On Monday, two days after the PhD emailed me, I was seriously stressed out about the whole thing. Why was he back? What did it mean? What would it be like to see him again? Etc, etc, etc.

So, I called my sister, texted Kelly, emailed Sarah, and talked to Jenna during our morning run. Yes. That’s what girls do.

All were helpful. All were supportive. But Sarah sent me an email that perfectly described why all of this was causing me so much angst. Here is what she said:

Here are my thoughts:
We date. We date stupid people. We date not-so-stupid people. We date people we like. We date people we’re not sure if we like. We try. We try over and over. And it’s all because we have hope. If we stopped trying, we’d feel hopeless. Or at least I would. So, we keep trying and trying, hoping that one sticks. Because you never know.

And that perfectly captures why I think I was willing to walk down this path. Hope. Hope that he would not be the flake he was before. Hope that I would be better able to show that I liked him (not one of my talents). Hope that he would be just as fun as he was before. Hope that he’d suddenly want to join my church and we’d live happily ever after. (Okay, that last one was a stretch, but you get the point, right?)

Despite what happened, and my normal propensity to find fault with myself, I don’t feel bad about how I responded. I’m not kicking myself for being willing to go to dinner with him. Or being gracious when maybe the safer, less vulnerable, and definitely less hopeful thing to do would have been to not be. I’d rather know that I tried, that I put myself out there even if the result is that I get hurt than end up alone because I wasn’t willing to take a risk.

All of that said, I’m no masochist nor am I some shrinking violet (before I wrote that, I had written “wilting flower” which I knew wasn’t right, but I could not remember the actual phrase). And I definitely (finally) have enough confidence and self-respect to realize that I shouldn’t settle for someone who doesn’t value what I have to offer and treat me well.

And so it is over. And the way I know it’s over is because I did email him and ended it. I would have just copy and pasted the email right here, but I believe in the full purge as soon as the purge can happen. So all emails have been deleted. And if I could figure out how to get my iPhone to not remember his email address, I would do that, too.

I appreciate all of the comments and I do agree that walking away with no response would have been completely justified and appropriate…but I wanted to say what I had to say, what I wish I’d said last November had I had the opportunity. And so I did. Basically, I said that I decided it wasn’t a good idea for us to get together. I told him that back in November, when he disappeared with no warning or explanation, I’d been pretty hurt and confused and that, while I did really like him, given the history, his current behavior wasn’t going to work for me.

I may have failed to mention that not only did he cancel by email three hours before we were supposed to meet, but even before that he hadn’t responded when I’d told him where I wanted to meet (he had asked) and I actually had to send an email to see if we were still on for last night (which I did at 9:30 am) and he still didn’t email me until 3:30.

Sadly, I’m not going to get my answer…but I kind of think Zach might have been right in his comments. And to be honest, now I don’t really care.

So, another one bites the dust. Again. But I still have hope.

ETA: To those of you who wondered if this guy reads my blog, the answer is no. I mean I suppose it’s possible, but we aren’t Facebook friends, the blog doesn’t come up if you google my name. He could possibly have found my twitter account and my blog from that, but…I doubt it. There are lots of other boy stories I have that I would not share on here because either a) they could easily find my blog because we are FB friends or b) someone I know might know them and…well, I try not to be overly dumb about these things.