't think like one, so if anyone (male or female) could offer more insight into what is going on here, I would really appreciate it.

Edited December 3, 2009 by seabird1