I learned a ton from that book. I found myself hiding in corners of Barnes and Nobles laughing hysterically, wanting to punch something, nodding enthusiastically like, "exactly!", or rip the pages out and frame them for either myself or friends. Then I bought it because I decided-- if I wanted to avert arrest-- that this book, and the emotions it produced were best kept in privacy.
It is so easy to live out scenarios and make excuses for people and find the million reasons why you are the exception to the advice you've so sagely doled out to your friends in similar circumstances. But you're not. You know you're not. You are the rule.
A couple months ago I met a guy at a party. Ron. I thought he was cute, and even though I had never made the first move before I decided to give him my number. (I think because I was pretty drunk.) I half way hoped he wouldn't call me because I remember inwardly cringing when he told me his age. 24. And--let's be real--a man's 24 is usually a woman's 21. However, he ignored all the man guides and called me the very next day. Instantly I was intrigued.
We went out several times, things seemed to progressing. I was a little put off by the fact that I had to initiate a conversation about our lack of physicality after the three week mark--but I chalked it up to him being a gentleman.
So--here it is--almost 2 months after we met and I cannot tell you for the life of me what changed between then and now, but things have fizzled. They have fizzled, popped, and shriveled up to a lifeless clump you leave in the corner to sweep up.
I kept trying to figure out why one day Ron just stopped asking me out for dates, why he stopped texting daily just to touch base, why I suddenly felt like if I wanted a response to a text message by 10pm I should send mine before noon. I tried over analyzing things for a few days and then one day I decided maybe I was too old for that. So, I did what I think adults are "supposed" to do in these situations and communicated!
I asked him straight up why he had seemed to back off and he said he hadn't. He had just been busy. But that nothing else had changed. I breathed a little sigh of relief, until the next day I texted him around noon with an open ended question, and by 9pm I still hadn't heard anything back.
I started thinking... what is busy? I went to school full time, worked full time, had an internship for 15 additional hours a week and somehow I managed to maintain having a social life. Yeah, barely, but I did it. It really doesn't take a lot of energy to send a text that says, "Hey. Hope you have a great day!" or "Hey, I am really busy this week. But I have a few hours free Saturday...dinner?" Really, I sometimes send texts while I'm on the toilet, so...
Today something clicked that a few years ago might have taken me five times longer to understand: Ron is just not that into me!
Oh well, his loss! And, onto the next...
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