Sep-2016
This blog of mine is in no way meant to man-bash. Despite the frustrations I may have encountered with dating, and my experience with my ex-husband, and some of the shitty things guys have done, I’m still pro-men, I’m still pro-dating, I’m still pro-relationships.
I’ve talked a number of times with my guy friends about approaches they’ve taken to dating and, of course, I know them as good guys – they’re my friends, I like them for a reason. But I also know that from some of the stories they tell me about their dating I’m like “wow, that was a dick move, but you’re not a dick”. And inherently, I know that just because a guy’s actions may make them seem like a total douchebag, that does not in fact mean they are a total douchebag.
In the case of my dates with Fresh Off The Boat Irish, I hope he remembers that too…
I remember when I first got to Vancouver, my priorities were settling into my job, finding out where to get good pizza and trying to work out the coins (loonies and toonies confused the hell out of me). For others, like Fresh Off The Boat Irish, as he became aptly known, the priorities lie with finding a date it seemed.
When I matched with him on Tinder, I was still going through my phase of going on as many dates as possible in the hope that by doing so I’d find “my person” quicker. Up until this point it had actually only resulted in meeting more wrong ‘uns quicker. But that wasn’t deterring me and so soon after my Blah, Blah, Blah & Blah dates, I set up an after work drink with this funny, rugby playing, Northern Irish guy who was full of great banter.
But from about half way through the first beer on our date, I knew this wouldn’t be going anywhere romantically. Not least because it kind of ended up being a “welcome to Vancouver” seminar presented by Yours Truly. I’m not sure if I instigated that or he did but between telling him about rent prices, how to get a phone contract, the best place to watch rugby from home, and generally an overview of life as a foreigner in Vancouver I felt like I could have been working for the working holiday visa people.
We went on a second date though, I wanted to see if maybe I’d been too quick to judge. He had a great personality and he was a lot of fun, so maybe I could get over his (lack of) height and find him physically attractive eventually? Ugh, that’s my least favourite conundrum. How to know if the guy you don’t find physically attractive will ever become appealing to you sexually… I’m yet to work this out… I feel a whole other blog post coming on about type…
Alas no, the second date really only confirmed my initial suspicions but he was a really funny guy and I know he wanted to meet people so I decided the next time I was out with my friend group, I’d invite him out thereby not only introducing him to people but also maybe giving him the indication that I saw him more as a friend and so getting me out of having to have the difficult conversation. I know, I know, I always talk about wanting people to just strap on a pair and have the goddamn difficult conversation. In this instance, I was definitely shying away from my own mantra.
So come the long Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, I was going out with a group of my friends to an Oktoberfest event that was essentially an afternoon of drinking, obviously, and I figured it was the perfect time to bring him out. However, the couple whose basement he was living in had invited him to join them for Thanksgiving dinner so he couldn’t join the beer festivities but I suggested we’d be going out after so maybe he could meet up with us then.
Unsurprisingly, the afternoon at the Oktoberfest were indeed beer soaked and as it drew to a close and we made plans for where we were going next I made sure to keep Fresh Off The Boat in the loop. He was really keen to come and meet us, he said dinner had been great but it was a bit weird being with a family he didn’t know and there wasn’t a whole lot of drinking going on so he’d love to escape to something potentially more fun. I promised him we most likely were.
The only problem was his dinner was still kind of tailing off and he was waiting for the right moment to take his leave of absence, plus he was staying out in a suburb of Vancouver that was going to take him about 45 minutes to an hour to get into Downtown from. So I kept him updated of our movements and he was going to join us when he could.
However, somewhere in the midst of him saying his thank you’s and goodbye’s and getting to downtown, the afternoon of drinking really started to take its toll on me and spending the best part of the early evening bar hopping had only compounded that. So at some point I decided to that the most sensible thing to do would be to go home. My mother would be so proud. Or at least she would have if I hadn’t already been incredibly drunk. But, put it this way, I missed the part of the night where two of my friends ended up in a bush (and that’s not a euphemism) so I’m thinking it was the right decision.
The one thing I forgot to do was let Fresh Off The Boat know that I’d called it a night and was no longer in the last bar I’d given him an update from. Oops. What didn’t help was that my phone had also completely died, which is very unlike me to let that happen given that it’s like a third hand to me. Double oops.
Fast forward 6 hours and I wake up at 4am and have 7 missed calls, 3 voicemails, and 12 texts from a progressively more angry Fresh Off The Boat. It started with the “ok, I’m out! getting in a cab and headed for downtown” through “hey, where should I meet u?” to “are u still out???” to a voicemail saying “I’m downtown, outside the last bar you said you were in, I’m looking like a bit of an idiot just hanging around, can you answer my texts?” right to “you better not have gone home and fallen asleep! Are you fucking kidding me?”
Oh. Holy. Shit.
I’m a terrible terrible person. I felt so unbelievably bad. Dicking people around like that is my least favourite thing and I can only imagine how I would have felt if it had been the other way around. And there was nothing I could say. I got drunk, I took myself home, I passed out and forgot I’d said for you to come all the way in from the burbs just to get stood up on a slightly chilly Vancouver October evening. There’s not really a way of dressing it up to make it look better. So I didn’t bother.
I texted him a few hours later when the hangover blindness had subsided and I could face the world a little more. He replied much, much later in the day saying “I can’t believe you did that” and that was pretty much all he said. I apologised a number of times, but made sure to never over-promise just to make it up to him. I had to remind myself I was trying to friend-zone him so taking him out for drinks or a dinner would for sure give him the wrong impression and maybe making him hate me by standing him up was at least one way to avoid the awkward conversation?
So there, I said it, I hold my hands up – sometimes I can be an asshole to date too and I’m not too proud to admit it!
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