acrossthemiles1 Posted April 19, 2011 Posted April 19, 2011 It seems like there are so many tales of dating woe on these boards, so I thought I would write up my little (entirely unexpected) "success story" from this weekend, ha...not as a way to gloat but just because it really was SO out of the blue. So, a few months back sometime in mid-January, I found myself at this incredibly trashy cowboy-themed bar somewhere in the mid-20's on the west side of Manhattan. Ordinarily I would not have been caught dead in this place, but my friend had scored an open bar ticket for me and as many friends as I wanted to bring, and I had a few free hours before I had somewhere to be around midnight. Predictably, I only managed to wrangle one friend into going (I have smart friends lol) and she needed to bounce at 11:00. So after sucking down as many free watered-down vodka tonics as humanly possible, she said goodbye to me and I was left with an hour or so to kill. I decided to amuse myself by going up to random guys and striking up conversations, which is something I don't normally find entertaining but I really had nothing better to do and I'm not the sort of person to sit by myself at a bar not talking to anyone, lol. Probably predictably, I was not met with spectacular success since most of the guys in that bar were pretty much the polar opposite of the types I'd even remotely be interested in. But, then I ran into this one kid who - wow. You know when you see someone who is just SO attractive to you that you're literally speechless for a second? That was this guy, lol. We struck up a conversation and immediately hit it off and spent a good hour and a half chatting and goofing off. There was LOADS of chemistry. Anyway, I finally had to extricate myself - quite reluctantly - to go off to this other prior engagement, but we ended up exchanging numbers (there might have been a little dark-corner making out somewhere in between....lol) and he got in touch later that week and we arranged to meet up that following Friday night. We went on a fantastic date with not a single moment of awkward silence - we found we had loads in common as far as taste in music, films, nightlife, food...at one point he said to me, "Wait a minute, and I met you in THAT BAR??" haha. We went to dinner at a great Thai place, then went to a couple dive bars in the East Village and just generally had an awesome time. The next morning we went and got breakfast and had more relaxed, easy conversation and when it came time to go our separate ways I said "See you around maybe" and he made some sort of comment in the affirmative. I didn't really push it more than that because I had no desire to make things anything more than casual (as I was sort of romantically interested in another guy at that point), but I really was hoping to hear from him again. About a week later: DISASTER!! I left my cell phone in a cab, lol. Because I have a GSM phone, I was able to keep my old number but since I hadn't saved any of my contacts to the SIM card I lost every single number I'd saved - including this guy's. Most of my friends/dates I was able to recover because I'd previously known them either in real life, on Facebook or OkCupid, but sadly, it seemed that unless he texted me back at some point, this dude was lost to me forever. When several weeks went by without a word from him, I figured he just hadn't been that into me and sadly filed him away in my "great one-off" folder. Then just last week - this is over three months later - I was planning to go to a concert in NYC by my two favorite DJs, on a Thursday night (these guys NEVER tour the States, so I was planning on taking the day off work - my job is located out of state). The night before the show, I get a random text from an unrecognized 347 number saying I might be wrong, but it seems like Chase & Status are playing at hiro ballroom tomorrow night. C&S were one of the groups I had talked endlessly about with this guy, so I knew almost immediately who it was. I could not effin BELIEVE IT. I seriously thought I would never hear from him again. He hinted that he might be interested in going, and I was pretty much over the moon. Then - DISASTER #2!! - it turned out the next day that because of an unexpected development at my job I was totally incapable of taking the day off work, so I had to cancel the concert. He actually seemed disappointed, so I said he should go out with me on Friday night instead. He replied, "I just might do that." Well, long story short...we ended up spending the entire weekend together. I mean, literally the entire