Her story got me thinking. What is the point of a long engagement? I mean, if you love someone, and they love you, why wait a year, or two, to get married? Why date for three or five or eight years? What are you waiting for?

If you never want to get married, then fine, I will put you in the “never getting married” box and ignore you. But what about the rest of you? Are you testing the waters? Do you want “to be sure”?

I’ve always thought that I’d date at least two years before my engagement, and then another one year before the wedding. But now that I think about it, why do I need those three years “to be sure”? I know there are people who have been married for over 20 years, and they say that they were always sure about their feelings for each other. Good for them. Me, I don’t think I’ll ever be sure. I don’t think I’ll be sure after dating someone for two years, I don’t think I’ll be sure if we lived together for four years, and I don’t think any length of engagement will make me “sure”.

Maybe being sure isn’t about the other person but about myself. Maybe I am just somebody who can’t be sure of how I feel. That doesn’t make it any less real.

I’ve always admired how quickly marriages were decided in the old days. You’d court for a little while, and if you found each other to be pleasant, the man would propose, and a wedding would take place soon after. In those circumstances, you would only see each other a few times before the engagement, always in public settings. Now we have all these checkpoints in place like anniversaries and co-habitation and long engagements, and still we have people (like myself) who never seem to be sure. When will it ever be enough? It’s like the show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, every time the host asks “Is that your final answer?” you re-evaluate yourself one more time. He could ask you a million times, and you would still hesitate. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet and say, “Yes, that is my final answer.”

So Erika, you have inspired me to re-evaluate my position on long lead times for marriage. Perhaps in a few months, I will be married too. (Ok, probably not, but anything could happen.)

——

To introduce myself shortly, online I go by gem, in real life I live in New York City. I have also been single my entire life. So I’m going
to talk about validating men, something that I fail at miserably and which is one of the main reasons for my constantly single status. The most recent example of my failure to validate a man is with my newest paramour, whom I met almost two months ago. I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then, he’s nice, he likes me, I like him, etc. However, when it comes to actually showing him that I like him, I end up unintentionally coming off like a total jerk. Always. This past weekend was a prime example of this…

We’d just spent hours being absurdly cuddly and discussing silly little things in our life. It secretly made me a little nauseous, but the outward happiness was real too. (It’s a paradox, but it’s true.) And then suddenly we noticed how long we’d been lying around for and he realized he had to leave. He asked what I was doing for the day and I mentioned that I was hanging out with my friend and her Italian friend who was visiting her. I concentrated on how I’d be with the Italian, with his cute broken English and his wild Italian hair. My paramour watched me as I talked about this Italian guy, and his response was a simple, “Don’t hook up with the Italian.”

I just smiled at his advice, and moved on to my plans for after that, how I’d been invited to a few parties, none of which I particularly needed or wanted to go to. And he quickly invited me to a party he was going to that night, as any nice paramour would do. But before he’d even finished I said a curt, “No.” And without looking at him, I rambled that I’d told all the parties I was going to go, so I had to at least go to one of them… even if I didn’t really want to. He concentrated on the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to any of the parties and obviously I couldn’t go to all of them, so I might as well just go with him! Didn’t I want to go with him?

I didn’t go with him.

Now, I understand the Italian thing a little. Keep him on his toes, blah blah blah. However, I definitely should have gone with him to the party. I wanted to, even! But… well, once I start meeting more of his friends and he meets mine, then, if we stop spending time together, we have to explain it. I don’t want to explain where he went and I don’t want him talking about me after we’re done. I want our relationship to exist in a bubble and if it pops, I want that pop to have zero effect on anything else in our lives! Slash I am an idiot who lets her fears force her into making poor decisions when it comes to men. Because what if the bubble never pops? Why jump to the negative conclusion instead of hoping for the best and just doing what I know will make me happiest in the moment… Which is why my new plan is to validate him and our relationship from now on and say yes when he wants me to say yes!

Except this weekend. I sort of have a really busy schedule with some old friends and a friend who just moved back to town. And then I’m going out of town for the holidays… so basically I’m not seeing him for awhile and by the time I get back he’ll have forgotten me. Oh well, good thing I kept the bubble small!

