Sometimes, I\u2019m just not that perceptive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI tried to hit on you last year when we saw each other at the convention,\u201d <\/i>someone recently told me.<\/p>\n
I tried to think back and couldn\u2019t think of a single thing he said to indicate to me that he was interested.\u00a0 Nothing sprang to mind.\u00a0\u00a0It’s not the first time that\u2019s happened.<\/p>\n
I was washing my car one summer\u2019s day at the local car wash.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t I know you?\u201d<\/i> a man said.<\/p>\n
I looked at him \u2013 wondering what he was trying to sell him.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t think so<\/i>,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, really<\/i>,\u201d he insisted.\u00a0 \u201cYour name is Joey, right<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him again.\u00a0 Nothing rang a bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go to UMass Boston, right? I saw you studying in a classroom one day and came in and talked to you.\u00a0 You were wearing this cute outfit \u2013 pink skirt, white blouse \u2013 hair all curly. I know that was you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Memory bells rang.\u00a0 I nodded.\u00a0 That had to have been\u00a06-10 months before.\u00a0 And\u00a0now I was dressed in a ratty t-shirt and shorts with my hair in a ponytail.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t have looked more different, and yet he recognized me and remembered my name.<\/p>\n
He smiled, \u201cI was trying to ask you out that day.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Whoosh<\/i>.\u00a0 That day we talked, I was single.\u00a0 I had no idea he was doing anything except being friendly \u2013 killing time between classes.\u00a0 Of course, by the time he told me, I was already 4 months in to a relationship with my future ex-husband.\u00a0 I never saw the guy again.<\/p>\n
Even now, as a wiser woman of the world, it\u2019s Whoosh Central around here. Maybe it\u2019s not really my fault.\u00a0 I think as a whole, we single people are so afraid of rejection that we never just come out and say what we want to until we have tested the waters 27 times.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For me, sometimes, in addition to the fear of rejection, it\u2019s because I don\u2019t want to hurt someone else or make them uncomfortable. \u00a0\u00a0So I compliment them, and then compliment other people around them.\u00a0 I try not to be too overt in my attentions. I\u2019m friendly and flirty all the time. This way, it\u2019s not that I\u2019m necessarily hitting on someone \u2013 I\u2019m just that way with everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a question to ask you<\/i>, \u201ca friend asked me one time. \u00a0\u201cBefore you started dating [last boyfriend], if I had asked you out, would you have said yes?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Whoosh<\/i>. I tell him yes. \u00a0What seemed obvious to me was evidently subtle to him. Too scared of being pushy, my attentions didn’t even register on his Richter scale until it was too late for him to react.<\/p>\n
For all my talk and bravado in public and online, I\u2019m scared to death that if I tell someone that I like them, they will run screaming in to the night. It’s one thing if it’s someone on an online dating site.\u00a0 So very different if it’s someone I met in the real world.\u00a0\u00a0And there’s the rub.<\/p>\n
How can I\u00a0fuss at potential\u00a0suitors, when I\u2019m just as bad as they are? Why should I be afraid to reach out to someone I know and say, \u201cHey \u2013 I think you are as cute as heck.\u00a0 Want to grab a drink sometime?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Whoosh<\/i>. I\u2019m sitting here now, feeling like I\u2019ve had the wind knocked out of me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was time to stop being afraid. Now the wait begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes, I\u2019m just not that perceptive. \u00a0\u201cI tried to hit on you last year when we saw each other at the convention,\u201d someone recently told me. I tried to think back and couldn\u2019t think of a single thing he said to indicate to me that he was interested.\u00a0 Nothing sprang to mind.\u00a0\u00a0It’s not the first…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[31,9,32,10,30],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","tag-conventions","tag-dating-2","tag-men","tag-online-dating","tag-whoosh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-2g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}