J: Just Friends

I made a very tacky tactical error on Thursday.

After our “let’s just be friends” conversation, I agreed to get together with Sunflower Guy again, for a walk, downtown.

Between the conversation where I agreed to the walk, and when the actual walk happened I had a conversation with the girl who originally set us up. Apparently, during the long weekend, she received confirmation that he is indeed interested in more than friendship. When he was encouraged to pursue, pursue, pursue me if he was interested (“nooooo!” I was silently screaming during that part of the tale) his response was that “That’s just not the way it’s done.” He told her that he was going to take it slowly and let the relationship develop naturally.

Hummmph.

So, going into our walk, with this intel, I was very careful to make sure that I kept my hands well to myself. No risk of hand-holding…even accidentally, thank-you-very-much. This was a friend-ly walk, after all. Nothing more.

And then...

(Ugh…I can’t believe this...still!)

And then we got to the coffee shop where we had planned to take a walk-break ….and I realized that I had not brought along any money. At all. When I left my car, I had grabbed my phone and my key and left the rest of my stuff locked in the car.

So, this guy…this UNEMPLOYED guy…this guy who I had JUST had the “we’re just friends” conversation with…this very same guy who I want to keep everything completely & totally platonic with…I had to ask this guy to pay for my coffee!

I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, in the smallest size that it came in. It was a $1.80 cup of hot tea. Completely and totally delicious….other than that bitter tang of guilt.

After the tea, we finished our walk, we got back to our cars, hugged and the evening was done.

It ended strangely. No promises of “next time” as in the past. And he walked off with a heartbreaking, dejected hang-dog look on his face.

I really do think he is a good guy. I really do want to be friends. But I just think that this walk turned out to be a nice little period at the end of that sentence.

We’ll see if he calls again. I don’t think that he will.

That very night, I had a dream. In my dream, I showed up for a party at our mutual friend’s house, with him by my side…again, as a friend. All of a sudden, that guy who broke my heart when he moved overseas but who returned to the US earlier this year (hereafter referred to as "World Traveling Guy") showed up at the party and came over to talk with me. I expressed shock that he was back in the city. He suggested that we go over to the pool to discuss what had happened. So I left Sunflower guy behind, sitting on the floor playing cars with a kid (Go Fish or Slap-Jack or Old Maid or some other such game). While I felt some guilt at abandoning Sunflower guy, I was at the party just as his friend, and I really was intrigued by what World Traveling Guy had to say. As we’re walking over towards the pool, World Traveling Guy reached back to take my hand in his.

I woke up disappointed that it had just been a dream.

In that dream, Sunflower guy had been so…childlike. He was happy and positive and asexual and go-with-the-flow and easy and just…not what I wanted or needed. On the other hand, World Traveling Guy WAS maturity. He was intriguing…he was mysterious…he was sexy. By taking my hand, without speaking a word, he showed me what he was looking for from me. He affirmed me, he stirred something in me. He was a man. And he made me feel like a woman.

This dream doesn’t mean I’m going to go chase down World Traveling Guy in real life and force him to tell me what happened between us and why he STILL hasn’t called despite being back for several months now. But it did affirm my decision regarding Sunflower guy. While I think he is fantastic, he’s really just not the one for me.

Isn’t it better to just end it now, if I know it's not going anywere, instead of letting things linger past the point where hearts really get involved? Isn’t that the respectful thing to do?

Really, there’s no need to try to force a relationship that won't happen. In the end, we’d both be miserable.