So as I said the other day, I’ve set my profile to invisible on the internet dating site since I’m no longer sure that I am single any more.
This has made the last two days mighty odd: I have had to say goodbye to people I didn’t even get to know properly – and I’ve found myself regretting not getting to know some of them a touch more. By some, I don’t mean a huge number – I mean two. Apparently, over 50 people added me to their favourites list and I had conversations with waaaay less than half of those, some of which lasted one message, some of which lasted several. One of which ended in a phone number – and I’m dating her (I think! Early days, but so far, so good :-)). I said goodbye and thank-you to everyone I was talking to because for better or worse, I believe it is polite and the “right thing” to do. Some of them got a few lines, some of them got a vast letter. It was the two who received a vast letter that have been hard to let go of.
For some odd reason that I’m pretty sure a therapist would have a field day over, this has troubled me. I didn’t have to say goodbye to any of them, technically. I mean, they didn’t know I was dating someone again and it’s not as if I’ve passed the “threshold of no return” (sex, if you want a translation), so surely I could have flirted with them all a bit more and seen what happens? Isn’t that the point of internet dating? But no. I’ve got this conscience thing (goddammit) that tells me that they ought to know the truth – regardless of whether it’s going to work out for me or not; but therein lies the complexity. I’d love to get to know the other two more, but it would be for all of the wrong reasons of which the two most obvious are:
- I’d be comparing. Did I choose wisely with the date I made, or should I have chosen differently?
- Surely I could just be friends? I could say “let’s just chat as friends” until I’m blue in the face, but the above negates any plausibility in that – hell, even I don’t believe I could do it. I’ve had (and still have) friendship-only relationships with females (yes, it can be possible, gents), but it strikes me that a dating site is the wrong place to start such a friendship, after all, it’s a dating site, not a meet-some-friends site.
So where is my Miss Right? Am I dating her now? Did I walk by her today without knowing? Is she thousands of miles away from me right now? Have I just let her slip through my fingertips on the dating site? Life is full of questions and the funny thing is, the simpler the question is to phrase and the fewer words it uses, the harder it appears to answer.
So come on ladies – what would you have expected a man to do in this situation? Think of this as helping me with my girl-to-boy dictionary.
One of these days, I’ll write a book all about love – if only to illustrate just how little I understand about it. It’d be a cracker – 75,000 words just to say “nope, I don’t get it, do you?”. Anyone got a suggestion for the title?
