A good frog is hard to find

Here is my fantasy:

I meet a man in my day to day life. We talk for a few minutes here and there. We finally decide, because the conversations are pretty good, that we should have coffee together. We have coffee or a drink together and the conversations get even better. He's interesting to me and I'm interesting to him.

We exchange phone numbers. He says he'll call on, say, Wednesday. He actually calls on Wednesday.

He asks me out to dinner.

Ahhh.

Dinner. At a decent restaurant, with a little ambiance. And why does he choose that kind of place? Because he wants to impress me just a little and wants the atmosphere to be congenial and pleasant.

We meet at the restaurant with a little ambiance. I wear a dress and my wonderful new high heels. Why? Because I'd like to impress him a little.

And while we're having dinner and another great conversation, we're both thinking how lucky we are to be there with each other. We're thinking about possibilities. We're actually entertaining hope.

After dinner, we go to our respective homes - kind of wishing that we weren't but not wanting to spoil things by rushing ahead.

Right. Pigs fly. And it's the era of internet dating. Besides, I keep mistaking frogs for princes.

Either KD had a slip of the tongue today or I had a slip of hearing but I thought she said, "Traumedy" describing a movie. I started to laugh. The perfect label for my so-called-love-life:
Romantic Traumedy.

Damn I'm tired of it.

**Some post after all this time, but hey - that's what's not so new.

Country and Western songs

The phone rings at 8:57 a.m. - but only once. It rings again at 10:00 a.m. and this time he doesn't hang up. By then, I assume, he's taken the requisite number of deep breaths and stiffened his resolve so that, after a long and almost entirely happy relationship of two and a half years, he can announce that we have not been very happy and now it's over.

He phoned it in. That's all I can think about. Two and a half years and he phoned it in.

It is, I think, the second time I have ever let him see me angry. Or more accurately, hear me angry. I don't argue or point out that we have one of these every six months and the rest of the time we are overjoyed to see each other.

"I hoped we could be friends, " he says, "but you don't sound friendly, and I guess that's understandable right now...."

Friends. Does a friend dump you on the phone? Doesn't feel very friendly to me. Feels downright sleazy, in fact.

And now, onward and hopefully upward - pushing off on my three unbalanced wheels, I'll just be continuing with the diagram and directions from hell.

I fall in a hole.

Pattern:

I'm steaming towards a goal. Right now, I have to write directions and draw diagrams for a bracelet pattern because, to my shock and surprise, a pitch I made to Unnamed Beading Magazine got to stage one - which is: send the bracelet and directions for consideration. I chose, in my infinite wisdom, to submit a bracelet design that I seriously doubt I can explain in under 100 pages. But that's not the pattern I'm referring to.

I'm steaming towards a goal. I need to focus intensely. At exactly the moment I get speed up, an important relationship in my life goes pothole (like going postal, only without weapons) I'm left trying to reach the goal of the moment, driving over the speed limit, on three wheels.

Example:

The phone rings. It's 10:00 a.m. and I'm having a good day at work. It's Man In My Life and he's calling to inform me that I've sent him a covert message. The covert message in question is that I'm having doubts about him and he's trying to decide if my life would be better without him in it. I have recently, casually mentioned getting email from a Man Who Is Not In My Life. This was the fatal mention containing top secret content understood by him, but not me.

I blithely assumed that I was telling him something about my life. You know, day to day news. I compounded the problem in a later conversation by explaining that I get too far into my maze-like brain as the result of choosing to spend days without human contact. I thought that I emphasized "choosing" as the operative word here but, according to him, I am sitting around alone and blaming him if I am lonely. I am, it would seem, a goldmine of secret messages. And crazy or stupid to boot because, really, I actually thought I meant what I said. I thought I was clear. I thought I knew what I felt.

*Pattern: Blindsided in a public place, deep in the pothole, I try to explain that I didn't mean to give covert messages. I consult my gut. Nope. No secret wish to have him out of my life there. Nope. No blaming him for my choices or general dilemmas.
But I have, I do, I am guilty on all counts, according to him.
Repeat from * over and over and over until I am trying to hide in a nearby storage cabinet with the phone while crying snottily and doubting my sanity. Maybe I'm not even on the phone. How would I know? Maybe I'm not even at the office. The general idea seems to be that I'm shaky on these kind of details.

I call KD, a Trained Professional and more importantly, a pretty smart cookie, for an objective opinion because I'm beginning to doubt whether it's really my hand dialing the phone.

According to the Trained Professional, Dr. Smart Cookie, what we have here is a mixed message which reads:

1. Be free! I have no claim on you. I am not jealous or possessive nor do I want you to be.
2. I am the alpha male and you have just mentioned another man. That upset me and now I am going to make you sorry.

I think that's pretty close. And what makes it bearable is that he has no idea that he's doing that. He gets pinned between his convictions and his conditioning, the testosterone floods in and maybe he's thinking, too, that what's the point of a girlfriend if she comes with issues and - voila! I'm a crazy woman, speaking in tongues, saying bad things. Covertly of course. Just like a bloody woman, don't you think?

Somebody shoot me?

No. Somebody shoot me if I do not a.) make a firm rule against conflict calls at work and b.) if you catch me apologizing for sending messages I definitely did not send.

No shooting him. I still love the big idiot. That's the other part of the pattern.

"Once had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out it was a pain in the ass"
Heart of Glass - Blondie