Bah, Humbug!

When I first started this post, I had a title in mind, Dance of the Bovine Fecal Matter.

Then, I changed it to Ride of the Vagueries.

Ultimately, I settled on the title above.

And they all will fit nicely into this post.

I'm finding it very difficult, if not impossible, from turning into a cynic.

In the last five months, I've been on 'dates' with four different men. I've blogged about two of them, and one really wasn't a date, but more of a business venture. But, there were sparks. And I wanted to move it forward.

It's the last one that really has me frustrated.

He asked me out of the blue. We'd met at a social event a couple of years back, became friends on Facebook, and after a while I asked him to go out, he said he was up for it, but asked to wait until some immediate social obligations cleared. I agreed, and later reminded him, but he never replied. So, I took his initial interest as either fake, insincere, or some other synonym for "Thanks, but, no thanks."

Truth is he simply may have forgotten. Uh-huh. Bovine Fecal Matter.

And now he wanted to go out. I remember really wanting to get to know him, as he seemed like a nice guy, and very interesting, so I decided to go, and hope maybe at least a friendship might occur. Or, lead to more down the road. After all, there was a reason he was asking me now. Maybe I was to learn something else? Maybe he was?

One commonality I noticed in the last two men, aside from being tall-dark-and-handsome, charming, intelligent, interesting and witty, was an apparent implied interest in wanting to pursue further time together with me. The first one actually said, "We'll get together again, soon, and finish  this conversation." In an email follow-up also said he had a real fun time and we'd get together again, soon. Seems very direct to me. But, how soon is soon? Five minutes? Five days? Five weeks? Months? I'm still waiting to finish the conversation four months later. Good thing I'm not holding my breath. More B.F.M.

The second guy was a little less direct, yet still seemed to want to get together. "If you like Sushi, there's a great place near my house," or "If you like kayaking, Santa Barbara is a nice place to kayak and you can tag along next time I go." I mean, am I misinterpreting here? I liked this guy, and wanted to get to know him better, and replied in kind. "We could do this, or that." Yet, neither of us actually set up the next outing. We were on the Ride of the Vagueries.

Until later. I invited him to a couple of different events, unfortunately both of which he already had plans for that day. When he left our first date, he parted with. "I'll be in touch soon." Ah, the kiss of death.

As I look back, the one common thread here is me.  Perhaps in my eagerness to pursue a friendship with them, I may have come across over eager in their eyes. My definition of friendship may be different than theirs. I'm in a place where I like frequent contact, but that appears too much like dating, or so I've been told. While it's difficult not to believe I may have done/said something that suddenly turned these men off, I have to also think it has something to do with them.

Perhaps, they had other reasons for being vague/ambiguous/full of B.F.M. The first of these two men had just begun a new relationship, so starting to hang out with another 'new' man might be threatening to the new boyfriend. The second man seems to have such a full social agenda, he may be subconsciously making himself unavailable to dating to avoid being hurt again. So, maybe he had a different agenda for asking me out? Especially after two years?

I remember these games, when I was first gaily dating nearly thirty years ago.

It seems men have not changed much.

And while it is getting more frustrating meeting these seemingly nice, handsome, charming, interesting guys who are very unavailable, I need to remember, even Scrooge eventually celebrated Christmas.