the current: RC

RC and I met at a wedding at the beginning of August. The wedding was in New Jersey, and before I got there, I actually thought to myself, "I wonder if I will meet anyone interesting, but oh well, they probably will be from Jersey anyways." As it turned out, I met RC, who is also a grad student like me in Boston. Despite both having known the mutual friend who was getting married for about two years, our paths never crossed before the wedding.

As we all got up to leave the wedding (there was a pretty obvious end to the celebrations with a mass exodus), RC asked me for my phone number. That wasn't the unusual thing. The unusual thing was that because everybody got up to leave at essentially at the same time, he asked for my number in front of everyone in our group while we were all standing in a circle. Very gutsy move, I thought, that also made it hard for me to not give him my # (how could I with so many people watching?).

That wasn't really an issue, because the thought didn't even cross my mind to not give him my number.

He waited two days to call (he called on a Tuesday; the wedding was the Sunday before), and we set up a brunch date for the following Saturday. This was around the time that I was getting really good vibes from Mr. C, so I actually almost called RC on Friday to say, "Sorry, I don't think we can do brunch." Instead, I decided to honor the date I had agreed to, to go, but to keep things casual and not follow up afterwards.

I'm really glad I went, because I started to really dig RC. He was the perfect stature I was looking for. He was the total gentlemen. We have a lot of the same interests. Both being grad students studying similar things was a toss-up as to being a pro or a con. On the one hand, we would both understand each others' lifestyles. On the other hand, I would sorta prefer to date someone who's not in the same field as I am (we both work on bio research projects).

That brunch led to a dinner&movies date a few days later, followed by a dinner&dancing date more than a week later (we were both really busy during the weekend in between), followed by his going out of town this past weekend, followed by another dinner date tonight.

Why this is different:
I have felt sincerely elated before each and every one of the dates (except the initial brunch), and that feeling has been sustained through all the dinner & movies & dancing. I never got bored; I was always interested. Most of all, I was always happy and giddy around him, which I really couldn't have claimed for Mr. C.

One small glitch:
At the dancing, we ran into another mutual friend El whom neither of us realized was a mutual friend. El, not realizing that RC and I were actually there together, asked RC, "where's your girlfriend?" I pretended to have been staring off into space and not paying attention enough to have heard anything, but I did notice RC shift awkwardly, glance quickly at me, shake his head discreetly while saying to El, "We're not ..." and trailing off, implying that the gf/bf status may be no longer.

Later that night, RC pulled me aside and asked if I had heard what El said. I lied, "no." RC then said that regardless, he wanted to clarify that El asked about his girlfriend because El wasn't aware that he and his girlfriend had broken up. He just didn't want me wondering what the heck was going on, and he wanted to make sure that I was still okay with things. I said that I, in general, don't care that much about history, as long as it doesn't impact the present.

Then I asked him how recent the breakup was, and he said that it happened midsummer. That's when I silently made a mental note to be on my toes a little bit. Midsummer would have been less than a couple of months ago. Also, the wedding was the beginning of August. Thus, do the math: when he and I met at the wedding, he had maybe been broken up for a couple of weeks, a month MAX. Hmm ... I wondered how ready he was for a new relationship and what exactly he was looking for in dating me? Rebound? Something working toward a committed relationship? Is he ready?

Tonight:
We met for dinner tonight, and we came back to my place afterwards (he asked what I was doing after dinner; I answered that nothing was planned, so he asked "May I come over?").

He comes over, and we sit on the couch and talk for a long time. I had noticed before that he is a very tactile person. Tonight was no exception; he played a lot with my hair, with my hands, pressing his fingers into my back almost as if he were giving me a massage while we both sat and talked on the couch. At one point, he just went in for the kiss. No warning; no hesitation; no go 90%, let her come 10 (see Hitch) ... It was just boom, kiss. It wasn't the best kiss in the world, but I have to say that I liked it :)

After a while, he definitely started testing out the waters to see how far he could get. I don't know; maybe I'm too conservative ... but I found that a bit sleazy. In general, I feel like the first kiss should be left at just that. It should be kept innocent and sweet, and not ridden with too much lust. When I think about it though, I don't really understand myself very much. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that I would have no problems having a friend with benefits, but then be reluctant to let a guy I actually like to get to second base.

I wanted to tell RC that he could stay the night if he wanted because I wanted to snuggle, kiss, and sleep next next to him, but I didn't because I feared that there might be certain expectations that accompany staying the night that I definitely wasn't ready to meet. That or the awkwardness of saying, "I'm not okay with anything more than making out, but hey you can stay the night if you want to do nothing but sleep."