weekend - from that Friday night to Sunday afternoon. When I met up with him I wasn't even intending to do more than get a quick couple drinks with him, but we ended up just completely getting wrapped up in each other...wandering all over the city, just talking and talking and joking around and telling each other stories...Saturday we went and got food after walking from practically one side of Manhattan to the other - we just completely lost track of time - and when he asked me what my plans were for the rest of the weekend, and I said I had none, I was like "...Oh, wow he actually wants to spend the rest of the time with me." Turns out (I discovered, as we hid out from the torrential rain in some Irish pub on St Marks) that when he didn't hear from ME after our first date, he assumed that I hadn't been interested, and had spent the last thee months trying to think of an excuse to text me back - the Chase & Status show was the first opportunity he saw, lol. When I told him the whole losing my phone story I felt like the world's biggest jerk - it just SOUNDED like a bunch of bullsh*t even though it wasn't! Then he was like "All right, well maybe now YOU can text me back this time" haha. So we spent pretty much the entire forty-eight straight hours hanging out together. It was really...amazing in a way. I have never felt so utterly at ease around a person I've only known for basically one day. I knew from our first date that there was a spark, but I had no idea just how BIG of a spark. There was literally not ONE second where I wasn't having the time of my life. We went to the movies, went to a Japanese place, ran around in the rain...and we talked and talked. Not once did I feel like I was on a date - I felt like I was hanging out with a really old friend. He is an amazing, sweet, down-to-earth working-man's guy and I can just tell, he has a heart of gold. When he saw me off at the bus on Sunday and said "I had a GREAT weekend," it came out just so genuinely goofy and happy and punchdrunk I actually laughed. It was so sweet, lol. Plus, he is probably quite honestly the most attractive guy I have ever been with, ever. I just cannot wait to see him again (this weekend!). I just can't believe I had enough dating karma saved up for him to actually come back to me. And this time around I made sure to back up all my phone contacts, haha.
Cee Posted April 19, 2011 Posted April 19, 2011 I love your story so much. Thank you for sharing that. And good luck with your date this weekend. Keep us posted.
SweetDaphne Posted April 19, 2011 Posted April 19, 2011 Loved the story!!! That's amazing! Thanks for sharing, it made me smile on this Tuesday morning.
daphne Posted April 19, 2011 Posted April 19, 2011 Cute story, but I can't figure out why the dingbat didn't text you first after the date. That would have saved a lot of hemming and hawing on both parts. You did do a testicle check, right?
Author acrossthemiles1 Posted April 20, 2011 Author Posted April 20, 2011 Cute story, but I can't figure out why the dingbat didn't text you first after the date. That would have saved a lot of hemming and hawing on both parts. You did do a testicle check, right? Well, he did actually, to be fair. There was a week or so in between our first date and the time that I lost my phone, and he DID actually text me during that time - we went back and forth about music and whatnot. Then, of course, came the cell-in-taxicab incident, and I guess since he didn't hear from me after that he assumed I was blowing him off. And actually (if you saw my other main thread you'd know this already), I've been pretty wrapped up in another guy for these past few months, and have only recently started putting that behind me. So really the timing would not have worked until now anyway. It all just worked out quite nicely.
SincereOnlineGuy Posted April 20, 2011 Posted April 20, 2011 I love the story too. And I attribute it to each having had your respective guards down. So much of LS is about people gearing-up for (and surely clenching their teeth very hard in anticipation of) some important social contact. Yours was very casual, and authentic from the opening bell.
daphne Posted April 20, 2011 Posted April 20, 2011 Ahh.. In that case, great story. Good luck to you guys then.
Author acrossthemiles1 Posted April 20, 2011 Author Posted April 20, 2011 Wait till you find out he's a plushie. Haha! He did a good job of hiding his "collection" if he is, lol. No, I think his biggest peccadillo is his penchant for expensive jeans. Which I'm not going to argue with because they look damn good on him.
