We had our cake and ate it too

I will never look at chocolate cake the same way again.

I’m not the only one

DateDaily wonders: “Are Canadian Men Wusses?”

Maybe that’s the problem.

See the full article by an American exchange student in Canada here.

Rules are meant to be broken

I’m having a hard time tonight following my own sage advice about taking it easy. The Canadian hasn’t called me back since I left him a voice mail on Saturday morning. There are several perfectly normal explanations for why he hasn’t called – he’s deathly ill (he was coming down with a cold on Wednesday), a raccoon ate this telephone, he found out I’ve been blogging about him, or he had sex with me and is avoiding me – but the waiting still sucks. He’s never *NOT* gotten back to me before, and has always been reassuring when there was a delay, but still – the dude hasn’t gotten in touch, other than a one line email thanking me for a link to an article I sent him, in the four days since he slept with me.

Women are inundated with all kinds of conflicting information about how to interact with the opposite sex. One magazine tells you, “Go for it, Girl! Unlease your inner she-beast. Club him over the head with your stiletto, drag him home to your lady cave and make him your prisoner of love.” Another publication tells you to remain demure, never call him and let him do all the pursuing: “If he calls you sooner than 21.3 hours after your first date, he’s obviously desperate and kick him to curb immediately. If he calls between 21.3 hours and 42.9 hours after your date, go out with him again, but not before making him wait 24.2 hours before you call him back to say yes. If he takes more than 43 hours to call, fuck him.”

I, for one, have all of these “rules” about how long to wait to call, when it’s appropriate to talk about exes, and who should pay on the first date running around in my head after too many years of reading Cosmo (as well as perusing the pages of Seventeen and Sassy during my formative years). Although I scoff a little at the thought, somewhere in the back of my consciousness there is a tiny, annoying voice (which sounds a lot like Marge Simpson) spouting rules that to some extent or another govern my dating behavior.

Some of the rules are meant to be broken; for instance, the rule to let the man make the first move doesn’t apply in cities like Seattle where the men sit back passively in their Northface gear and pray for a Swedish Bikini Team lookalike to fall in their laps (I don’t care what Marie Claire magazine says about Seattle being the No. 1 US city for single gals, dating here is difficult. Read Seattle Weekly’s snarky response to the matter here.) Others are outdated, and some are just plain common sense.

The point is: maybe it’s time to forget the “rules” and start letting common sense dictate our dating actions – and reactions. I probably should have waited another day, but I broke down and sent The Canadian a “hey-what’s-up-so-are-we-hanging-out-again-or-was-that-for-old-times’-sake” email. It’s fairly lighthearted and fairly eloquent – I do, after all, do this writing thing for a living and it sometimes comes in handy. If he gets weird because I asked a few questions, it’s probably not meant to do, and one email, or one phone call should not make or break a relationship.

But most importantly, it’s helped me to let it go, for tonight at least.

Another note on chilling the eff out

Since I found out that Former Crush has a girlfriend, the attention I’ve been paying to him has dwindled considerably – more so for my own sanity than a desire to avoid him. I would still like to hang out, just not in any “date-like” situations. (Earlier this week, I sent him a “hope I didn’t put you in an awkward situation but I hadn’t realized you have a girlfriend” email to clear the air, to which he replied “Well, I hadn’t exactly told you I was dating someone”). He’s clearly noticed, because now he’s the one who sent me a Facebook message asking when I want to get coffee next. There really is something to the age old advice to let him do the pursuing. I chilled out, stopped caring and now he’s coming around again. In this case, it’s not necessarily the same thing as it is in a romantic relationship, but it still seems to be a fundamental part of the dance between members of the opposite sex.

From the archives: why I need to chill the eff out

Hmmm…just dug up this blog post I penned shortly before I stopped seeing the Canadian back in April. It was a good reminder to just chill the f*ck out, especially as I haven’t heard from him since I walked home humming the tune to O Canada on Wednesday night. I still need to lock my mobile phone in the car of somebody’s trunk, though:

April 6, 2009

Having been single again about two months following a three-year relationship, I’ve only just begun to test the dating waters, and have consciously tried to take a more laid back approach. If I’ve learned anything, patience is a virtue, and nothing is ever as urgent as you think it is.

So yesterday afternoon, I was feeling just a little bit smug and self-satisfied as I was getting ready for my date with The Canadian. We had, after all, just passed the all-important three-week milestone and I hadn’t freaked out about it yet.

