I'm not defensive

I am grateful for knowing when an interesting date is still a bad date.

The guy I went out with last night was interesting. That is, I was never bored on our date. Yet, it was somewhat miserable. Everything I said, he questioned. Then he told me I was being defensive and I needed to let things go. When I laughed, he said, why do you think that’s funny? I said, do you realize what you’re saying to me? He said, I am just trying to help. Well, how I feel is, who asked him? I also said, look, as much as I may want to and as much as I may need to and as much as I may try to, I’m not going to change. At least not much. So, if we can’t manage to get along now, maybe this isn’t going to work out. In the past, I think I might have kept trying with this guy. He was attractive, he was interesting. I liked him, even though I didn’t enjoy myself. (I feel awfully perverse writing this.) But, when he was driving me home, I realized that the only time I’d laughed the whole evening was at the absurdity of the situation. As KJ said, there’s a lot of things I don’t screen on (religion, politics, age), but shouldn’t I screen on humor? (A shared sense of, that is.) And this guy did not make me happy, did not make me laugh, and he did not inspire me to tell funny stories. He made me defensive, frustrated and annoyed. Thus, it was and will be our first and only date.

Later, when I told Heather about this guy, she said, "he's a yenta!" Now, that would never have come out of my mouth, but I think she's right. He kept telling me what whas wrong with me and how I could improve. I did tell him all three (!) of my bad date stories and he critisized my reactions to each situation. In all cases, I thought that an apology was deserved, but I didn't necessarily expect it. Actually, I was pretty sure Robert would apologize (and he did). Lou, I thought he might, was dissappointed that he didn't, but it wasn't a surprise. Johnny, well, I was just terrified he would call so I was relieved never to hear from him again. Yenta-man also thought it was interesting to think about why Johnny left me so uncerimoniously on the side of the road. He did agree that it was beyond rude, but yenta-man thought that Johnny wanted something from me and didn't really want me to leave. I just thought Johnny was nuts.