It was the last week of our 30 day competition. Pressure was on! I was again experimenting with little app-texting and going nearly straight to the date. More fun? After all, my shower-hair-makeup-ready routine was down to 40 minutes, and I’d save time not endlessly texting. 

Owen and I had a good initial back and forth. He almost came out with me a week ago to an impromptu comedy night (and thanked me for the proactivity!). He skis, plays squash, and his profile indicated that he values kindness and intelligence. A bit younger (33). Seemed to have potential.

For the first fifteen minutes, I thought it was a great fit. He was a self-proclaimed nice guy (even though he smiled often without his mouth). He caught me immediately on my small-talk platitudes (“Nope – we are not talking about Trump on a date! Let’s talk about something unique.”) which I liked. For the first fifteen or thirty minutes, he asked a ton of questions about me (so much so, that I told him how impressed I was since most guys seem to monopolize when they’re liking a first date). He showed interest, he was making an effort. He was scrutinous like me. He said he liked not having to dumb down his conversations. He even let me pay for our drinks when I offered without protest. I took a daring risk – I told him about this blog, explaining that I was on a personal mission to figure out what I’m looking for, to prioritize relationship-seeking, and to be somewhat scientific about it. The reception of this information was lukewarm. But overall I liked a lot of what he said.

Something changed. True or not, my mind placed it contemporaneously with the moment he said, “wow, I really like you.” I can’t prove it was causal. Yet … soon thereafter, he did the thing. Stopped asking questions and started going on and on about himself. He was clever enough to catch himself after 5 minutes “wait, am I doing the monopolizing thing??” but then went right back to it. Suddenly I was tired and trained of energy. I said so, not knowing how to save this. We had great energy at the beginning, but I felt none of it now. 

I mentally ran through the reasons the date may have turned sour. Was it me? After all, the week was quite stressful – we were throwing a dinner party the next night, then packing and moving out of our airbnb to head to Italy for 3 weeks. Berlin had recently started draining my energy, with its moody overcast days and general lack of beauty and ambitious presence. Was it that? But also, something about him wasn’t aligned. Underneath his statements of positivity, I had felt a subtle darker personality. Quite the opposite of the first half hour, now I just didn’t feel drawn to him. I was 100% checked out.  

Perhaps most importantly, tiny little statements that were made here and there didn’t feel right. For instance, moments where I had opened up, showed something really personal about me, or said something mattered to me – he maybe tossed aside or casually dismissed or refuted. It was subtle – on the surface he was quite interesting and nice – but still, it was always there and I couldn’t ignore it. That had to be it. No second date for him. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t a party to my shift. He said at the end how great he felt, that he didn’t have to pretend to be someone else with me, and that he was looking forward to meeting for squash when I return from my vacation! I left it there…