She was the first real date I went on in a while. Cute. I remember how beautiful she looked with her curly hair and puffy cheeks. We met online and then decided to meet up. We ate a little something from multiple restaurants and even played a fun game. We had a very candid conversation with each other cause our communication came natural. Verbally it seemed she was not quite seeing me in the way she would hope by this first date. And I sweet-talked and cracked jokes, but yet ambiguity lingered. Not even just for her but for me. It was as if she was saying no in one moment, but yes in another. Her eyes were always saying yes. I pride myself on being respectful so I wasn't going to pressure her to do too much on the first night. But we did kiss over and over again. And after she left, for the first time I began to think of the possibilities as to where this could go.
But the following day she called things off, cause she just couldn't see us as being more than friends, even though we weren't that either. I think I wasn't aggressive enough. I think conceptually the Halo Effect played a role in her decision. In other words because I wasn't aggressive enough towards her, all those other good qualities about me (that she mentioned to me), didn't matter. And this is often the normal thought process for women and men… She seemed right, because she seemed right to me. I factored in all of her apparent qualities, and thought it over. Was there something I wished she did or acted more like? Absolutely… But why should I overcast the other wonderful things about her that I liked. To me it all mattered. She seemed right. But I wasn't right for her. Noticed how there is no "seem" when I referred to how she felt about me. It was likely black and white for her, while I work and manage in the Gray. I believe we do not know what we want, so we have to get comfortable in the Gray. And the truth is no one will have everything you want them to have. I do not think she fully understood that, but I did… She seemed right to me, I wasn't right for her. But the question she, you, and I should be asking is... What is right?
I will never forget The Girl Who Seemed Right.
I finally had a chance to sit down and give this piece the time it deserves. I had a few thoughts as I read through it because Ive been on both sides of this event - choosing to end things when there isn't an apparent issue. The first thing that came to mind is that dating is an opportunity for us to learn what qualities we like and dislike in a person and to begin constructing a list of qualities that we like, we can tolerate, and we dislike. Once we have this list, we can begin ranking these qualities from necessary to ideal. However, this list isn't easy to make. It takes an insightful, mature person to be able…