I have a video chat later with a man who sounds promising. We matched on an app, exchanged substantial messages for about a week, and got far enough that he gave me his full name. His LinkedIn checks out. On paper, the preliminary committee should be delighted.
Instead, I feel a slight dread.
Nothing dramatic. I don’t have a terrible feeling about him. There isn’t some glaring problem I’m trying to explain away. He seems interesting, and our conversation has had actual substance, which ought to count for something.
I think I may simply be tired.
I’ve been on ten in-person first dates, with no one I wanted to keep seeing. That’s ten rounds of meeting a stranger and finding out whether the conversation we managed beforehand could survive being in the same place. None produced a keeper. Now another introduction is starting to feel suspiciously like an interview.
The video call is supposed to be the easier part. We can have a conversation without arranging a whole evening. Yet even that modest appointment has acquired the weight of something I need to prepare myself to get through.
I don’t want to cancel. We’ve spent a week getting this far, and I’m still curious about him. Also, “you never know” remains an annoyingly durable argument. It has survived all ten dates.
Maybe I need to lower the stakes to something closer to what’s actually scheduled: a short conversation with a person who seems interesting on paper. I don’t have to arrive with enough enthusiasm to carry a hypothetical relationship. I just have to talk to him.
Still, I’d appreciate one of those stories where someone was about to give up and then met somebody wonderful at the last possible moment. Preferably a convincing one.
The call is later. For now, I’m weighing a modest adjustment in expectations against adopting another dog.
