This summer has been a most interesting one for me as far as learning about my own, sometimes unconscious, dating patterns. My experiences with three very different women gave me a whole different perspective about the battle of the sexes. Maybe if I had not been interacting with all three of them within the same period of a few months, I might not have realized how utterly schizophrenic I actually am when it comes to dating.
If you asked each of these women about me, they would paint a totally different picture of me. Am I a liar or a fake if three people can’t describe me in a remotely similar way?
I’d like to think that I’m an honest and truthful person.
I just realized that I tend to act differently around different women depending on my headspace and circumstances, and especially depending on how much I’m into her. However, after analyzing those three experiences, I realized that until I become more comfortable merging all my dating split personalities into one, something will always be missing from my relationships.
First of all, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a momma’s boy. No, I don’t live with her. I just mean that I grew up in a family of strong women. And that gave me a great appreciation and respect for women. Being also an older brother, I always think about the fact that any woman I’m dating could be somebody else’s younger sister or daughter. So to make an already long story short, I don’t perceive myself as being a “dawg.”
But ask one of those three ladies (Sister #1), and she will tell you that I’m an emotionally unavailable man who more than likely lies to her when I tell her that “I'm currently overwhelmed with work,” “out of town” or that “my cell phone battery died.” Admittedly, I’ve used all of those lines on her over the past few months, and while all were true at least once at any given time, I realize that I could have made more of an effort to get in touch with her all those times. I am very vague when she asks me if there is someone else in the picture. I won’t lie to her, but I won’t go into details. She knows about that girl I sent flowers to a few weeks back before we met. I haven’t mentioned her much since, but somehow she knows “that girl” is still around.
Sister# 1 and I have tremendous physical chemistry. We constantly flirt together on the subway, on the way to the restaurant, or just by the way our eyes meet while reading the paper and reaching for that muffin when we have breakfast together.
So what’s the problem? There’s Sister# 2. She’s the one who got the flowers a few months back. She’s the one I think of when my mother asks me: “Have you met someone special these days?” Like nearly all the women who fit that profile in my life, I’ve had the tendency to put her on somewhat of a pedestal. I’m always conscious of putting my best foot forward. I find myself self-editing my thoughts when we talk just to make sure that the right words come out. Unlike with Sister# 1, I’m not as spontaneous or as much of a flirter around her. I’m somewhat more reserved. While I was engaging in adventurous sexual innuendo during my early conversations with Sister#1, that side of me hardly ever comes out with Sister#2. I’m really trying to be a nice guy, you see?
Sister# 2 has no doubt that I’m into her because I’ve told her a few times. I take her to nice restaurants once in a while, and we spend time strolling around the city. We certainly have a great connection, but we both know something is missing. That physical chemistry that causes Sister# 1 and I to spontaneously hold hands without a thought doesn’t exist. I am dying to reach for her hand but, somehow, it would seem forced and unnatural. I just don’t feel it from her. I’d even say that I’m uncharacteristically insecure around her. So I keep admiring her from afar on her pedestal.
Now Sister# 3 is an interesting case. Our paths had crossed on and off for a while before we finally decided to go on a date together. There was some mutual attraction there, I thought, and I was optimistic about us getting together. Who knows where it could lead, I thought. Both Sister#1 and Sister#2 were in the picture at the time, without any firm commitment on either side, so I really took it as a “what the heck” thing.
My date with Sister# 3 was an utter disaster. The person who showed up on the date had nothing in common with that same person that I knew of on the social circles, or even on the phone just a little while back. I was puzzled. She looked bored and completely uninterested. I must have looked at my watch as many times as I wished in my head that I had stayed home. I didn’t know what to make of the unusual situation, so I just decided to ignore the obvious tension and carry on being my chipper self. I basically carried the conversation topics as if nothing was the matter. I thought for sure that we would never hear from each other again. But many weeks later, I got a call from her, and she was once again the charming and cheerful woman I was originally attracted to. She said she was thinking about me and wanted to know how I was doing. Was she looking for a reaction from me on our date? Was I supposed to ask what was wrong? I’m not sure. But somehow, I’m dying to find out.
To use my usual Sex and the City references, while I felt like Carrie’s Mr Big with Sister# 1 and Carries’s Aidan with Sister# 2, I guess I would say the pattern is yet to be discovered with Sister# 3. But having paid no attention at all to Sister# 3’s antics and basically writing her off as an option seems to have worked more than all the acrobatics I could have gotten into had I set out to pursue her.
Now that the three settings have been laid out, I shall proceed with the cross-analysis in my next post.
