Friday, December 21, 2007

Dating disappointment

I've written so many posts about postdocs and academia that you might think that this blog was about postdocs, so I will include a dating post, since I'm sure that my readers (if there are any) were waiting on tenterhooks for an update on my romantic life.

I was totally excited about the guy whom I was dating, but had to travel a lot, so we only got to see each other between trips (mostly mine, but some of his), but he did a "It's not you, it's me" and disappeared. I've never said this about any friend of mine, male or female, but his previous relationship sounded like she was borderline abusive, and at the very least negligent. Understandably he wants to avoid falling too quickly into anything, and doesn't feel ready to have any relationship at all. It's been less than a year. Still, it's hard not to take that personally. It's always possible to be kinder or sweeter, and I feel like if he liked being around me more, he wouldn't feel like this. But there's no sense in talking about the counterfactuals. If it's meant to be, it will be.

The part which particularly sucks is that he lost his phone a couple of weeks ago before going on a trip of his own --- and I'm pretty sure he really did lose his phone. He has probably replaced his phone by now, but shows no indication of having it, and is no longer visible on Skype, and so all of this happened by email, much while I was at my interview. In theory, he wants to be friends, which seems to mean that he'll hang out in a group but not separately. He's so sweet, and I hate to ascribe any bad motive to him especially since his emails were so apologetic. He did handle the situation in the most passive-aggressive way possible, avoiding me and generally giving me the feeling that he didn't want to spend much time around me, until I said something.


Just a week or two ago, it seemed like I had so many potential dates, but these naturally seem to have evaporated.


And that's the closest thing that I have in the way of potential. As disappointing as it is to be dumped by a guy who I really liked, I'm even more disappointed to have to start going to events and online dating sites again.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sorry about your bad experiences. At least it sounds like you don't fall into doomed-to-fail relationships like I do, just because I feel there's little potential otherwise, and I am tired of being alone.

Dating can be tough. Hope things go better for both of us soon.

And yeah. I resent having to return to online dating sites, too. The gay world (I'm gay) has its unique sets of challenges, too.