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.
LOVE the idea of locking one’s phone into the trunk. Very good thinking.
oh, this reminds me way too much of myself… like in every possible potential relationship. Yep, single and have been for a very long time. Not ever managed to chill out at all, so you go girl!
yeah, well, the zen is quickly wearing off!
[...] 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 [...]