I am not the world's calmest person by a long shot. I often make mountains out of molehills and my mind will take step one and race to step 100 in about 16 seconds. I also have the lovely habit of ruminating on past experiences and jump to the worst possible conclusions, even though outwardly I come across as severely optimistic. Unfortunately, this set of thoughts and behaviors does not bode well when I begin dating. I am that person who will send a text to a guy I'm seeing and need to check my phone every 7 seconds to see if a return text has been sent, and then if I do not receive a response in a fairly short window I often jump to "he must not be into me." This can be EXTREMELY exhausting. I don't mean to be this person, and I can't really help the churning that begins in my stomach or the heart palpitations or the wetness under my arms. If I could only turn my mind off for a little while and just enjoy the ride I would be oh so happy. I also understand that my anxiety can be great. It helps me to always be ready in a crisis and I am fiercely supportive and I'm pretty much always available (within reason).
As I recently became single (as of November, 2) I completely intended on remaining single for a little bit. I, of course, would casually date because it's fun and gives me something to fill my time, and you know, sex. A steady stream of sex is always appreciated, but I would rather pair sex with a few drinks or dinner, instead of a 5 minute Grindr convo. I began going on dates and it was pretty slim pickings. People were either dumb, boring, or just not a match. I mean I can pretty much carry on a conversation with anyone, but that doesn't mean that I want to. In addition to this there was also not really any of the sex happening. I mean if we are gonna have a bad date you should at least offer to have sex with me as a consolation, right?
Then one night I had plans to grab drinks with this guy that I had been talking to on Grindr on and off for a while. I must admit I was rather excited for the meeting. He physically was my type: tall, thin, pale skin, and dark hair, so I at least knew that he would be physically very attractive to me. And as it turned out we had a lot in common, seemed to have similar senses of humor and share common values. The first "date" lasted over 4 hours and ended with a 40 minute snogfest in my car. I felt like a high schooler. You know that feeling when you have an amazing first date and you feel light and happy and giddy and you just keep imagining what the future holds and you begin to write his name in all your notebooks??? Well it was kind of like that, but without the writing in notebooks.
At the end of that meeting we had already made tentative plans to hangout Saturday night to stay in and watch a movie. This was basically code for we are gonna hang and, to be blunt, fuck. He even made a statement that we didn't "have sex on the first date." He used the word date, so I thought that we were both on the same page. Over the next two days leading to our second meeting it became clear that he was not the world's most timely texter. Being a bad texter isn't a bad thing per se, but because of my anxiety it often leaves me with too much room for my own interpretation, which as I have already mentioned often ends in catastrophizing. As a side note psychcentral.com defines catastrophizing as an irrational thought a lot of us have in believing that something is far worse than it actually is.
So as his texts became further and further apart I became less and less assured that we were going to meet for a second time. Finally, he responded and apologized for the lack of a prompt response without me having to mention anything. Apologies are always appreciated, however, they do not often abate my anxiety. We ironed out the final plans and agreed to meet at like 7. He then pushed it back to 730 and probably arrived at my house around 745. Normally someone running late would vex me to no end, but we were only hanging at my place, so there wasn't really a rush and he was communicative about his running late.
We watched a slightly lack-luster film and ordered in Thai food, making out intermittently during the movie, and we even paused the film to fool around a few times. Everything about the evening was great. We seemed to have similar tastes in food, movies, and the sexual chemistry was unbelievable. I found him undeniably attractive. I don't think I stopped thinking about ripping his clothes off the entire time. He also found me really attractive and there's nothing better than seeing someone look at you with hunger in their eyes. Even the way we had sex was amazing, it was that balance between soft and hard, sweet and dirty. We just seemed so in sync. By the end of the night I was basically picking out the children we both never wanted's names. We kissed goodnight and he texted me when he got home about how much fun he had. I went to bed feeling confident that this was going to be a thing.
As the weekend rolled on I would send text messages and he would continue to wait longer and longer to respond and at times would just "forget" to respond at all. He would always apologize for not responding or taking too long to respond, but he avoided texts that asked when we could hang out again and when we made plans to hangout later that week he cancelled and we rescheduled for Friday. I texted him Friday morning to check in as we hadn't texted for a few dates and he tried to cancel again or at least reported he had a lot of "errands" to run. I have no idea what errands a 25 year old man who lives at home with his family would need to run, but they seemed awfully important.
I understand that people are busy and obviously have priorities, but I know this because I am also busy too. I hate when people act like they are the only busy people in the world. I want to respond with "I'm bust too, I just know how to keep my commitments so you don't notice." I work two jobs, have friends, family, and personal interests. I respect other people's time and I expect the same consideration.
His text that he might have to cancel again was enough to throw me over the edge. His lack of timely texting had already been churning my anxiety and I just didn't know how to read him, and being left in the dark only intensified my catastrophizing. I knew that I was going to teeter off the edge and say something intense. I may not be the best communicator but I always communicate how I'm feeling. Once he said he might have to cancel again I reported that cancelling twice in a row was a bit much and I thought I was done. I ended the short back and forth responding to him saying that he had a good time with me with "It just seemed that you weren't all that interested with the cancelling and sporadic texting." Sure maybe a little aggressive for someone I had only been on two dates with, but I am nothing if not aggressive. I pretty much regretted it the second that I sent the text. I jumped to, could this be salvaged? Was the text too much?
I mean we had such a great time, maybe differing communication styles weren't the end of the world, maybe we could still find a way past my aggressive texting?
I'm sure all of this sounds at least a little bizarre or intense to some of you, but this is how the mind of someone with anxiety works. We are always thinking and countering our thoughts and decisions. It leads to a lot of self-doubt. These ruminating thoughts about my choices to shut him down so quickly kept coming all weekend and into the following week. My anxiety was very high and eventually I decided I would just send a text apologizing for my abrupt response and see if he wanted to hang out again (if he didn't think I was insane). He responded later that night after I was already asleep and basically said that he had a great time, but wasn't looking for a relationship right now and didn't want to get me into something that wasn't going to meet my needs. All in all it was a very thoughtful message and it helped. I was glad that I made the effort to clarify things. I sent an open-ended response that if he ever changed his mind he had my number.
That was less than a week ago and honestly I don't expect anything to happen or change. It's also easier for my anxiety not to have expectations because let's face it expectations are often let down. This is only the latest instance where my anxiety hijacked my dating life and I am sure that it will not be the last. Everyone experiences anxiety to a certain degree, but most people do not experience a level of anxiety that can be disruptive to their lives. I, unfortunately, am in this subset of people. My anxiety isn't even that debilitating that I need medication for it. There have been moments where life circumstances occurred where medication has been helpful, but in this instance voicing my thoughts and feelings to him and my friends was enough to bring me down to earth. I often need to ask my friends in my fears and thoughts are rational and often they are, I just might be more intense and heightened than your average person.
During our second meeting I told him about this blog and he jokingly asked if he was going to wind up in the blog. I jokingly replied "probably not." Guess I was wrong...
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