From one jaded friend to another… don’t get in your own way.

I had an experience yesterday that really opened my eyes as to how jaded I've become while dating. For context I (27m) have been single for about a year now after a 7 year relationship, so for much of my adult life I did not date. I've been dating for perhaps 9 months as I took a little bit of time after my breakup (that ended amicably) so I can't say I know all that much but I'm not a complete novice either.

Anyway, I know we all know the tell-tell signs of a ghastly entity. The slowed text frequency, the short answers, the lack of input from one side; we've grown accustomed to it, perhaps so much so that (like myself) we waste no time when we encounter these things. Recently, during quarantine I started dating a young lady that I feel quite good about. We talk all the time, the effort is mutual, and she didn't have pineapple or The Office on her profile (so, ya know… a rare breed). Yesterday, I'd noticed almost immediately that the nature of her texting was different, it was shorter, slightly less engaged, and didn't seem to align with the two previous weeks of communication. As I recognized this I just prepared myself for the worst and told my friend that if she continued along this trajectory for another 24 hours I would delete her number, and that I would put money on the fact that by the morning she'll send a sweet but painful message of disinterest, or nothing at all.

As I'm reading later in the night she sends a "double text" (which… is a fucking stupid thought that we even quantify texting someone more than once a negative thing but… I guess) with a simple "Hey" and waving hand emoji. In my head I'm like "alright, here we go, lay it on me"; but much to my surprise it was an invitation to speak on the phone (the first time we've done so since our first FaceTime date). I was pretty taken aback but of course agreed… and we spoke for 3 hours! We were up until about 1am, turns out she's moving to a different part of the city and she was looking at furniture for most of the day. It was a wonderful conversation and a complete aberration of what I thought was coming, and there are very few times I thoroughly enjoy being proven wrong, but this was definitely one of them.

I share this because I've seen countless stories about how fed up we are with the constant ghosting, the games, and the disingenuous motives; and I am right there with you. This experience opened my eyes to the reality of hope being a possibility. This isn't to say that you should wear rose tinted glasses when you're doing the heavy lifting because you and your time are important and no one should waste it; but that sometimes things are not what they seem. Hopefully this is something someone needed to read.