Way to go, Slick

Remember how I met someone and was annoyed by my coworker's comments and then never said anything on the matter again? Sorry about that.

It's true though. I did meet someone. It was, of course, when I least expected it - at an industry event and I was certainly not in flirt mode. I was networking my face off when we met, which is why we actually met, but a few hours after our first encounter, we were almost inseparable for the next few days of meetings. I still wasn't even sure whether I was making a new friend or business contact or what, because while we did flirt a little, it certainly wasn't overt and we were spending most of our time at this work event. We were mostly just talking about our industry, about our common interests not related to work, and laughing throughout, and I really wasn't even analyzing it too much. That, of course, changed when he kissed me.

I like kissing.

Unfortunately, the day after our last meeting, we had to go our separate ways, at least physically. We live in different states, sadly, and our event had been in neither of our states.

We kept talking though. And flirting. LOTS of flirting. This time it was overt, and we'd said that we didn't want to just write off our time in person. We got in deep in some our discussions, because of our shared background, which is actually something that started the day we first met. There aren't too many cocktails parties I start talking about the temple with someone I've only known for seven hours. Not only do we do the same thing for work, but we were both raised LDS. I'm from The Homeland; he went to school in The Homeland.

Though we never talked on the phone, we chatted and texted almost every day, and it was just nice and thoroughly enjoyable. We kept being surprised by even really obscure things we had in common.

I did get the feeling he wasn't telling me something though. I got that impression from the night we kissed. There was something he was conflicted about in regards to starting something with me, but he never really brought it up after that night and even then I was only getting it in between the things he was actually saying. Thanks to the miracle/hell of his online presence, I dug up that he was divorced, possibly even twice, once in the last few months, which is probably what he was referring to when he said he'd "just resolved a relationship" while only inches from my mouth and I wasn't going to dig deeper just at that moment. I knew he had kids, since it was right there on a profile we'd already connected on. He did tell me about his struggles in his relationship with the church and how he was still trying to figure out just what he believed.

Still, I remained cautiously optimistic. With the distance between us, things were bound to develop slowly anyway, so I figured we'd talk about things when the time was right. I am getting older after all, and I know that the chances of me finding someone completely baggage-free is decreasing.

And we were still talking.

Until three weeks ago.

We last texted on a Friday evening, even though we'd spent most of the day on IM together. I called him Sunday morning, but only left a message. He wasn't on IM the next day or any day since. By Wednesday, I texted him asking a question that was not "Um, hey, where are you?" I sent another casual text about a week later.

No response.

We were still connected though a couple different online networks though, so I thought he might just be taking a little break. That is, until I got a message last weekend via Dropbox that I left our shared folder. That is not something you can do accidentally, and I knew I didn't do it on purpose. Seriously!? Being rejected by Dropbox is not something I ever expected to have to process. We still have one other online connection, not to mention our shared professional network.

I'm really bummed, to say the least, and a lot angry. Someone I had something with has just disappeared on me. Again. Not calling after one or two dates is one thing, but after weeks of talking, flirting, and physical affection? I am so not a fan, and it's happened to me more than I'd like to admit. This guy even knew that, because we discussed it once, some weeks earlier.

Him - I can live without. As genuinely interested as I was, there were several yellow flags and the timing was probably all wrong. But to just disappear with nary a word is a cowardly way out and rather juvenile. I'd love to say something - send an email or leave a voicemail that says, I don't know, something perfect. But what would it accomplish? Probably nothing.

I'll likely run into him at our network's next gathering in about ten months. That's going to be . . . fun. . . But this isn't my fault! He clearly has things he needs to work through and he's just not ready for me and too chicken to say anything. Even something as simple as "Look, I just got divorced. I'm not ready for anything new right now. Can we still talk though?" It really was the conversations we had that made him so attractive in the first place.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep being fabulous. Someday, hopefully soon, someone is going to take the risk of jumping into something with me. I just have to keep remembering that.

But hugs and chocolate are nice right now too.