Loca

Dear facebook guy,

Thanks for reminding me how I'm still really impatient and insecure and obsessive and crazy. I really appreciate that, because I was starting to feel like I had actually made some progress in the independence and self-confidence arenas. Anyhow, due to the crazy, I decided to distract myself from you by joining Jdate again. When I did, I was surprised to see that in fact I had never fully taken my Jdate profile down and I had about 50 messages in my inbox.

Two of them were from you. One from November 2008 (a week before I got back together with my ex) and one was from August 2007 (a week before I went exclusive with my ex the first time).

Um, not fair, I just paid $80 to STOP thinking about you -- for at least four months with a $39.99 monthly renewal rate -- not to discover little cute things that push my thoughts ominously in the direction of "we barely missed each other twice before and are now finally coming around to our ultimate destiny in the universe."

Reading back over old e-mails with texting guy - yes, I actually almost went out with texting guy in 2007 as well - was fun and somewhat educational. The percentage of guys I recognize on the site is refreshingly lower than I feared (now that I've gotten pretty involved in Jewish activities, etc.). There are even some decent ones, although I really am not going to get into the business of browsing profile pictures due to the Rules. Yeah, I'm still trying to salvage those for the next exactly two months from today.

But the approximately eight times I have signed on to Jdate between paying for it last night in a huff of frustration at not having heard from you for four days and writing you this message that you'll never see, the first thing I do is check your profile to make sure you haven't signed onto Jdate since I last did. So far you haven't. You last signed in nine days ago, or last Wednesday, the day you called me before our Friday date. I mean, why would you need to sign into Jdate right before we went out on our fourth date? What the hell?

Also, I'm guessing you haven't figured out that [Rulebreakerjdatescreenname] and I are the same person. Would you have told me if you had? I'm honestly not sure about that one, but since your second Jdate message to me did not seem to acknowledge the first - and was after I had changed my profile picture - I'm assuming you just don't know.

Well, next time you sign on, you will most likely see me if you perform a search. Jdate tends to inform you if a girl in your search criteria has updated her profile. But facebook guy, what could you possibly be searching for? Are you just not that into me?


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Gosh, look at the time. I've got a really early day, lots to do, so I must be going now!

<3
Rulebreaker

Rules quote of the day

"We can't control cancer or drunk drivers, but we can restrain ourselves from dialing his number."

--Rule #5, Don't Call Him and Rarely Return His Calls

Security does not exist in absolute form

It is useful information to me to know that I still tend to be really anxious about not knowing when I'll next see or hear from someone I like. And then when I get anxious, I start to get anxious that I really like the person. And then that makes me more anxious.

Of course, this makes no logical sense. As a divorced person (thankfully I didn't end up having to put *this* on my mortgage paperwork), I more than many others my age know that the proposition of knowing you will be with someone forever is inherently false. Someone can stop loving you after making that commitment. Or they can get hit by a bus. One cannot live life trying to derive personal security from external sources that circumstances can always take away. The only place to find that is within.

Suffice to say, panicking that I don't know when a guy is going to call me for a fifth date--at 3:15 AM twenty minutes after the fourth date ended in making out against the door of my front coat closet--is among the most absurd reactions I've had recently. But I'm sort of glad I documented it.

On a totally and completely unrelated note, what does a Rules Girl do with a guy who leaves the toilet seat up in his house and my house? I have actually never dated a toilet-seat-leaver-upper before. My tentative answer: say nothing until you're in a relationship, then only if you care about it a lot.

sad!

I don't really know what to write other than, I think I got prematurely excited about facebook guy, who has basically canceled or changed up both nights this weekend, and who hasn't asked to see me again even though he knows I'm going out of town for a week. The 2nd cancellation was pretty good practice for me at being light and breezy in the face of disappointment. I don't think I was 100% successful. It just caught me off guard. It was a good reason I suppose, I just wasn't expecting it. And there's always that nagging "he wouldn't have even thought of canceling or changing for any reason if he was that into you."

I really really like fb guy, but I'm not a huge fan of how things went down re this weekend. His pattern indicates he'll call tomorrow or Sunday, but I had really looked forward to seeing him all week, and now I have no clue when I'm going to again. I feel like maybe I need to step back from this even if he does call. This feels quite unpleasant!

I would say I've bent the Rules with fb guy but not completely broken them. I haven't let things get too far physically, I haven't talked about relationship stuff at all. I've let him do all the calling and all the planning to the extent it's possible at all. But I stay out on dates for a long time, it hasn't been entirely clear who's ended the date, etc., and I pretty much act like I like him a lot.

