how very lucky to be a girl

It’s interesting how you can tell someone everything they need to know by not telling them anything.

I spent exactly one day feeling sad about the loss of the idea of Danny until I looked at the reality of Danny. I’d gone typically mad for him and done all the things we girls do, gone all the places in my head that I wished I hadn’t. I’d imagined this could be “the guy”, fantasized about our perfect relationship, clung to the stories of kindness and the notion that he said he wanted a committed relationship and more children. I’d cast him imaginarily into a role for which I never made him audition.

Maybe he sensed that. I can’t know. I can’t know because he never told me. We only went on two dates.

And I felt sad. Somehow robbed of the perfect future with the perfect guy. Until I realized the guy was hardly perfect and I didn’t want that future.  Not with him. Not at all.

This isn’t to say that I’m looking for perfection. I’m not. I’m just looking for someone who’s perfect for me. And Danny was not that someone.

He was not that someone because he didn’t want to be that someone. He was not that someone because he didn’t show me he thought of me, if he ever did think of me. He was not that someone because he never told me I looked beautiful to him. He was not that someone because the time he spent with me didn’t make him crave more time with me. He was not that someone because he didn’t think I was amazing. He was not that someone because he didn’t want to find out if I was amazing. He was not that someone because he didn’t think I was his someone.

And mostly, he was not that someone because he didn’t want to do any work or put forth any effort. If he couldn’t do that now, when it’s easiest, he certainly isn’t going to be able to do it when the stakes are higher, when life and relationships get harder, when there’s so much more riding on it, when it really matters, when we need it most. And, quite simply, that’s not good enough for me.  I want and expect and deserve better. So should he.

Maybe the woman will come along who makes him want to be that man.  I am not that woman. He never stated this, but he told me, all the same.  He told me everything I needed to know through his actions, even when they were confusing.  And for what felt like the first time in my life, I saw it and rejected it.

Danny may be a great guy. He’s smart and interesting and a seemingly wonderful and committed father. He is curious and worldly and cultured and free-thinking. He has a great sense of humor.  But he doesn’t have to offer what I require:  His interest.  His effort.  His heart.

And he told me all of this by telling me nothing at all.

He did write me a week or so later.

He just talked about himself and said that he hoped I was having a “nice week”.

I felt better having heard from him.  He made it clear that he wasn’t that interested, or at the very least that he wasn’t sure if he was interested. He’d made it clear that he would happily and willingly have sex with me, but as a wise woman once told me, there comes a moment for every man where he decides whether or not he wants to do the work that having any given woman will require, and Danny had clearly decided to opt out of the work. It may not have been as manly or as admirable as being direct may have been, but it made me feel a little better about not being completely wrong about him. He hadn’t struck me as the kind of guy that would just completely ignore a woman and vanish. And so I felt better knowing that he was not.

I thought at first to respond and then thought better of it.  Just as I learned to hear what he was saying without words, I knew what my decision was and that there was no need for words; he would hear what I had to say in the absence of my own, and we would both move on, better for it and perhaps closer to finding our someones.

 

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