That’s a nice spin you put on it, Mike, but you seem to forget that I was there. I did, in fact, “accuse” you of that same kind of suffocating behavior I mentioned in my last post. I think it was the night you called me complaining that the woman who had asked you for space less than 48 hours earlier hadn’t answered any of your five text messages that day. Hard to sell that you’re just “doing the right thing” and “responding” when you weren’t getting any response at all, and you thought it was unreasonable and inconsiderate that she wasn’t answering. You even suggested that texting someone five times in a day was entirely consistent with “giving her space”. I’m sure it’s tempting to decide that I’m projecting, but five unanswered text messages to a woman who has just told you she wants space rather speaks for itself. And that’s without even getting into that whole thing about how you put aside all of your own interests for months trying to find ways to keep her happy or your own recent post about how you just keep crossing off rules when you start noticing red flags.
It seems like that last post hit a lot of hot buttons for you and made you a bit less rational than usual. I’d guess those hot buttons have something to do with the word “needy”, because you’ve objected to my characterizing men that way twice in your post, even though I never used the word in mine. Ironic that you lodged that complaint in a paragraph about how you thought I was reading things in based on my own past experience. “Blame” was your word, too. I didn’t say a word about fault, or blame, or that anyone had done anything wrong. I said that when a man was omnipresent and couldn’t take no for an answer, that had a negative impact on my interest in seeing him again.
And the issue of women “testing” men–where did that come from? You mention it in response to my negative reaction to constant telephone calls. What, exactly, was the test? Having a telephone? Do you think that I had my land line installed specifically so that I’d be able to measure whether or not a man called me too often, or do you think I might have been thinking more about talking to my friends, calling my mother, even ordering the occasional pizza? (Think carefully–your answer will speak volumes.)
And all of that before we even get to the big conclusion, which seems to be that when a man has been so constantly in your face and demanding that you can’t stand the sight of him, it’s only fair to keep seeing him anyway because relationships require compromise. Relationships also require a certain degree of compatability, and I’d never be happy with a man who made me feel stalked every waking minute…any more than a man with a need for constant contact would ever be happy with a woman who needs a lot of quiet and time alone. What’s wrong with recognizing that? Why do you want to turn “this doesn’t work for me” into some big right / wrong, fair / unfair, reasonable / unreasonable someone’s fault kind of thing?