Author acrossthemiles1 Posted April 28, 2011 Author Posted April 28, 2011 Okay...I thought I would update this a bit. Since I last wrote we spent the whole of last weekend together as well, and things really felt right - really clicked, felt promising. I like this guy a lot. He is funny, really affectionate, killer taste in music...exceedingly attractive haha...and, maybe most importantly, he is interested in an exclusive relationship WITH ME (something the last guy I was with hedged about until the cows came home). Of course, right on the heels of this fantastic weekend, after about three weeks or so of no contact from this last guy (who as I mentioned, up until fairly recently, I was still really hung up on) I get The Email from the last guy: the "let's just be friends" email. On one hand, I was delighted at the opportunity to turn this around and say "well that's okay, I'm seeing someone else anyway" - but once this initial thrill faded I was faced with the rather disheartening reality that I am still emotionally entangled in this first dude. And so now, rather than feeling all the lovely little butterflies I'm supposed to be feeling thinking about this coming weekend with the new (infinitely hotter, infinitely less flaky) guy, I'm stuck with a neverending mental litany of why didn't he want me, why didn't he just give me a chance. Christ, I REALLY wanted to be with that dude. And yes, part of me knew all along that it wasn't going to work out. But A) I was so caught up in it that I had convinced myself otherwise, and B) he did NOTHING to dissuade me from getting emotionally invested in the relationship, just gradually did the pull-back while simultaneously telling me that he "adored me" until the gaps between communication became longer and longer and finally it was acceptable to break things off. Whatever, reality is reality, but the point is that I never really had time to extricate myself from that and to get myself comfortable and settled in this new relationship. So now I am worried that my leftover baggage and latent romantic obsession with Guy #1 is going to f*ck up my chances with Guy #2. Obviously, the fact that I have "another prospect already lined up" is not something that makes my plight particularly sympathetic to my friends, so I've tried to play down how honestly upset and hurt and anxiety-ridden I am over the whole thing. Because now I'm also convinced that any guy who expresses romantic interest in me is going to fall right into the whole whirlwind/pullback paradigm.
BiscuitXOXO Posted April 28, 2011 Posted April 28, 2011 *hugs* It'll turn out good. Even though you still have feelings for Guy #1, you realize that relationship is over. Over. For good. And you have an excellent thing going with Guy #2, which would be a shame to waste. I've tried to play down how honestly upset and hurt and anxiety-ridden I am over the whole thing. Because now I'm also convinced that any guy who expresses romantic interest in me is going to fall right into the whole whirlwind/pullback paradigm.[/Quote]
Author acrossthemiles1 Posted April 29, 2011 Author Posted April 29, 2011 *hugs* It'll turn out good. Even though you still have feelings for Guy #1, you realize that relationship is over. Over. For good. And you have an excellent thing going with Guy #2, which would be a shame to waste. Well, I know. That's why I don't want to f*ck it up with feelings for another guy I can't control.
TuffCookieX Posted April 29, 2011 Posted April 29, 2011 Loved the story, and definitely know the feeling of being emotionally wrapped up in someone who you should no longer care for. It's the "you want what you can't have" effect. I'm still trying to figure out how to get through that sh*t myself. Time heals all, however... I wish there was something I could do to speed the healing process up - especially when there is a great guy waiting for you to get over the last douche!
Saketomi Posted April 29, 2011 Posted April 29, 2011 Awesome story! Forget about contestant #1! He missed his chance. Contestant #2 come on down!!!! If it were my choice I would choose the option that makes me smile not the one that makes me cry.
Author acrossthemiles1 Posted April 29, 2011 Author Posted April 29, 2011 AAAARGH! I KNOW! My problem is I can't STOP THINKING about the jerk. I desperately want to. I keep telling myself it's just because things with Guy #2 are still relatively new and I haven't settled into it yet. I mean, there are other factors at play...Guy #1 was very charismatic, very driven, highly intellectual, but being around him was like going a thousand miles an hour in every direction. It was exhausting in a way. Guy #2 is much more laid-back, more humble and more willing to take my lead. I find that extremely refreshing, of course, but it is is somewhat of a transition. Oh FML.
Saketomi Posted April 29, 2011 Posted April 29, 2011 I had a similar problem with one of my ex-girlfriends. I met a fantastic girl who I'm still with today, but at the beginning I was still hung up over the previous girlfriend. I was worried that I wasn't giving my new girlfriend the love she deserved so to fix it I started texting/phoning her everytime I started thinking about the ex. It wasn't an immediate fix but it definitely helped. We're still happily together and I don't think about the ex anymore.
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