It seemed like we had passed the “is-this-just-a-hook-up?” phase and were heading into “dating regularly” territory. I had managed to resist the urge to drive myself crazy by wondering “Where is this going?” and just enjoy it for what it was – getting to know each other. I hadn’t violated any text messaging etiquette, neither of us had mentioned past relationships, we waited at least a few dates before taking things to the next level in the bedroom and he seemed to be into it as much as I was. Most importantly, he’d been consistent, which is a big deal in my book. I thought I had managed to be pretty chill about the whole thing. That was until last night.

After the first hour of what was supposed to be a fun night out, he abruptly said he needed to go home. He walked me back to my apartment and gave me a half-hearted hug. So how did we get from post-coital bliss on Friday morning to a platonic parting on my front porch on Saturday night? Up until that moment, there had been no weirdness or anything that would indicate everything wasn’t all puppies and kittens. So what happened?

As a writer, I have a rather overactive imagination and conjured up all types of possible scenarios. Sure, I intellectually understand that there are a myriad of perfectly reasonable explanations for his odd actions. But I wasn’t buying any of them. I understood he might have just been having a bad day, but it still didn’t stop me from chucking my new found identity as a go-with-the-flow kind of gal out the window and resorting to the paranoid, constantly-checking-my-phone and self-doubting behaviors I thought I had outgrown. Why did it go so wrong when I had done everything right?

So I spent the last 24 hours freaking out. In a big way. I had all kinds of imagined dialogues with him. I sent one text message at noon asking if we could talk tonight, and contemplated sending about a dozen follow-up texts every 30 minutes thereafter, finally locking my phone in the trunk of the car so I would quit checking to see if he had written back. I angrily signed back onto my online dating profile, trawling for potential suitors, swearing up and down that I was done putting all of my eggs in one basket.

Then, as I was furiously scribbling a slightly more indignant version of this blog post, he called. He said he was sorry for leaving me in the lurch last night, but explained he had been thinking that we still don’t know each other very well and maybe we should take a step back. Not that he didn’t want to see me anymore, not that he was dating someone else, and not that he had a wife and six kids back home in Canada. And, you know what? My state of freaked-outness instantly melted away. While his call doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is puppies and kittens again, it does mean that he cares enough about our relationship/friendship/whatever it is to check in and let me know what’s going on in his world.

While I do feel slightly silly about my relationship panic attack, in a way, it was a good reminder of exactly why I vowed to take it easy this time around. After all, nothing is ever as urgent as you think it is, and if you give him half a chance, he might just pleasantly surprise you.

Assorted New Year’s Paraphernalia

Oh Canada

It’s a good night when you come home with your bra in your purse.

One step back, or two steps forward?

This week has been characterized by a bit of moving on – either that, or falling back into old, bad habits. The week of Christmas, I texted the Canadian, who was the rebound guy immediately following the dissolution of my three-year relationship (officially ended due to my relocation, actually ended because it had been over for a long time).

My original tryst with the Canadian was actually a fairly joyous occasion; I was neither distressed nor downtrodden over the breakup, but rather extremely relieved to be out of a relationship with an expiration date.

Things quickly proceeded from the first date I’d had in three years to hot and heavy, but neither of us ever talked about “where things were going” or “what we wanted”. I was just trying to go with the flow and not think about it too much, but it soon became evident that we were acting like we were in a relationship even if we were not, in fact, in a relationship. He acted rather oddly one night, which precipitated two conversations, the first of which entailed him saying he didn’t want a relationship but wanted to continue to date, and the second of which entailed me saying that I didn’t think I could handle “just dating”. So as quickly as we started “hanging out”, we stopped. It was very amicable and adult.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him at all, but rather that I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle any other potential sources of instability at that point – one month after I moved back from another country and about a week after my maternal grandmother passed away.

So that is the long back story of why I decided to text him again a few weeks ago. I think it was mainly to distract myself from the Former Crush (I am sure there will be many more men who earn and lose that moniker). But when I didn’t hear back from him in a few days, I proceeded to delete his phone number. So over the weekend he texted me and said that he had been in Canada over the holidays and had left his phone at home. So his number has subsequently been restored to my phone book.

We’re having coffee on Wednesday. (Or is it happy hour if it’s at 6 pm at a bar?) What am I hoping to get out of it? I have no idea. Is it possible to develop a platonic relationship with someone you have recently dated? I’m perfectly happy just being friends because he was a pretty cool guy and we share a lot of interests, but then again, who knows? It’s a lot easier to hook up with someone who has already seen you naked.

Four days into 2010, and I’m already violating one of the main lessons I learned in 2009.

Just don’t do it

The turn of the year always seems to warrant some navel-gazing and rumination on the previous 12 months. I’ve made not only some big leaps careerwise this past year, but also some major geographic ones. After living abroad for six-and-a-half years – the entirety of my post-college life – I moved back to Seattle. With the relocation came the end of a long-term relationship. While I haven’t exactly sowed my wild oats this last year, in retrospect, it hasn’t exactly been a dry spell either.