The hard part about this experiment is that when things go south, the Rules wants me to blame my Rules failures. And that ends up translating into blaming myself. There's some internal tension between the implicit "you fucked up the Rules and he poofed" and the "he'll either love you or he won't," both of which are clearly present undertones in the books.

I'm not gonna lie, this shit is hard! But I'll feel better in the morning. I have awesome friends and a cool house and new boots.

Rules GPA slipping steadily...

We're almost at 4/6 months, and I have achieved a fundamental competence in the principles underlying the Rules. With the exception of the whole demureness issue (note, though, that in NOT falling over or dropping stuff nearly as often as usual, I have improved my demure quotient substantially), have so proven in my actions. Where I screw up, I know I'm screwing up.

Most of all, I have Rules girl-league-confidence. I don't feel pressure to do things I don't want to do. I feel good about my self-restraint in declining to do things I do want to do but are too fast or overly indulgent. I don't get too insecure about whether a guy really likes me. Indeed, when I do break the Rules, I'm doing it because I want to and have calculated that my action does not violate the Rules's basic precepts.

But ... I don't wanna be a Rules girl anymore. I wanna be facebook guy's girlfriend. *whine*

Facebook guy asked me out the past two Tuesdays for Saturday. The dates, albeit much longer than permitted (think 2-3 AM), were really great. I have tentative plans with him this weekend and he asked me to a party on short notice that I couldn't go to because I have plans. I've hesitated on writing about any of this because a) I don't want to jinx it, and b) somewhat contrary to (a), I feel like it's going somewhere and I'm imagining having to let him read this at some point.

Yes, yes, I'm indulging in thoughts, but I'm doing it to avoid indulging in facebook guy himself. And I'm better at turning them off when I try to.

Meanwhile, texting guy called a week and a half after the last call (which I had returned after an hour despite the Rules), was apologetic, asked if he could call me next week, and hasn't called eleven days later. To quote a friend, "Texting guy exists to jerk you around."

And, I don't really have anything else going on.

And, I don't care.

The Wednesday Rule

I have not gotten very many Saturday night date requests during this experiment. Therefore I have really not had to address the notorious "Wednesday Rule" as such.

The Wednesday Rule, among the simplest, is probably the Rule most quoted by people who don't know much about the Rules: Do not accept a Saturday night date after a Wednesday.

Corollaries addressed within the Rules (implicitly or explicitly):

• Don't return a call before you otherwise would (applying the Rules) to artificially meet this deadline.
• Tell him you have plans, even if your "plans" are cleaning your apartment.
• It is helpful to actually make plans with girlfriends for Saturday night so that you do not have to think about how you will be cleaning your apartment on Saturday night while turning down the date invitation.

Non-Rules people hold up the Wednesday Rule as the prototypical illustration of the Rules's absurdity. This bright-line Rule leaves no doubt that the Rules are nothing but mind games, and that Rules Girls are manipulating men, they say. Shock! Horror!

I'll reserve ruling on the merits of the Wednesday Rule for the moment, but suffice to say that one of the complaints about the Rule is that there is little discretion involved. It's too black-and-white.

Leave it to my life to make this complicated.

Via e-mail (relevant portions, not verbatim)

FB guy - Tuesday: Will you be around this weekend?
Me - Wednesday : Yep
FB guy - Thursday: Want to do something Saturday night?
Me - *headdesk*

Technically he asked me about the weekend before the Wednesday deadline. I was considering using this as a loophole to accept the date, but PRG set me straight. He did not book me Tuesday or Wednesday, so I had to say no. I did so on Friday, and felt HORRIBLE about it for pretty much the entire day. Then on Saturday night I watched "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" DVDs at my sisters' apartment.

This week (I'll just skip the somewhat weird results from my saying Saturday wasn't good for me), he called me on Tuesday and asked me out for Saturday. Good, right? Well, he wants to do something in the afternoon followed by early dinner.

The Rules free me from worrying about his motives or whatnot, there could be several and I highly doubt he has another date after me. The important question is what do the Rules say I do about this?

• I have to end the date first. If I suspect he might have plans afterward, this could be tricky.
• I cannot accept a spontaneous invitation to hang out with him afterward.
• Arguably, if he changes things up on me and calls Thursday or Friday to say he wants to have a later dinner instead, I can't accept this.
  

This all points to me making late night plans for Saturday night, and then sticking to them after the "early dinner."

Fascinating.