I went on a date with a new guy at the end of last year. I wasn’t blown away by our conversation prior to the date, but he seemed like a decent enough fellow so I decided to meet him.

The day of our meeting, we were talking on msn and for whatever reason I asked him if everything on his profile was true. He said yes, that he would explain at our meeting. I thought nothing of it, because to be honest I don’t know why I even asked the question.

We met at a coffee shop that appeared to accept debit, but we found out later that it only accepts Mastercard. We ended up going for lunch at a well-known sandwich shop next door. As we ate we talked a bit (the usual pleasantries) and after finishing my sandwich I told him that he was not the age he claimed to be, 33. I told him he was older. He smiled and teasingly said that I was free to believe what I wanted. I replied that it was not merely that I thought he was older, I was convinced he had misrepresented his age. After a while he admitted he was in fact 36. I was not impressed, especially since my profile says that men up to the age of 37 can contact me. A day or so after the date we spoke on the phone for about 45 minutes and his explanation as to why he lied about his age (an inside joke between him and a previous contact on the dating site) just sounded ridiculous to me. I felt like if he could lie about this, he could lie about anything. I poured on the guilt, telling him how it was a big deal for me to be totally honest about my size in the written part of my profile, and to put up pictures that accurately reflected my size, and I felt that people should be honest in their profiles.

I hesitated to see him again, but a colleague suggested I give it a chance and see if I could get past the lie. I went into the second date certain the first words out of my mouth would be “LIAR!”, accompanied with my right index finger pointing at him, but I actually had a decent time on the date. We talked about general topics and I felt like he was someone who would accept me more or less as I am (good) but there wasn’t any sizzle or spark on my side.

So after a couple of weeks of sending text messages back and forth, we spoke on the phone and I told him that I didn’t feel the way I should feel about someone I wanted to get to know. I never felt like sending him a text message to see how he was doing; I was content to respond to his text messages. He told me I was resistant to his efforts for us to meet up and get to know each other better and he was right. I’m still trying to figure out why I was resistant: is it because I sort of like another guy who lives far far away or was I just not that into him? We haven’t been in contact in a week and I don’t miss talking to him, it’s more that I miss him not contacting me. Oh, the contrariness of women named Jummy!

And to make things more interesting, one of the guys I never dated sent me a text message completely out of the blue. We hadn’t talked in a while and he asked if he could call me. A number of years ago, I had inadvertently broken his heart. The thought that I could have done such a thing to anyone is unbelievable to me, but I felt like he and I were not well suited for each other so I told him that we should stop our regular communication. Like most men I have almost dated, he was unable to fulfill my desire for a man who shows me unequivocally that he burns to know everything about me. Maybe he (and others) did want to know all about me, but I wanted to them to express this desire in ways that I would recognize: by asking me questions, recalling things that I said to them in the past at appropriate times, or asking me more about my blogs (or trying to find my blogs) after learning I was a blogger. So calling me twice daily wasn’t good enough, though to the guy he probably thought that was a sign of his devotion. Anyway, I don’t regret not dating this guy.

Long story short, I jokingly/seriously asked if he wanted to call to ask me to be his maid of honour and tonight I found out that he is getting married and wanted to catch up with me and invite me to the wedding! Since we quite literally had not spoken on the phone for over four years and have never met in person, is it bad that a small part of me suspects he called (and is inviting me to the wedding) to make sure I know he’s done well for himself? Maybe I feel this way because I wouldn’t have called him to tell him of my impending nuptials. I’d expect him to see pictures on facebook and come to his own conclusions because that’s how it’s done these days!

Anyway, aside from these two events and my strong rapport with young Nigerian men (more on that later), not much is happening with me.

Filed under: Love? by jummy