PSA

I am at a loss as to how to explain the male psyche. I am not alone in this. If my girlfriends and I could understand this, we would probably be reduced to staring at each other over half-finished pints. If my male friends had a clue, this blog would not exist.
This doesn’t mean I don’t try and pick my male friends’ brains every chance I get, trying to figure this out. My male friends know when I’m on a rant, they should just try to placate me and eventually I’ll get tired or something shiny will grab my attention and they’ll be free. Until then, they try to break things down.
I was having one of those moments and V was the unlucky male recipient of my confused wrath. I was still obsessing about the neighbor “incident.” The fact that the incident was next to nothing and I wasn’t horribly broken up about the whole matter wasn’t the point. I just thought the whole thing was incredibly indicative of a much larger force at play. And it was something to obsess about during an incredibly slow day at work.
V brought it up, anyway.
“What’s going on with that guy you were all vague about last week?”
“I never heard from him again.”
“What happened?”
“He kissed me and never called. Drive by kissing.”
“Did you try to get in touch with him?”
“I sent him a text message. He never responded.”
“That’s not cool.”
“Why do guys do things like that? You’re a guy. Explain this. Please.”
V was quick to say that he didn’t speak for all mankind and that this guy was a huge dick if he was disrespecting me like that (this is why V is my friend), but he also brought some insight.
Basically, from what I can get from him, men are still all about the chase. But because we’re no longer hunter/gatherers, they turn the chase towards us. And, sometimes, just knowing that they can have us is enough for them. Once the chase is over and they’ve proven that they can capture us, they don’t need to bother any more. This was nothing new.
What shocked me was V’s reaction. As he told me all this, he admitted that he had been guilty of this whole hunt and run method of dating. The more he talked about it, the more he became guilty. He ended his explainer suddenly.
“Now I feel bad.”
Is it possible that we’re all just hurting each other and we don’t even know we’re doing it?
V’s confessional made me think of all the times I’ve been unkind. And, sadly, there are a lot of them. There are a lot of guys I know who would LOVE to date me that I just don’t have chemistry with. I know they think we do. And, I hate to say it, but I love that they think we do. It makes me feel better about myself to know that somebody else likes me in that way. It allows me to tell myself I’m picky, not desperate. And it softens the edge of my nightmare of becoming one of those crazy cat ladies.
I never thought my acknowledgement of love unreciprocated hurt anybody. But there are people out there tonight who are feeling about me the way I feel about the neighbor. They are wondering why I don’t call, why I kissed them once and never kissed them (or called them) again. And I hardly gave them a second thought while they wondered what they did wrong, what opportunity they missed, what they could have done differently that one time, that would have turned things around.
I guess my point here is that we are all careless with other peoples’ feelings while we wonder why people are so careless with ours. The bottom line is it all comes back to the oldest of sayings, “Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.” A broken heart is a horrible thing to hold, in your hands or your conscious.