Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Anticipation

Life has been a bit uneventful this past week as the object of my affection was out of town.

I'm not sitting around pining for him though. I managed to spend lots of time with girlfriends.

One friend got engaged during Holy Week, another had a birthday... there hasn't really been a dull moment.

Friday night my friend Kafi and I went to a party hosted by one of my favorite online stores... ModCloth.com!

Their writers were in town for a writers conference, and if you check out their website you'll understand why creative writing is so important to their product descriptions.
We met some of the writers and I told them that they're like J. Peterman for Anthropology type clothes!
Here's ModCloth's blog post about the event. As a registered shopper on their site, I was sent an email invite to the shindig! And my friend and I got some free stuff! I got the. Coolest. Earrings. I'll try to feature them here soon.
It was awesome!

On Saturday, I met a group of girlfriends for dinner and had a killer eggplant sandwich!

But back to the object of my affection.
Before he left to visit his family for a week, he said that he'd call me when he gets back.

I'll admit I was bummed that I wasn't going to hear from him, but I reasoned that we've only been seeing one another for about three weeks, and it's expected for him to compartmentalize his family visit separate from anything that is going on with me.

All my girlfriends agreed. I decided that I would just wait and see what happens when he gets back. (sometime today)
That is, until my friend's new fiance said he thought it was weird that McTwitchy would not even text me while he's gone. Then I bummed out a little.

But I have been thinking it's still not as much of a red flag as the many red flags Mr. Burns waved at me over the years.

After we had been dating more than a year, Mr. Burns went back East to visit family, and as I drove him to the airport, he said, "Don't be mad if I don't call you while I'm away."
WTH? That is NOT okay!
I replied, "I won't get mad. I'll just know that you're not thinking about me."

Mr. Burns argued that I was projecting or something... and I said no, you don't ask me to write you a hall pass for not calling while you're gone!!! And why would you want to? If you love me at all, you should miss me, even plan to miss me... and can't help yourself from calling me!

It should have been perfectly clear then that he didn't really care for me.
But we tortured ourselves for another year or so after that! Ugh.

Please learn from my mistakes ladies!!

Meanwhile, I don't want to have expectations on McTwitchy. But I also don't want to make excuses for him like I did for Mr. Burns.
So I'm just going to see what happens when he's back, and we'll go from there.

My feelings for him have been tempered over the past week that he's been gone. I'm a little less twitterpaited... but I am still feeling the pitter-pat of excitement that hopefully I'll see him again soon.
I'm just not counting on it.
And I think that's healthy.

2 comments:

Genevra said...

Once again I just loved reading this post and the last paragraph in particular. I started enjoying dating and budding romantic relationships a lot more, when I stopped putting so many expectations on what someone did or didn't do. I'm starting to realize, amazingly enough, that the world doesn't rotate around me and that peoples actions or lack of actions are not always about me, even in romantic relationships. :)

Getting to know someone in the beginning and the twitterpaited feeling that comes along with someone that you are really attracted to, is one of the best feelings in the world. It can also quickly turn out to be the worst feeling, when the object of your affection starts being human and doesn't act the way or do what you were expecting. It's so hard to stay objective during those times.

With that said, I don't think it is a red flag, little or otherwise, that he hasn't been in contact with you while he was away. But only because I'm the same way, when I am traveling,or when life gets insanely busy. I tend to be very single focused in those cases. If I have free time, I might make contact more. If I'm pretty busy and distracted, I don't.

Really until you get to know him better and spend more time with him, you don't know if his lack of communication in that situation is a reflection of you or not. Which it sounds like you realize and is why you are a little less twitterpaited and not obsessing about it, and instead continuing to live your life.

Go TRS!

Melissa said...

Hi TRS,
I completely understand those feelings. I think it's difficult at the beginning of a relationship, when there's so much excitement and newness, for each week to measure up to the last. Seems like it's natural for the excitement to ebb and flow, but it can feel so discouraging to me when it ebbs in the downward direction!

Since it's only been 3 weeks, I agree with Genevra and wouldn't look at it as a red flag. He might be very focused on his family while he's there and it may not be a reflection of his feelings for you at all that he hasn't contacted. It's such a new thing after just a few weeks.

Anyway, just wanted to reassure you that others of us understand! Hope you hear from him real soon, and I'm sure you will.

Melissa

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