Have I fallen for a seasoned player?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2003
Have I fallen for a seasoned player?
16
Fri, 04-02-2004 - 8:48am
For months this customer of mine flirted with me. I never really encouraged it along as I had a boyfriend, so when I finally ended things with BF earlier this year, I decided to pursue him. I began helping him with his research as an excuse to get closer to him. He started coming around alot, coming in to see me for something work related, or just to say how nice I looked. Sometimes he left me little gifts. He even called on Valentines Day for something work related. I felt the interest was very apparent.

My friends said he would probably never ask me out because of the intimidation of the workplace, so I took the iniatitve and asked him over for dinner. It went really well. A few weeks later he asks me out to a fancy dinner, as a "thank you" for helping him so much on his thesis research. He made up this cute invitation by power point slide, picked me up at my house, open the car doors for me, seated me, the whole 9 yards.

A few days after our "big" date, we see eachother at his graduation ceremony. I congratulate him afterwards. He asks "what are you doing tonight?" and I stupidly respond "probably sleep". We talk for a little more and not wanting to hang around too long as his friends were with him, I say "I'll let you go." So he says he will call me before he takes off for vacation. In fact, he said it twice during our conversation. Now it's been over a week and no call. I assume he's left. I'm just really hurt.

Things were really taking off so I don't understand what went wrong. My friend says maybe he was never seriously interested and is just a player, because he's a well off, nice looking 40 year old Bachelor. But part of me thinks he is somewhat shy.

Thoughts?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 04-04-2004 - 12:26pm
Fair comments. I understand that you would like to know of his interest level in you. Some of his actions indicates a level of interest yet its impossible to know the intensity of the interest. The intent of my original post was to get you to think broader in terms of his actions.

Words are important. Actions are important. The most important thing to see is how actions reinforce/backup his words. If they are consistent and he follows through, then you have something concrete to go on.

Avatar for northwestwanderer
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 04-04-2004 - 12:40pm

I'm having trouble understanding why it's appears to be so hard for you to accept the idea that he might have been interested, but has perhaps changed his mind.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-15-2004
Sun, 04-04-2004 - 5:04pm
You act as if you're a victim when it is your choice to continue talking with him even though he is not asking you out on dates. Last summer my boyfriend at the time introduced me to 50 of his friends and family, talked marriage all of the time (in specific terms but not specific to me), met my family and friends, called every other day, saw me at least twice a week. He said he saw potential for marriage in the future. Because he didn't say in all that time that he loved me, when at 4 months time he said he was not in love yet but thought he might be soon, and then broke up with me two weeks later, I still did not feel led on or played. We dated for a relatively short amount of time, he never told me he loved me, never proposed or talked about proposing in the near future, and so when he decided that i was not the one for him I accepted that he wasn't in love and that while he thought he had been getting to that point he realized after some soul searching and therapy that he wasn't. I think that's fine and appropriate. While I was disappointed I never raised my expectations to the level of expecting him to fall in love, propose to me or want something long term, so I was not devastated, did not play the victim and did not consider him a player even with all the invitations to meet his family and friends (which continued till the very end). Given that I did not feel lead on in that situation i cannot imagine feeling lead on after two dates and heavy flirting (the man I mentioned was friends with me for over a year before we started dating and started flirty emailing about two months before he asked me out- had he not asked me out I would not have felt led on by the flirting.

I guess you have never felt caught up on a first second or third date in the romance of the evening, only to wake up the next day and realize that it just wasn't going to work for you, for whatever reason - I have, more than once, and I have never felt that I lead someone on by being caught up that early on then changing my mind. It's called dating.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2003
Sun, 04-04-2004 - 5:44pm
I know I have to chill out. I think alot of the reason is that I'm actually on a rebound. I just ended a year long relationship over New Years, which was emotionally exhausting. Some of you may have remembered my posts from that one...the boyfriend who posted the online ad. I finally kicked him to the curb, but I have not entirely sorted through my feelings of anger and hurt over him. Feelings of betrayal.

So instead of dealing with the hurt, I began focusing on this new guy whom I have actually known for over a year. I thought, finally, a decent guy! I just kept bumping into him everywhere I went. All the attention and flirting he gave me was flattering. I thought, maybe he's "the one." It's my own fault I have set so many expectations on him.

Avatar for northwestwanderer
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 04-04-2004 - 5:53pm

Ah, ok!

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2003
Wed, 04-21-2004 - 10:52am
Update:

After 3 weeks of not hearing from him, I had assumed it was over and gave up.

He comes in last week to my work with a gift from his trip and invited me out to dinner both Friday and Saturday night. He never called as he was sick with the cold/flu for a week and then left for vacation. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I have no idea what will happen long-term, but just goes to show you can't fret over things and overanalyze things (which I always manage to do)....time will always tell you the answer one way or the other.

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