"The fool doth think he is wise"

In my anger after posting the last blog, I acted impulsively and sent the blog link in an email to T. A lot of people opposed this idea, saying I shouldn't let him know how much I liked him, I should delete all the previous blogs about him, that it would give him the upper hand. At this point, there is no upper hand, there is no relationship, there will be no more dates. I don't care if he knows that I really liked him, I'm pretty sure I made that abundantly clear anyway. If nothing else, it elicited a response from him, the heart of it being that I'm not shy enough, quiet enough, or bookish enough for him. Ok, in layman's terms - he's just not interested in who I am, why he waited 5 dates and over a week to tell me that? He blames that too on his shyness.

So let's break this down... I'm not shy enough. When I was little, I was extremely shy. I was probably considered shy up until college. I never considered it a good social quality to possess. I grew out of that phase, and even though I guess I am no longer shy by society's standards, I will always think of myself as reserved. As I mentioned this to my roommate after my first date with T, I felt that because he was SO shy I was overcompensating trying NOT to be shy. I guess that didn't work in my favor. But he did tell me on our 3rd date, (the NFT date) that he felt uncharacteristically comfortable with me, is that a bad thing?

Next point: I'm not quiet enough. I'm not awkwardly quiet, no. I'm not extremely loud or garish though either. I think if there were a spectrum of extreme quiet to extreme loudness, I would fall just above the halfway mark closer to loud, but most definitely in the middle somewhere. I can be completely reserved and demure, he just didn't get to know me well enough to see that.

Final Point: Not Bookish. Now I took this comment to heart. "Want to come meet my cat and see my dictionary?" I didn't blog about our 4th date (Because I feel after 3 dates you are wading into relationship territory, and it is a slight betrayal to record every intimate detail - I guess that's fair game now, I'll post 4th and 5th date stories this weekend.) But in preview, that is the line he used to get me to come back to his apartment. When I told this to a few friends, they would stop me, mid-sentence, and every single person's response would be..."Wait, did you hear what you just said?" At which I had to laugh, because yes, I realize an invitation to see someones complete OED is not usually a tantalizing lure, but to me, I was very interested. I think anyone who can hold a conversation about reference books, dictionaries, or online retrieval systems can be automatically classified as bookish. I actually took this comment as an insult to my own intelligence. As I mentioned after our second date, T is clearly an intellectual, and I didn't feel like I lived up to those standards myself. I don't know enough about the types of literature he reads to have at an length discussion about it, but that didn't mean I wasn't interested in knowing more. I am studious and intelligent, I read a lot, write a great deal, and have a general bookish quality about myself. I've been told, on more than one occasion, that I definitely look bookish. (Even the subway stalker thought so!) My sweater vest/v-neck sweater (navy mostly) with a button down shirt collection is growing exponentially, and my librarian look is very close to being complete. All I need is a new pair of glasses, and I'm set. Not being quiet and shy, I can forgive. But not being bookish enough is a direct attack on who I am.

I think he either over thought things way too soon, or he really didn't like me all that much and thought this would be a better way to tell me. It bothers me because I do feel like we could have been well matched, but I don't want to date someone who is so quick to judge. So who then would T like to date? Sounds to me someone exactly like himself. Isn't variety the spice of life?