The tally at the end of 2009, in no particular order, was: 1 end of a three-year relationship; 1 almost immediate month-long rebound fling with a Canadian; 1 strange bout of transatlantic Skype banter with a ginger Scotsman who has a devastating accent (and I just realized I already sent him the URL to this blog, so we’ll see if he actually reads it); 1 drunken hook-up with a film director who made a movie about a font; 2 sober nights that we’ll just refer to as “a particularly spectacular lapse in good judgement”; 8 pleasant enough but extremely yawn-inducing first dates from the Internet; 2 crushes on exceedingly hot, talented and creative gentlemen who both turned out to have girlfriends; and 1 red wine-induced who-cares-if-our-friends-and-sister-are-watching New Year’s Eve makeout session.

The lessons for the New Year, in no particular order, include:

• Don’t assume, or attempt to ascertain by Facebook stalking, his relationship status the next time you meet an extremely hot, talented and creative gentleman. Just ask him.
• Sometimes it’s okay to be a design groupie. Just realize you might lose your journalistic credibility when it comes to a particular movie about a font.
• Never, ever hook up with someone on the basis of the fact that “he’s not boyfriend material”, especially if he serves food or beverages at a neighborhood establishment that you frequent. Just don’t do it.
• Beware of Canadians of the male variety. Just because.

“Are you going to blog about everything I say?”

“Are you going to blog about everything I say?” Not Dave texted me after I emailed him the link to the blog post detailing our evening of drunken New Year’s debauchery.

Well, no silly, unless 99 percent of everything you say is exceptionally witty, stupid or charming. All three of the above are all fair game when it comes to the blogosphere.

I probably violated some kind of cardinal rule by emailing him the link to the post in the first place, but my decision to pen this cyber missive under a pseudonym rather than my own name has more to do with avoiding automatic association if someone Googles me than it does with attempting to maintain total anonymity. There are certainly a few people in my life I would rather not make the connection (like my former crush-who-has-a-girlfriend) and I’ve already realized there is one particularly spectacular lapse in good judgement I won’t be publicizing on the Internet, but I’ll deal with those issues if and when they arise.

You have to be a bit of an exhibitionist to be a blogger in the first place, but the thrill for me is really in the re-telling of the tale. I recently followed the online banter between two bloggers; she’s a writer for Marie Claire magazine and blogged about a Hot Band Guy blogging about her blogging about him. Hot Band Guy pretty much sums up the challenge of being both the blogger and the bloggee:

I couldn’t quite decide if having this insight into a someone’s world would put a person at an advantage over or a disadvantage under the person who wrote it. Granted, you have to understand that in writing, especially about topics like dating, the writer has to create a persona-sharing certain characteristics with him or herself, but not necessarily truly who they are. Focusing in and really channeling our neurosis or vanity or whatever we are using creates a less ambiguous space for the reader to receive and identify with the story we’re telling.

Sometimes you slightly alter the plot line or the dialogue (I prefer the British version to the American “dialog”; it looks more complete) for the sake of the story, and sometimes you change someone’s name to protect the innocent – or the guilty. I had readers of my former blog tell me “you’re not really as mean or neurotic as you sometimes come across in your blog”. Well, yes, that’s part of the game.

I started my former blog in 2005 following a car accident that kept me on crutches for four months. As I was living abroad in Sweden at the time, I stumbled on a topic that was so wildly successful that it led to its own demise. It turns out that blogs about dating – especially mating and dating in Sweden – are an excellent way to get dates. I attracted a fairly regular following, and a few blog suitors to boot. One turned out to be a disaster, one ended up designing a website for me and the third ended up being my boyfriend for three years. Of course, it gets a bit tricky when you meet a girl through her blog and then don’t really want to be blogged about.

I asked Not Dave if being blogged about was really as bad if he thought it would be. He said no, but I’m not sure if I believe him. He did mention “Like the name change by the way”. So we bandied a few suggestions for a new moniker back and forth, including Friend’s Friend’s Brother, Guy I Snogged on New Year’s Eve, and The Guy Who Hit on the Big Bosomed Ukrainian Bimbo. The latter has some lovely alliteration going on, but then we compromised and settled on Not Dave (okay, so it wasn’t really a compromise, it was more like a unilateral decision by yours truly.)

It was nice when Not Dave emailed me this afternoon (and I know he is probably reading this). And I surprised myself by being, well, a bit more forward than I usually am when I texted him back. Then again, I was also a bit surprised when I told High School Boyfriend that he really should have asked me to dance. It seems that the quest for things to write about gets me back out there a little bit more…