It’s hard for me to admit sometimes that I’ve really messed up. But I really messed up. I always joke about how awful I am at relationships, but this time I don’t find it so funny, just disappointing. I’ve really let my fear of relationships sabotage me to the point of no return. I met a new guy, as you can figure out I’m sure. I actually first “met” this guy back when I was trying out OkCupid, before I met Mr. Almost-Perfect and cancelled my account. We had emailed frequently, yet not-so frequently. We’d go through spurts of emailing several times a day to nothing at all for several days. And the same thing occurred when I gave him my phone number, so the fact that after about a month after ending things with Mr. Almost-Perfect I received a text from him saying “hey stranger” and it wasn’t that surprising at all. So we started talking again, and had some hour longs phone conversations for several weeks before I asked him if he was ever going to ask me to actually hang out. Come to think of it, I had to give him my phone number way back when; I guess that’s just the way we were. I’ll call him Mr. Marathon, because he was really into running, his ultimate goal was to run an ultra-marathon, and he did at least one type of race (his favorite being the obstacle variety) a month. He’s older than me, 38, which is quite a change from what I’m used to. He works from home, and also has a 7 year old son who is his everything. Super attractive, and I even admitted to him that I was intimidated because of how disciplined and…good he seemed. I doubted that he ever had a bad day, that he would ever say a bad thing about anyone, and that he even ever didn’t smile. Our first date we met at Panera and we mostly talked about our shared love of running. My running meant a slow run of between 3-5 miles, and his was a minimum of 5 miles, usually stopping to do hundreds of pushups or burpees or running with a weighted vest, it almost made me feel lazy.
I had learned early on that he also didn’t drink, so mentioning going to happy hour with my co-workers made me feel guilty, and I hate admitting it, but I really worried if we could date if he didn’t drink; I loved sneaking a juice box of wine into the movie theatre, or staying up late playing drinking card games, or sitting outside by the fire pit drinking a cold beer, but he assured me that it didn’t matter if I had a drink, and wasn’t a deal breaker. I just didn’t feel adequate to him, though he never said anything to me to make me feel like that, it was all my own doing. Something that Mr. Marathon and I did from the beginning of our email/text relationship was share jokes. He knew how I loved a silly joke. My favorite being “knock knock…who’s there?…smell mop…smell mop who?…” say it aloud, you’ll get it in a bit. So yeah, elementary school humor, which made our first date even better when we walked next door to Panera to a Half-Priced Books and right by the door when we entered was a joke book. I promise we stayed by that door for a half-hour just making each other giggle and laugh out loud sharing jokes, I feel like a lot of people walked by and gave us a little smile by how cute we were. And then we walked around sharing our favorite books and movies. We’d go into the foreign language section and he would try to impress me with his French knowledge, or into the travel section and talk about the best road trips. We were originally going to get ice cream but spent so long in the book store that we ran out of time. Who would’ve thought that going to a book store would be the perfect first date? I wasn’t sure that he was feeling me the way that I was him until he made a bet that he would figure out my last name within 24 hours, loser buying ice cream. I wasn’t home for more than 45 minutes before he texted me saying “Have a nice day tomorrow Miss ____”, he had figured it out, but I felt happy that he had created sure-fire excuse for us getting together again.
Mr. Marathon told me that he wanted to plan a super fun second date, since he knew I love an adventure. We decided to go to the Asian Fest downtown, thinking we’d see some good culture and eat some yummy food, but what we really walked into should have been called “Ghetto Fest”. There were very few Asian things there, just mobs of, well…my students. Figuratively first, mobs of young teenagers yelling at each other, or shouting about how they wanted some ribs (the ribs must’ve had been really great at the Asian Fest, we heard a lot of commotion about them), and then literally, my students -everywhere I turned, witnessing me on a date. Needless to say, we didn’t stay there long, but did take a while walking through the park and back to the car. And like a perfect gentleman, he always opened the car door, and walked closest to the street to ensure I didn’t get hit by a car, I was seriously wondering if I would ever see a flaw in him. When we had our first kiss I realized it wasn’t there either, we had great chemistry. So this is how it continued, we had several more dates, and I still didn’t see any flaws in him. I mean, he was really cheesy and I teased him about talking like an old man, he would answer the phone saying “What’s up buttercup?”, or call people jack wagons instead of an a**hole. I was noticing that we had a lot of differences too, not just the drinking and working out, but he hated the city, we didn’t enjoy the same foods (besides ice cream, which we were eating on almost every date together), we were on opposite ends politically…in fact, we seemed to only have the same tastes in music and adventure. He’s also super into PDA, wanting to kiss me in public and sit on the same side of the table as me, but despite all that, I was really enjoying our time together. He even went to school with me on the last day to help me pack up my room and carry all those heavy boxes downstairs, he was just such a sweetheart. So the only thing wrong with Mr. Marathon was me. I kept getting freaked out because it always seems that if something is too good to be true, it is. I was waiting for the shoe to drop, and that’s when the self-sabotage began. I started pointing out what we didn’t have anything in common and focusing on that. He would complement me and I would shoot it down, but then I would worry about whether he liked me or not. I had told him early on that I hated to be smothered in a relationship, so he would give me space, but then I worried when I didn’t hear from him. It was definitely my confidence and negative feelings towards relationships coming out. And I know that I do it; I sometimes feel like I can hear my inner-self screaming to cut it out, and I can’t. The culminating event happened when I was asked out on a date by a guy from my past, Mr. Muscles. I really didn’t want to go honestly, I enjoy my time with Mr. Marathon so much I just didn’t feel the need, but we hadn’t said we wouldn’t date other people. So I asked him one night what he would think if I went on a date with someone else. Once I hit that send button I regretted it, where’s that unsend button? He must have been asleep because I didn’t hear back from him until the next morning when he said “I didn’t see that coming, let’s talk later”. Let’s talk? That never sounds good to me, so I texted him back saying “That’s never a good sign, just forget about the whole thing, take care”. Once again, texting before I think. I seriously need a friend to stand around and screen all my decisions, because as the day went on and I didn’t hear back from Mr. Marathon, the worse that feeling in my stomach got. That evening I texted him, and later I called him. I had to leave a message telling him how awful I felt and that I really messed up and regretted it, but I would leave him alone until I heard from him. That was all just yesterday, and I haven’t heard anything. It’s weird having no idea about what he is thinking, but not surprising since that’s how I felt the whole time we dated. I mostly feel like kicking myself because Mr. Marathon is clearly a guy who shows his feelings through his actions, but I need that constant reassurance through words; why couldn’t I see that he liked me, and why couldn’t that have been enough for me, especially so soon into our budding relationship? I always try to end things before the other person can do it, which is what I did here; I was so afraid that he would eventually realize that I didn’t stack up to all he had to offer and would get rid of me, so I tried to beat him to the punch, but I regret it. And I realize that I do offer a lot, he told me how much he loved kissing me, how I cracked him up, how I told great stories, that he thought I was cute, but yet it wasn’t enough for me. And I’m left clueless about what to do now, besides retreat with my tail between my legs, hoping that this is a lesson that I can learn from at the very least.