REACTIVEradio

What I’m about to write here may be big news to some, or it might be a big ‘whatever’. I don’t know, all I know is that I need to get what I’m about to write off my chest so that I can make the first steps toward fixing whatever the hell it is about me that seems to be so horribly broken when it comes to dating.

For all intents and purposes, Ashleigh is a great person. She has a well paying job, has responsibilities of her own that she manages without any help from anyone else, and she is kind to others when she is isn’t threatening (out of earshot of anyone of importance) to take part in the good ol’ Canadian past time of letter writing to air her grievances. She also isn’t that hard on the eyes, either.

I met Ashleigh shortly after I moved back to Canada. Looking for something to do, I realized that I hadn’t spoken to a few friends in months, of which one was having a birthday party at a local sushi place. Not wanting to miss out on sushi, I happily came along and ate my raw seafood. Yum. It was at sushi that I first met her. She was at the other end of the unusually long table, but nevertheless we exchanged pleasantries and went about our dinner not really talking to each other.

After dinner, we went next door to what I can only describe as an Irish-pub-meets-nice-restaurant. Celtic music in the background mixed with plain colored tables and carpet really didn’t mesh, but I’m getting off topic. We ended up sitting next to each other and doing the usual “What do you do?” “Oh well what do you do?” small talk that everyone seems to default to when meeting someone new.

After a few drinks we all decided we’d had enough “rockin’ celtic music,” we all made our way outside and stood under the over hang which was the only thing preventing the rain from soaking us. Unfortunately, between the 6 or 7 of us that were there, we couldn’t decide on anything to do. Ashleigh had suggested bowling, and I figured that was as good a suggestion as any, so I “sided with her.”

A few of the others were vehemently against this idea, but somehow our powers of persuasion were successful, and we all piled into our cars and headed towards the bowling alley. Of course, we spent so much time arguing about what to do that by the time we arrived, the place was closing up.

Oh well.

At any rate, we ended up playing pool at a pool hall not really close to anyone’s house now that I think about it, but we had enough chances to talk being that we were on the same team that we decided to continue seeing each other.

We met a couple times after pool, and it was clear we liked each other. She had just got out of a relationship with someone I’m told was less than decent, so to say she wasn’t interested in getting into another so soon would be the understatement of the year. I completely understood; I wouldn’t want to be pressured into something like that when I had just got out of one.

After a month and a half of “seeing each other” however, this mindset still hadn’t changed. Maybe I’m at fault for trying to rush things, I don’t know, but I’d like to think that after a month and a half of seeing someone nearly every day for many hours at a time, you should be comfortable enough in your own perceptions of someone to be able to judge whether or not you want to consider this person your boyfriend or not. Apparently my view isn’t shared, because on Sunday when we finally spoke after nearly a week of not seeing each other, she decided to end whatever it was we did have at the time.

I understand that she’s going through some shit of her own right now, so I don’t fault her for feeling the way she does. Sometimes people just have differing opinions on things and that’s OK. If I got upset every time someone had an opinion that was different from me, I would just start crying and never stop, but since I don’t, I’m not going to let it get me down.

I am going to ask the wonderful internet for advice though: from an outsider’s perspective, do I seem needy? I really do care for her, and if she had told me that she was getting to that point where she’d want to consider me her boyfriend, I could accept that, but the fact that things were just stagnating, and rather than progressing (even at a snail’s pace), things were going nowhere, I felt like this wasn’t something that I could continue.

The only way I can relate it to anything is learning. I absolutely cannot stop learning. Whether it’s about why an electron is able to stay in perfect geosynchronous orbit with a nucleus in an atom, or why yellow is the new black this season, I cannot go a single day without filling my brain with information (useful or otherwise.) This to me, is progressing; my brain is never content with the amount of information in it, and always needs to be adding more and more. Whether I’m learning something useful like how to change a tire with only a tub of vaseline and a rubber band, or something completely useless like why such-and-such rubber is used in the space shuttle versus such-and-such other rubber, I’m still learning. Just like my relationship with Ashleigh; I don’t care what the final outcome of her decision would be, as long as she was making progress towards a solution.

In the end, I’m sure I’ll be OK. I’m going to do my best not to let this breakup (is it even a breakup if we were never officially dating?) affect me too much but I’ve got to be honest, she holds the titles for both smartest and best looking when it comes to women I’ve had a relationship with (however you want to define it.)

Am I over-thinking things? Probably. Am I going to learn something from all this? You’re damn right I am, even if I don’t know what that is yet.