So I have come up with my own list of 10 indicators that she’s just not that into you:

1. She screens your calls. Yes, women do it too. You can tell she’s screening if she never picks up when you first call, but then picks up after your fifth or sixth call. You definitely know she’s screening if she finally picks up and says, “What?” (Here’s a handy-dandy How-To guide on screening, not that you should need it.) If she’s screening your calls, she’s not that into you.
2. She takes a long time to respond to your text messages, and her texts are one-word replies. Women, on average, use more words in their texts than men. If her texts to you are shorter than yours to her, she’s not that into you.
3. She doesn’t initiate anything. If she is never the first one to call you, first one to text you, first one to email you, or first one to suggest meeting, she’s not that into you.
4. She won’t introduce you to her friends. For men, they may not want women to meet their parents, but for women, meeting her friends is the symbolic equivalent. A woman’s friends are her greatest allies, they are the girls who tell her she’s a goddess and deserves a man who will worship the ground she stands on, rightly so. A woman will always screen boyfriends past her friends if it’s getting serious. So if it’s been a while and you still haven’t met any of her close friends, she’s not that into you.
5. She doesn’t want to spend special occasions with you. Even women who don’t like romance like romantic gestures at the right times. Unfortunately, if she isn’t interested in your Valentine’s Day plans together, she’s not that into you.
6. She brings up the idea of casual dating. Even women who aren’t that into you will want to have the relationship talk. Why? Because we’re women and believe it or not, we do like to have things laid out on the table. Women tend to feel guilt more strongly than men when they are seeing multiple people, even if the relationship was not explicitly defined as “exclusive.” Thus, she will probably bring up the idea of casual dating so that she doesn’t feel like she’s cheating. But women are generally monogamous-loving creatures, so if she doesn’t want to take herself off the market, she’s not that into you.
7. She doesn’t wear the jewelry you give her. Giving jewelry as a gift is a precursor to the engagement ring in most women’s minds. If she doesn’t wear the jewelry you give her, it’s probably because she doesn’t feel like she’s yours. If she doesn’t want to show the world that there is a man in her life who is buying her nice jewelry, she’s not that into you.
8. She always cancels your plans. If someone doesn’t want to see you, in general it should be a pretty clear sign that they’re not into you. But women can be subtle, because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Instead of flat-out rejecting you, she can come up with all sorts of last-minute excuses to not see you. These may even be legitimate excuses, she may be legitimately busy, but the bottom line is, if she doesn’t make time for you, she’s not that into you.
9. She never lets you stay over at her place, you always have to go your place. This one is not set in stone depending on other factors like smelliness, roommates, and location. However, it is generally easier to leave someone’s home than to get someone to leave your home, especially when you want to do it without hurting their feelings. If she’s always looking for an exit strategy, she’s not that into you.
10. She refuses to make plans for the future. Not all women are meticulous planners, but on average, they probably plan more in their relationships than men. If she changes the subject every time you want to make plans for the future, be it going on a trip together or getting a pet together, she’s not that into you.

The bottom line is that women and men are more similar than they are different. Regardless of whether we are shy or busy, if we are into you, we would want to see you. Sometimes it’s better to hear the truth sooner rather than later, especially if the truth is: she’s just not that into you.

For all intents and purposes, his name is PLB and he is so cute. Why is he my preordained lover? Because someone I met over a year ago had tried to match us up before I ever met him! She was a friend I’d made in the first week of TheBusinessSchool, and when she heard I was “single and looking,” she started gushing about this incredibly sweet boy in her class. For whatever reason, she wasn’t interested in him herself, but she thought the two of us would be perfect together. I lost touch with her, but when I met PLB earlier this year, I remembered what she had said. It seemed she had told him about me too, because when we met, he asked me if I knew her.

Perhaps it was because we were pre-disposed to the idea that we might make a good couple, or perhaps we really are fated to be together, either way, we got along swimmingly. I met him around recruiting season, so I asked him if he wanted to practice case interviews together. It was weird to be alone with him so soon after we’d met, but we became comfortable with each other quickly. He’s quite disarming. Pretty soon, it felt like we had been friends for ages.

Now comes the good news, and the bad news. The good news is that he seemed totally into me. The bad news is that the more he flirted, the more nervous I felt around him, and the more I closed up. You could say I was playing hard to get, but I wasn’t playing anything. It might have actually been better if I was playing, but I had no strategy, no game plan. I just was hard to get – my own fault, and as a result, he probably thought I was indifferent towards him (which couldn’t be further from the truth).

After recruiting season ended, I rarely saw him. We could no longer use interviews as an excuse to see each other or commiserate together. Also, when he found out I had gotten a job offer in Singapore, it probably bummed him out. After all, he had only had a few interviews that led nowhere, and this prestigious job offer only made me seem more inaccessible to him.

