I'd like to think that I'm a better person than I was at 20 - nicer, more interesting and easier on the eye too. However it appears I'm wrong, if two recent meetings were anything to go by.
The first was with someone who was very briefly my best friend at school. She got in touch over Linked In and turned out to live near where I work so we met up one evening for dinner and a catch up. I thought we had a good evening, with plenty to talk about. She said at the time I should come round to dinner next time but she has ignored subsequent attempts to organise next time or indeed get back in contact.
The second was with someone who I barely knew at university. He was older than me, in a different college and hung with the rich kids whereas I only wanted to (see, told you I'm nicer now) and I don't remember talking to him more than once or twice. He snogged me once at a party but nothing came of it. He also got in touch over Linked In and seemed fantastically keen to see me again. He took me out somewhere extremely expensive, spent the whole evening telling me how much he'd adored me at university and had never forgotten me. Given that he had turned into someone incredibly handsome, charming, interesting and attractive I thought that finally all my birthdays had come at once. Admittedly I did get the third degree about why I hadn't felt the same about him at university (maybe I would have if he'd only told me at the time - the one thing that hasn't changed was that then as now I was intensely unhappy about being single) but on balance it swung towards romantic (although weird) rather than creepy. Or I thought so at the time. Things got a bit erm heated and there was a lot of talk about seeing each other again, what we would do together and so on. And I haven't heard from him since (yes I did try contacting him). In retrospect it seems clear that as the evening progressed he seemed less and less keen so it seems that four hours of current day me was enough to destroy 28 years of fantasy me.
The whole thing really unsettled me. Did he get me confused with someone else? Am I really that awful now? I found myself really regretting that nothing had happened at university because my life could be so different if I hadn't ended up with the clown I married.
I could have done without this. I'm really lonely at the moment but I think that was the final straw in the dating sense. I didn't even enjoy the fancy meal because the romantic tension was so high neither of us could eat. And that is a real tragedy.
No no, he was just a player. As for the old friend, people are just rubbish I think, it seems the more ways we have to keep in touch, the slacker we are.
ReplyDeleteI agree that both these encounters are a bit weird. I've had similar experiences, where someone seems really keen to get in touch, and then when I reply, telling them what's going on in my life and asking about theirs, I never hear from them again. Maybe it's partly idle curiosity and once that's satisfied people don't want to make the effort? Or maybe as Annie said, people are just rubbish.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I can testify (as I personally witnessed same) that GSE rebuffed the advances of a very handsome Scandinavian person of good standing. I'm like Steven Hawking. Not that I am boycotting Israel for spurious reasons, but that I am a physicist by training and I don't understand women either.
ReplyDeleteIt's true - he was very handsome but:
ReplyDeletea) I was old enough to be his mother
b) I suspect strongly that anyone would have done but I just happened to be i) closest and ii) not his ex PhD supervisor who was the next nearest female person
c) a gentleman would have offered to make himself available in Woking rather than suggesting I got back on a train to take advantage of his availability.
Like I said at the time, I was flattered but not enough to do anything about it.