We met on Hinge and discovered that, despite living in a very big city, we were only two miles apart. Convenient, I thought. Our first date was set for three in the afternoon. The weather had arranged a full day of cold rain.
I arrived fifteen minutes late. That part was on me, and I apologized profusely. He was standing outside in the rain when I got there. I was freezing, so I suggested we duck into a coffee shop. At the time, getting out of the rain seemed like a fairly uncontroversial proposal.
Over coffee, he did most of the talking. I learned about him, then learned some more about him. There wasn’t much room to discover whether conversation between us might have its own appeal.
Eventually, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I suggested we head outside. We walked for a little while, and he continued talking about himself. I complained about being cold. The sun had improved the view without doing much for the temperature.
When we said goodbye, he asked to see me again. I didn’t feel a connection, so I messaged him afterward and said so. I meant it. I wasn’t concealing some complicated objection that might be resolved by reviewing the afternoon.
He responded with a wall of text reviewing the afternoon.
He said he’d arrived thirty minutes early. Combined with my fifteen minutes of lateness, that meant I had made him stand in the rain for forty-five minutes. My apology had apparently acquired an additional half hour of responsibility.
There was more. I’d complained too much about the weather. I’d forced him into the coffee shop, which he hadn’t appreciated. What I remembered as seeking shelter had become another charge against me.
I’m willing to own being late. I’m less clear on how I became responsible for the time before our date was supposed to start. Now his message is sitting there, and I’m wondering: how exactly am I supposed to respond?
