The Art of Communication: Abstract, Minimalism, and Impressionism

Oh, the agony of waiting for a guy that I dig to call me! I go through several emotional stages in a very short amount of time. First, I’m optimistic and excited. He is most definitely going to call me. He said that he would call and why would he say that if he didn’t want to call. No worrying here! Cool as a cucumber…then my confidence starts to slip a little. I mean it has been a few days, we did have a good time, he said he was going to call. Here’s where things can get pretty bad. Sometimes, I’ll decide that I don’t need to sit around and wait for him to call me, I can call him! I’m an independent woman and he likes that about me. He probably was nervous and wasn’t sure if I really liked him. Yes, that’s it. At this point I have clearly entered the denial/delusional stage. I will come up with several reasons why he didn’t call (business meetings, family illness, shark attack, memory loss) and several reasons why I should clearly eschew all that I know about the art of dating and call him.

Even as I dial the numbers I know deep within me, if he really liked me and wanted to call he would have called. It really is just that simple. Yes, there is the nebulous concept of “how much time is appropriate before calling” and I’ve never really gotten a satisfactory answer. Sometime between 24 hours and 7 days seems to be the range of what is considered acceptable although I think it should be more than 24 hours but definitely less than 3 days.

Calling the guy has never worked – at least not for me. Sure, it may get me another phone conversation, maybe even one more date, but it has never led to anything more than that. The worst times are when there has been some type of intimacy or brief ‘relationship’ – then it’s as if I can’t bear not calling or emailing. It feels almost physically painful to not try to make this, whatever it is, work. Then when he doesn’t return said call or email, it’s 1000 times worse than him not having called or emailed at all. I could have pretended that he lost his phone or the ability to type or was crushed by a flying house. All far preferable than realizing that whatever we had meant more to me than it did to him, or even worse that he was totally repulsed by whatever happened between us and had no desire to have any future contact at all.

For the times when I wisely refuse to call first and decide to tough it out in case his idea of appropriate time for a callback is closer to 7 days or even a couple of weeks, the rapidity with which my thoughts exponentially become more and more negative is stunning. It varies from situation to situation but usually goes a little something like this: Step 1: Clearly there has to be something wrong with me that he didn’t call.
Step 2: Maybe he didn’t really like my sense of humor or maybe I came off as too aggressive or too smart or too stupid or too liberal or too passive or maybe I snorted too loudly when I laughed (or snorted at all).
Step 3: Its probably the size of my butt/thighs or the frizz of my hair or something wrong with my personal appearance.
Step 4: He never really meant to say he was going to call; he just thought I was so pathetic and he wanted an escape plan for that moment in time and he has since forgot about me and moved on to a thinner, hotter, nicer woman.

Occasionally I can get a little healthy anger at him for not calling and I’ll pretend to scrounge up some pride: if he doesn’t want to call me, then that is his loss! That’s right, there are plenty of other fish in the sea…or if not why would I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me. I’ve attempted to shorten the whole cycle – from hope to denial to self-loathing to anger to acceptance—and I think I’ve gotten it down to as low as a week depending on how much a really liked the guy. But the length of time really depends on what else is going on in my life and if there are any other potentials on deck.

Now that I’ve taken you through all the painful steps of my mental (and I do mean mental) process dealing with the lack of communication, I think its only appropriate to tell you of one of the examples of the exact opposite of a minimalist communicator. Ethan* and I started chatting on Match and let me just say that his pictures were gorgeous. They didn’t look fake or male model-ish or anything – he just was a hottie. He came off in his profile with a nice mix of sensitive and witty with a touch of over-confidence. The emailing was great so we decided to exchange phone numbers. On the phone, the charm was gone and Ethan just sounded like a total weasel. We chatted for a while one Sunday evening and he talked about how luxurious his house was, how many HD TV’s he had in his house, his glamorous vacations, etc., etc. At this point although I was not enjoying the conversation, I still thought it would be cool to meet him in real life. I mean he was attractive and his personality was cool online; maybe he was just nervous and bad on the phone. How bad could he be? We arranged to meet up for a drink a few days later on Wednesday night.

Monday morning, Ethan texted me at 0618 saying “hi beautiful. have a great day. take care. can’t wait to see you.”

Monday morning, Ethan emailed me at 0915 saying he had been thinking about me all morning and hoped I was having a great day.

Monday afternoon, Ethan left me a voicemail around 1330 to see if everything was ok and again that he had been thinking about me.

Monday afternoon, Ethan sent another text at 1600 to say that he hoped work had gone ok and that I had a safe drive home.

Monday evening, Ethan called at 1900, concerned as he hadn’t heard from me all day.

Safe to day I was FREAKED. First of all, who texts someone at 0600 in the morning?!?! Then who texts and calls and emails multiple times when they have had no response?!? Crazy people, that’s who. So I didn’t call him back or text or anything, hoping foolishly that a lack of response would be a sign for him to knock it off.

Tuesday morning, Ethan texted me at 0610 saying “hi again beautiful. missed you yesterday. hope everything’s ok, can’t wait for tomorrow.

Tuesday morning, Ethan emailed me at 0830 and 1030. Tuesday afternoon, he left a voicemail at 1230 and 1630 with a text thrown in between. All with variations on a theme of he hoped I was having a good day, he missed me, why hadn’t I returned his calls/emails/texts, etc.

Tuesday night, I decided to put on my big girl pants and answer the phone when he called at 1830 and tell him to stop contacting me that it was freaking me out. Then I decided that he seemed fairly unstable and that a little white lie might be in order. I told him that I hated to do this to him but that my ex had just called me out of the blue on Monday and we had started talking and I didn’t think it was fair to string Ethan along when it looked like me and my ex would be getting back together. He got pretty pissy and said I didn’t know what I was missing and that I would come “crying back” to him when I found out what a mistake I had made but that I should just forget that he had ever given me his phone number. I had to bite my lip not to give away my lie by hysterical laughter. Instead I just said that he may be right but I had to give it a try.

I didn’t have time to discover my regret for passing up a gem like Ethan as pretty shortly after my encounter with him, there was a week where I went on 3 dates and was introduced to 3 other guys; all that happened in one exhausting five day period. Sadly I’m too exhausted now to do that story any justice, so it will have to wait for next time.