Recently, however, we’ve been in contact again. It started with running into each other a few times at dinner parties and bar nights. I would always hug him when I saw him to demonstrate how close our friendship could be. But he never sought me out at these events, so I didn’t put much hope in it. At the bar last Thursday, I ran into him again and while we were talking, he put his arm around me because I was cold. His hand was even colder than my skin, so I took his hand with mine to try to warm it up. It was a reflex, I wasn’t even thinking about flirting. But in the days afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He might have felt the same way, because now when we run into each other, there’s this energy between us. There’s more play-fighting and physical contact¹. But I am such a huge doorknob when it comes to flirting that I totally missed my chance to go out with him:
Him: I didn’t know you were so into food [after seeing my food blog]. Have you tried Restaurant X?
Me: makes a face. Yeah, I’ve been there once. My bulgogi was burnt. It was pretty terrible.
Him: Oh.
Me: But I’ve heard they have good soup. Maybe I just ordered the wrong thing…
Him: Yeah, they do have really good soup. We should go there for dinner sometime.
Me: Oh, maybe. Sees someone running by that I haven’t seen in a while, and starts talking to him enthusiastically.

I really didn’t mean for the conversation to have gone that way, but it somehow did. When he mentioned us going to the restaurant together sometime, his tone was so casual that I completely missed it! At the same time, I saw KEB run by. I had a question for him, so I ended up ignoring PLB and talking to KEB enthusiastically. After KEB walked away, PLB was totally jealous and threw a little fit about how I was overenthusiastic in my conversation with KEB². That was when it hit me (yeah, delayed reaction, I know) how I had nonchalantly ignored PLB‘s invitation to go to dinner with him.

Needless to say, when I replayed the conversation in my head, I immediately proceeded to bang my head against the nearest wall.

Luckily, all is not lost, even for a huge doorknob like me. After going to see Where the Wild Things Are, with KEB no less³, I sent a simple one-word text to PLB – just to show him that I was thinking about him even when I was with KEB. A few minutes later, he texted back – hurray! I had redeemed myself, slightly.

The next night, I was thinking about him again but I didn’t want to always be the first one texting him. If he was into me, he should text me! I was starting to feel indignant when I checked my phone and realized he had already texted me, over an hour ago! Hurray!

Between the emails he had sent me during recruiting season (my bad for not replying), asking me to have dinner with him (my bad for ignoring him), and texting me (my bad for having my phone on silent), I’m thinking I have a pretty good chance with this one.

I just have to stop being such a doorknob!

1. Although I always avoid his physical contact as part of our play-fighting, even though I really, really want his arms around me again. Why do I play so hard to get? Geez, I even frustrate myself.
2. He might have also been jealous because I was going to see a movie with KEB that night.
3. Not a date though, really.

• Once the novelty of running around town with million-dollar cheques in your purse wears off, it just becomes exhausting.
• In this day and age, why do we even have to deposit these cheques manually? I mean, have these people never heard of wire transfers?
• Yesterday, LawyerMan drove me to two banks so I could deposit two cheques before the close of the business day. He’s too important to deposit cheques himself but apparently not too important to be my personal chauffeur.
• A client asked me out for lunch the other day. I’m not sure what the office policy on dating clients is.
• In any case, I don’t think I’m old enough to be dating divorcees. Unless he wants me to be his 20-something twinkie in the city¹.
• Ever since MFL returned from Hong Kong/Singapore, we have been in constant contact. Yesterday, he texted me in the middle of the workday to remind me to go the bathroom². Not exactly a Dear Diary moment (woops, is that what this is?), but he must have been thinking about me, worrying about my retardedly busy workday enough to send a text message to remind me to slow down (At least, that is the typical female analysis of this situation. Boys, insights?).
• MFL and I are seeing a movie tonight. Just the two of us. Is this a date?
• LawyerMan just spent 30 minutes with me explaining how to electronically register real estate titles. That’s more time spent with him than all the minutes and seconds I’ve seen him in this whole month combined.
• Even though I bitch about how retardedly busy I am at work, I actually kind of love it. I love that for eight (sometimes more) hours of the day, I think about nothing other than the (overflowing) tasks at hand. I love that I am kept so busy I can even forget to go to the washroom or eat. I love that I have a reason to stay late even if I don’t get paid for it. I love that I work harder at this job than anything I’ve ever done before, because this validation (that I might actually love my job) will help me get through law school. And I love that I am really, really good at my job.

1. Friends reference.
2. Despite his reminder, I didn’t have a washroom break until 4pm, as I’ve already mentioned.