January 31, 2007
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I wanted to thank all of you for giving me such good advice. Again. I am so lucky to have friends of your caliber.
I’m not sure what’s going on. Sam’s not calling and the last time we talked –If it were in person he would have been running out the door — he couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. I had to say good-bye for him because that’s one of his things is that even when he wants to hang up, as in he’s starving and he needs to enter the data for the day — he has a brilliant system that involves entering daily stock prices into a database that computes the percentage of change from the day before — he can’t say good-bye. I think he’s been so lonely in general and then to have someone to talk stocks with, he’s not gonna run out of stuff to say for a long time. We have been talking for two hours at a time, at least once a day. And now nothing.
I know my laugh upsets him. I laugh hard. As in big. He must think I’m laughing at him. When he called the last time and asked about the cancer he did it in such a point-blank way that I burst out laughing. Mostly out of nervousness because of what I was going to have to tell him. And the last time I was totally laughing about myself. He was asking what part of the suburb I had lived in, north or south. I hesitated because I couldn’t remember. No one who lived there ever used north or south and because it wasn’t true north or south it never made sense to me. Okay, I have a shitty sense of direction and until I got a car that said what direction I was driving, I never knew. Now, of course I live on the other side of the city where everything is lined up all square and you don’t have to guess. So anyway, I could hear the shock in his silence and said something like you and I are pretty different. He responded with the most blunt thing I’ve heard him say: “you’re different.” I burst out laughing and could hear him squirming. At which point I said good-bye for him.
That was Sunday. It was odd that I didn’t hear from him yesterday because I left a message asking about a stock. Really it was an excuse to see if I’d freaked him out. He didn’t return the call. Finally, tonight I called and was surprised to hear his wife’s voice still on the recorder. He’d joked on Sunday, saying he better take it off if he were going to have women calling him.
Even if he decided we weren’t a match, he’s not the kind of person who would just disappear. I am pretty sure I nipped any sort of romantic interest he may have been entertaining. I shared some stories that probably had his eyebrows raised. But still, I wouldn’t think he’d stop all contact. I called him back a second time, thinking he may have lost my phone number. He doesn’t have call waiting so I doubt he has caller ID. I joked that if he weren’t coming over Friday, he’d better tell me so I could stop cleaning. Still nothing.
So maybe all that fantastic advice was all for nothing. You should have seen me. I’d read one and go that’s it. That sounds right. Then I’d read the next one and think, no this is better. By the time I got done reading everyone’s I was even more confused. Now I feel like I’ve lost a precious friend. And I only knew him 10 days.
Comments (14)
I think I missed something, but that’s OK.
RYC: I should see her on the 13th and can ask her about the ribbons then.
i am a big laugher too….hope all works out my dear
You couldn’t expect the two hour phone calls to keep up forever- it hasn’t been that long. Really. Give him some space. If you still don’t hear from him, definitely go with your gut- he probably doesn’t understand what you are laughing at and if it’s not AT him, you should make sure he knows that… FWIW: I don’t think he’s gone- just busy or taking a breather- processing you and what you mean in his life… another one of those feelings.
We can all get a bit adolescent about men!
He’s very innocent…..
what’s really amazing (to me!) is that you look like you do (from the pics you’ve posted), you have the wherewithall, you have the libido, and still no one has snapped YOU up. that’s what’s amazing. maybe you just need to move somewhere where the pickin’s aren’t so scarce.
I find it strange that he should be so fragile about your laughter. Maybe he’s too conservative for you. He reminds me of some guys I went to college with. I liked them and thought about pursuing things, but I decided NEVER to change myself for them. If I wanted to change for me, fine, but if they didn’t like my sense of humor, it was impossible. … Still, a fling would have been fun.
And ditto to MyKi above. You are hot and ballsy and I’d do you!
He might be hunting for something very specific – there are guys like that. They don’t really want friends. They don’t really want fun. They want someone to fill a particularly designed slot in their lives left empty by… whatever. That’s a shame, but if its the case, there’s nothing you can do.
maybe he’s percolating…thinking…some guys need more time. and i have a laugh that everyone who knows me well mocks. they think it’s funny, especially when it ends with an unexpected snort.
He’s scared to death of you, that’s what I get!! Maybe he was married young and innocent, married a long time and just hasn’t ever been exposed to women of your caliber!! That’s my guess.marilyn
Hello Pr.! I can sense in your post that you started to blame yourself that because something you said or you did that you felt like you lost a precious friend. Please stop that negative thinking. If he behaves that way out of your laugh, he is not mature enough to understand what a woman who just survive breast cancer went through. You can search again for another stock buddy.
Oh man….
Hmmm… Yes to all of the above. PLUS not everyone obsesses the way we do. I can’t tell from your descriptions whether he does or not, but perhaps not and he just got busy. Or felt the need to break the pattern a bit. But especially as anonymouswish says: it’s not YOU.
The ebb and flow of the attractions or disappearances of single middle-aged men is something I have not gotten used to. They were so different when they were younger. Who knows what goes on in their minds or their hearts? Somewhere along the way we all became emotionally complex, I guess. Often it’s really a delicate dance. xo