Conversations we had tonight:

1) He actually asked me where I thought the two of us were going.

This really surprised me because I still see things as being fairly early in the game, and I also see this conversation as one that women generally want to have and the men try to avoid for as long as possible. He kinda caught himself because as I thought about what I wanted to say, he asked "Or is that too early to talk about?" I replied, "No no, we can talk about it now" and told him "I see the two of us having a lot of potential" to which he readily nodded his head and agreed.

I then thought about it some more, and I said "I'd like to see us go somewhere."

His response to that wasn't negative, but it certainly wasn't positive. Instead of saying "Yeah, I agree. I'd like to see us go somewhere too", he said, "Let's see where things go." This confused me because it seemed almost like he didn't want "us" to go anywhere, but if that were the case, why would he have brought up this whole conversation to begin with by asking "Where do you think we're going?"

2) His ex-girlfriend

At the dancing the other night, after he told me about the ex-gf that El brought up, he said something to the effect of "Well, we can talk about this more when we're not out like this." So I took him up on it and asked him about her tonight. He said that things have been tricky because she doesn't want to fully accept the breakup and move on. He said that he felt he only liked her as a friend, so that's what he told her, which is how they broke up, but she is having a hard time dealing with that. I probably should have asked more (how long were you together? when actually did you break up? what does she do? etc etc), but I opted to keep my mouth shut.

3) Dating other people

Since we appeared to be talking about a lot of the hard topics anyways, I went ahead and asked him if he was seeing anybody else. He didn't answer right away (which to me meant that, yes, he is seeing other pepole) ... He paused, thought about it, and finally said "not seriously." I registered that to mean that he was dating other people in the same way he was dating me, but then he added, "You're the only one I've been dating seriously." That threw me for another loop because I no longer knew what "dating seriously" meant. I thought dating someone seriously meant dating him/her exclusively, but that's clearly not what his defintion was. I wanted to ask him "What do you mean by dating seriously?" But again, I opted to keep my mouth shut because that may have been too much.

So really, asking him if he was seeing anybody else resulted in my having even more questions.

He did ask me the same thing immediately afterwards. I told him that as of 2-3 weeks ago, I was still seeing some other people, but I had actually broken things off because I couldn't see them going anywhere so why bother? This prompted him to say that communication is really important.,"If you [hypothetical 'you'] are dating other people, that's fine, just let the other person know. If you no longer feel the same way, then tell the other person. As long as both people are honest and direct and actually communicating, then things should be okay." I told him that I agreed. Mentally, I was thinking to myself that I hope he follows through on his own advice and will do the same with me in keeping me in the loop when he dates other people and/or starts to feel differently about me.

4) Our compatibility

Earlier, I mentioned his hesitation and evading agreement when I said "I'd like to see us go somewhere." He followed that up with "Let's see where things go" and also "I feel like we don't really know each other yet. We learn more whenever we spend time together, so let's see where things go." He also mentioned that he knows I'm a busy girl, and that he doesn't want to distract me. My response to that was that we make time for those things that are important to us.

So after the conversation moved on to several different topics later, he brought up the point again that we don't really know each other very well, and because of that, he's not sure that we would mesh. I could tell there was something specific on his mind, and he finally named it: drinking and going out.

He said that he doesn't drink, mainly because of his religion (Baha'i), but he knows that I go out a lot. I wasn't sure what that meant so I asked him if he has problems with other people drinking, and he very quickly answered a definitive "no, no, not at all." Then I was confused, so I asked him if not having problems with other people drinking is the same standard he would also apply to someone he's dating. He didn't really answer the question ... instead he said that he doesn't want me to feel like I need to change my ways because he doesn't drink due to religious beliefs, or to feel like he is judging me when I do drink.

So I asked him if he was more concerned about my not being able to accept him not drinking than the fact that I do drink. He said yes, he was more worried how I would feel about him not drinking. So I said "well, I guess we'll have to just see."

I added that I actually don't drink that much, which didn't seem to really have much of an impact on his concern. Either he didn't believe me, or (more likely) it's not the drinking itself that he is concerned about incompatibility-wise, but rather the whole lifestyle of going out to clubs/bars/parties. I don't think he chooses to not do very much of that, and he is worried if we can have a relationship when our perspectives/lifestyles are so different.

So in the end, I think we had fruitful interesting conversations. I'm glad we laid a few things out in the open. I'd like to keep seeing him, but I guess anything else, we'll just have to wait and see.