One of the things about being married for a number of years and then finding ourselves once again in the dating world is that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between the rules that have changed while we’ve been away from the game and the rules that remain the same.
I met my second (ex) husband on my first visit to a singles bar shortly after my divorce. We hit it off really well that night, discovering that we had lots of things in common as we talked in that noisy bar. As we left the bar that night he asked if I’d like to go out the next weekend and I said yes.
And he never called.
I waited and waited and waited. I believed that when he said he’d call, he would call. One of my girlfriends had linked up with his friend that night and every day she’d ask if I’d heard anything and I’d say no and I’d ask if she’d heard from her guy. Of course she had! Her new boyfriend called her the day after and they went out every single night that week!
I was getting angrier and angrier. I was afraid to leave my post by the phone fearing that he’d call and I wouldn’t be there but waiting for a call that didn’t happen just wasn’t something I could see myself doing either.
Everyone was starting to make plans for the weekend. Would I like to join them? What if he called and I already had plans? I really liked this guy! At least as much as I knew about him from that one meeting.
My girlfriend suggested I call him particularly since her guy was talking about the four of us getting together. She said her guy was surprised he hadn’t called me.
On Wednesday I dialed his work number and hung up before the phone rang.
On Thursday I dialed his work number and hung up before the phone rang.
On Friday I dialed his work number and didn’t hang up the second time I dialed it. His secretary answered and I asked to speak to him.
“Are we going out this weekend or not!?!” were the first, very angry, words out of my mouth. “I’ll call you later,” he said after a short pause. I said a few more choice words like “you’d better” and “I don’t plan on sitting at home alone this weekend waiting for your call” — much to my own disbelief — and hung up.
At that time in my life I had a career that involved a lot of outside travel and cellphones weren’t the common accessory that they are now (kind of the dark ages, I suppose). I’d placed the call from a pay phone during a short lunch break so there wasn’t any way he could get in touch with me for the rest of the afternoon.
Once I hung up the phone I had instant regrets over placing the call and certainly over how I’d snarled demands at him. What in the world had I been thinking? There was no way I’d hear from him again! I’d acted like a crazy person. I’d broken rules one through three hundred in the dating game.
What a loser I was! I beat myself up a couple hours that afternoon and then I got angry again that he’d put me into such a spot by talking about a date and then not following up. Finally I calmed down and tried to think of my options for the weekend. I sure wasn’t planning on sitting at home alone thinking about how stupid I’d been.
There was no call waiting on my answering machine when I got home that night and I decided to see what my single friends were doing. Then the phone rang. I froze. What if it was him? How could I backtrack from my actions earlier? What if it wasn’t him? It was him. I apologized for my earlier call and he laughed. He said I had surprised and amused him and that was the reason he called back.
We went out that weekend. But my divorce wasn’t legally over and he wasn’t interested in dating someone who was technically still married. I explained the legalities were over except for receiving the papers from the court. “Call me when you’re legally free,” he said. Two weeks later I did (breaking the “wait at least a year after the legalities are over before getting serious about anyone” rule). Three and a half years later we were married.
He told me later that he had been introduced to another “eligible” female the same time as he and I met. If I hadn’t made that fateful call, he probably never would have called.
Rules are meant to be broken. That goes for the rules of who makes the call.