Personal Woes and Advice 6

[2D8HP]

My life has officially become, like, every Buck Owens song ever, y'all.

Spoiler: A whole lotta words

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I've been seeing this lady for the past couple of months-- we started dating back in May but we first met as classmates during our first semester at university and started really getting to know each other and spending time together around January. When my neck of the woods started going into lockdown due to the pandemic, she started inviting me around to her place, and I wound up spending every weekend for like a month and a half there, sitting on her couch and talking for hours about books and art and music and travel and politics and, you know, the whole shebang. We'd trade books, she'd give me one of hers and I'd give her one of mine, read them over the week, and then talk about them at her place. Turned out later that she'd been dropping hints throughout that time trying to get me to ask her out, which I eventually did.

I'm head over heels for her. Just for context, I'm 24 and in all my life-- all through high school and the early college years-- while I went on dates and saw people casually, I've never really found myself drawn to anybody or felt even a glimmer of being in love. So she's pretty special to me just by virtue of that, and it feels like we've shared some pretty special moments too.

If you're waiting for the 'but' in the story, here it is: but lately, I've had a sense that something's off. We've been texting back and forth much less the last couple of weeks, and that's at least partially on me-- there's definitely been times that I took a little too long to respond, a couple or a few days. But the cherry on top right now is that we last saw each other on Monday, and that night, I sent her a text to the effect of 'hey, sorry for the late text, I just wanted to wish you a good night and to say it was really nice seeing you today. I missed you :)'. Guess how that turned out?

If you guessed 'it's now Friday morning and Comrade ain't heard so much as a word back', I salute you and your perspicacity. So now I'm over here worried sick, and honestly just confused, because while I'm not the most perceptive man on the planet, I'm almost certain that if something were wrong, I'd have noticed the last couple of times we spent time together. If she'd been distant, if she'd been kinda quiet, if she wasn't really laughing and joking around, if she'd been avoiding physical contact-- I would've picked up on those things. But none of that was the case. Before I left her place on Monday she was in my arms with her hand stroking mine, we were joking around just like we usually do (she joked the second-to-last time I saw her that she was determined to get me to wear shorts, or really any non-jeans manner of lower body accoutrement), shoot, she even called me 'honey' on Monday, which was the first time either of us had used any kind of pet name like that. We made plans to see each other again the following Monday and I left feeling like nothing was noticeably different or wrong.

So, you know, there's a part of me that's holding out hope that, hey, maybe nothing's wrong between us. Maybe there's something going on in her personal life that I'm just not privy to. Maybe she didn't see the text. Maybe she's still annoyed at me for that time I didn't text her back for a few days. Maybe she just didn't feel it needed a response. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But there's another part of me that's got no stomach for wishful thinking, and that part of me has a real bad feeling that this thing we've got going ain't long for this world. Worse still, that she isn't planning to text me back at all, that she's just gonna ghost on me. Which is a real hard thing to think about, 'cause like I said, she's pretty special to me, and right now it feels like I couldn't possibly be less special to her.

If I don't hear back by tomorrow I'm probably gonna shoot her another text and ask if we can meet up real quick to talk, since if we're gonna part ways I'd at least rather do it in person. I just wanted to get this all off my chest 'cause it's sure been getting me down and like Buck Owens said, I don't want my friends knowin' that I feel so blue.

Oh jeez, if you're 24 I assume she is too, in my experience (and the statistics I've seen) women that young are less interested in being someone's exclusive girlfriend, in many ways her gal pal's will be far closer to her, and who she mostly wants to spend time with, with a series of guys she's friendly but not "serious" with. She's much more likely to more interested in having an exclusive romantic relationship when she's closer to 30 years old, unfortunately that's the age when men start to stray more because that's the way of the world.
FWLIW I did get a permanent (with some hiccups) girlfriend when I was 24, but she was 29.

Spoiler: Some of my romantic history in my 20's

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[...]My first love and first real girlfriend was only 16/17 to my 19/20 and she was also 'spending time with' (cue Biz Markie) an "about 30 years old" man who gave her the Wire's 1977 "Pink Flag" album, and after I shared with her a bunch of albums she told me about it (and where she got it from) and we'd listen to it together.

