Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Not NBA Rebounding

Well I find myself in an interesting predicament. I find myself being pursued by a man that I once was really interested in. The only reason why I say once is because after spending some time with him, he informed me that he was in a pretty serious relationship. We have remained friends throughout the last year and a half, but I no longer thought of him as a romantic possibility.

Well friends, he recently broke up with his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Recently - as in two weeks ago. He kind of broke down to me about it and I offered whatever help I could - ie moral support, moving help since he was living with her (he's not LDS in case you're confused), etc.

Apparently to him, that meant someone to hang out with. I naively thought that as his world was collapsing in front of him, he just needed to be around different people, and that I could support him while he is figuring everything out. So I invited him to a dinner I was attending with some other friends that live in the DC area and he came. We also went out to dinner this weekend and then watched a Spanish film.

Things were going well until we started watching the movie and I realized this was different. This was not two platonic friends watching a movie on a Saturday night. This was something. While I was trying to concentrate on understanding the film (the rule was no subtitles), I was half thinking: "what did I get myself into, and how am I going to get myself out of it?"

Not that I don't want to date him, but it had just been so long since I let myself wonder if we would ever be a good match to really wrap my head around my feelings for him in that moment.

Well, the moment of truth came when he kissed me. I'm pretty sure he was absolutely shocked when I pushed him off of me and said, "I don't think this is a good idea." I told him my concerns that he had barely broken off a very serious relationship and that I didn't want to be the rebound. I explained that I wanted him to want to date me as the person I am, and not date me because he was lonely and missed that companionship that he had for so long and I was conveniently around to fill the void.

I feel good about it and I told him that I'd be open to dating, but that it would have to be really slow. Well, I said a lot of things. The post-rejection reaction has been pretty good so far and we'll figure out what we're going to do moving forward. But, I'm really starting to think that I'm a heart breaker for real.

I can say that I've never been in this situation before. You would think that having someone who you genuinely like as a person want to date you would be so simple, but in my dating life, nothing is ever simple.

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