An inappropriate dating technique

A few days ago, I met a blog reader called R for dinner and we ended up spending the night together. However, on the same day that I met R for dinner etc, I'd also met another guy for coffee in the morning. The guy who I met for coffee seemed to be a genuinely nice person, but it also seems to me that he has no idea how to go about looking for a boyfriend.

The first part of this story can be read on the post about when R stayed overnight. But the brief summary is that when I met the guy for coffee in the morning, I told him that I was meeting a friend for dinner that evening, but he then managed to get me to admit that the dinner might turn out to be a date. Then during the dinner with R, I kept getting txt msgs from him to ask me what I thought of R. Worse than that, the following day he actually phoned me up to ask if I'd slept with him.

A few minutes after the phone call, when I admitted that I did sleep with R, the guy that I met for coffee sends me the following txt msg:

Guy: What r h doing day time

It's must have been a hurried txt msg because presumably he means "What r u doing day time". But I have an easy answer:

GB: Need to work!

Almost immediately I get another txt msg from him.

Guy: Tomooorw I mean

At this point I'm pretty fed up with all this intrusion, so I try to be polite but firm by replying:

GB: Please give me a bit of space, as discussed previously it would be nice to see you Monday eve

That does the trick, because he stops sending me messages or calling me. In spite of all the intrusion, I am still prepared to meet him for dinner, and in fact I'm thinking of telling him that he's doing a very bad job at trying to date me! Sometimes blog readers here ask me for dating advice, and I always say that it's important to take things slowly, and play it cool and casual. I still think that that's the right way to date a guy, but clearly this guy is taking the opposite approach. Relationships that get built quickly will break just as quickly.

So a couple of days later, I send him a follow up txt msg to try and work out if we are going to meet for dinner on Monday:

GB: Hey, if you still want to go out for dinner on Monday evening, how about [a restaurant near my house] at 8pm? Lots of places closed due to the bank holiday, but that one seems to be open :-). GB x

He doesn't reply immediately, but a few hours later, he sends me the following.

Guy: Hey. GB. I think we need to leave it as I am not really comfortable with u after the text

That doesn't matter to me, and in fact is instant proof of what I was planning to tell him, namely that relationships that get built quickly fall down quickly. All the intrusion into what I was doing with R suggests that in his mind I already had a relationship with him, and so this txt msg is to break off the relationship.

This txt msg also illustrates another part of the problem. He clearly expects me to understand what "the text" is. But how am I meant to know whether he's uncomfortable with my most recent txt msg where I suggest a restaurant close to where I live, on the basis that there's a slight implication that he'll come back with me after dinner for activities, or whether he's uncomfortable with the previous text message where I asked for a bit of space. Guys that build their relationships slowly learn how to communicate well with each other, but because we've only just met each other, we haven't learned how to do that yet. I decide that since I won't be able to tell him this kind of stuff face to face, I may as well try and tell him something in a final txt msg, in an effort to try and help him for the future:

GB: No problem. One piece of advice which you can obviously ignore if you want: The next time you find a guy that you might be interested in dating, take it 100 times slower and play it cool. Anything that's built quickly can fall down quickly. So take things slowly and build solid relationships over long periods of time. The impression you gave me when you phoned me was of a very needy person, and that's not very attractive. Anyway, good luck, hope things work out with your work and with everything else too! GB x

A few minutes later I get a reply:

Guy: I won't u can say what u want.

Again, what exactly does that mean? My txt msg said that he can obviously ignore my advice, so "I won't" suggests that he's paying attention, although I suspect that he means the opposite! And then ten minutes later he sends me another txt msg:

Guy: Because I am working on Monday.

Even more random! The guy clearly somehow expects me to be thinking about things in exactly the same way as him, so that I'll understand what all these txt msgs mean. However, because we never really built any kind of relationship with each other, I can't be sure what he's trying to say in any of his recent txt msgs.

I haven't heard from him since, and my best guess is that we won't meet again. However, I still reckon that he's a nice guy who simply needs to adopt a different approach to dating. I wish him good luck in his endeavours :-).