After my tearful breakup with "K" it was 1989, I was now 21 years old and going to see Helios Creed in San Francisco, on the way to which I saw "N", an older than me (not yet but closer to 30 than 20) very Punk girl who was also going to the gig who I befriended back when I was 18 when we were both worked the refreshment stand at a local club (the one Green Day started in), I was surprised to see her back in California, and she was a different first to me before she left California again. Some months later I visited her in Ottawa where we went to a record shop that had pretty pricey British imports including "Pink Flag" which I paid $20 Canadian dollars (about $15 U.S.) for, which was the most money I ever spent on any piece of media until the late '90's, but I finally had my own copy of Wire's 1977 "Pink Flag", and it's 21 (short) songs.

Ottawa was weird, so clean it felt like a film set, we went to one Punk Rock show together (with an amazingly peaceful audience), crossed over to Francophone Hull, and visited a museum in Montreal. Montreal, despite being a French speaking city, felt more "American" somehow than Ottawa. The last day before I returned to returned to California she told me "Thank you for making me love you again", I sent her letters afterwards, she sent one back apologizing that she "Can't love you the same way" and I never saw her again,

I still have "Pink Flag", I still treasure it, and listen to it a lot, one of my favorite songs on it is the beautiful "Fragile":

♪♫♬
Tears fall in slivers, you broke my shades
The light too bright, let me bury my heart
Filter emotions of green, cowardicee gives blue
A restricted view, let me open my heart
I have a fleeting love
Searching when it lands
Fragile, needing precious hands
Fragile
You eat my energy, give me more rope
Nail in the wall, let me hang my heart
I have a fleeting love
Searching when it lands
Fragile, needing precious hands
♪♫♬

which is immediately followed by the ANTI-love song "Mannequin"
the lyrics of which I have often ached to say to bosses and co-workers.
Mannequin has been often recorded by other artists (and often sounds romantic despite the lyrics), but I've only seen it performed once, at a house party hosted by KALX D.J. Lisa Albright/Anaconda, where the band there that night performed it, and that night is the last time I saw the beautiful "J" before her suicide. We were both KALX volunteers, went on a few dates together, but that night we only spoke briefly as she was with a guy who stayed close to her and stared daggers at me (who could've been her brother, they did look enough alike). She's been gone decades now, but I still think of her, and "Mannequin" is among the songs that trigger those memories.

In June 1992 me and the women who I later married went to see "All the Vermeers in New York", it was my birthday that week, and she told me "I'm glad you were born", within a month she asked me to live with her, we each went on one last date with others that we'd pre-committed to, mine taking poor "A" to a show in San Jose that took me far too long to get to because I got lost and it's hard to read a map on a motorcycle at night (sorry!), D's was with "a tattooed guy', and the next half year when D and me lived on our unemployment checks was the happiest days of my life and I wasn't a punk anymore, though sadly (though she well deserved it) she never had as much of my love that I could give when I was even younger because my heart was smaller by then (too much scar tissue)[...]

[...]When me and "D" seperated in '98 (she moved back to Seattle to be with her dying father, I kept working at the motorcycle shop and paid rent so she could come back to California) I rode motorcycles more, and I also went to a couple of gigs again, I again went on a date with "K" (she had come back from her brief time at a college in Washington State, where weirdly my wife was then near) and I don't remember anymore a word we said to each other then. I met "B" who years ago had introduced me to "K", and afterwards did "salvage work" on me (she's who I saw a lot of movies with, in retrospect too many: "Sid and Nancy", "She's Gotta Have It", et cetera, that feature men being horrible to women) an X gig that I arrived at shedding a massive amount of water because I rode my motorcycle in a downpour to get there, she told me she was moving to the U.K. to be with her mother that she hardly knew growing up, and I never saw her again.[...].

[...]Eventually I saved enough to pay rent for months without a job, temporary quit the motorcycle shop (winter was coming and they really didn't need my hands for that season anyway) and I went to Seattle to be with my wife again, and after the awaited death of her Dad we returned together to Oakland, California, and we never really talked of our time apart.

"'tis better to have loved and lost than never to loved at all" - Someone long dead, maybe Shakespeare?,

I'd almost say no to that, lost love is pretty damn painful, but the songs you learn may make it worthwhile, even after it's gone.

Any dates you go on with a woman who isn't at least in her very late 20's I'd advise regarding as practice and toughening up your heart.

Try your best to learn to be a good friend and a good lover, but don't expect an exclusive or lasting relationship.

I do know long lasting couples who first met and dated in their earlier 20's (and even teens), but they got back together years later after "playing the field", it's heartbreaking I know but expect no steady long lasting boyfriend/girlfriend relationship at your age.

Sorry.