Don’t Ruin Our Date With Emotions
It was just fine without them.
I park my car outside the dive bar. My dates with Thomas are always after work because he had to get home to his kid but tonight, he arranged childcare so we could meet at a sexier time at night like normal adults.
We’ve been dating for a few months. Unlike the others, we connected on a deeper level. I warned Thomas from the beginning that I wasn’t ready to commit until I moved out of the home I share with my soon-to-be ex-husband. I’ve repeatedly told him he’s a free agent who can continue dating other women.
A few days earlier, we had a conversation about Thomas’ desire for more of a relationship. It was bad enough when he told me that he was falling for me, but his recent messages pushed me beyond my comfort zone. His talks of our kids meeting, cohabitating, and marriage were too much, too soon. I told him the more he pushed, the more I’d pull away and he’d lose me completely.
I fucked Sean a week later. We were dating and then stopped talking after he began traveling for a new job. This isn’t the ideal behavior of a chick who has another guy head over heels for her, but I’ve made it clear I’m not anyone’s girlfriend.
This evening brought Thomas and me back to the fun, sexy side of dating.
Thomas looked great in jeans and the softest t-shirt I’ve felt in my life. I wore a flared skirt and a low-cut sweater. He knows I don’t have anything on under my clothes.
The date is going fantastically well. We have ongoing topics that we shelve for when we’ll see each other to discuss. We’re laughing. We’re drinking. We’re kissing.
At one point when Thomas went to the restroom (ugh, homeboy goes constantly, something about his diabetes), the guy behind him asks me my name.
“Are you on a date?” Creepy Guy asks. I reply that I am.
“Is it going well?” he pushes.
“Does it look like it’s not going well?” I spout back. Creepy Guy pays me a generic compliment on my looks and tells me that he had to give it a shot.
Later, I tell Thomas about the Creepy Guy interaction when we’re in a booth and he’s fingering me. I have to admit that hands-down (pun intended), he’s the best with his fingers of anyone I’ve ever been with. I know Thomas gets turned on thinking he’s with the hottest woman in the room that other guys want (for the record, I was the only woman in the room so the bar is low).
His Jeep is parked in the back, surrounded by drunken twenty-somethings who have all the freedom in the world without children or responsibility. We fuck like rabbits in the backseat. I tell him how it would turn me on if any of the parking lot partiers saw us. He bends my body like a pretzel and eventually lets out the rebel yell of a guy cumming.
It was a raunchy, sexy, and drunken evening that ended with naked debauchery. Perfection.
Thomas walks me to my car. I thank him for the evening, give him a kiss and a hug.
Then he ruins it.
“Can I tell you something without you feeling like you need to reply back?”
No no no no no nooooooooooo. We talked about this. Don’t fucking do this.
“I’m in love with you.”
Fuck.
We’ve only been dating since June. I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to get serious until after I moved out. It wasn’t just for my sanity of not having the burden of a relationship to worry about; it was also because I want to date other people when I have the freedom of my own place.
Now I can’t follow that dating strategy. Once I finally move out, Thomas will expect to fall into Commitment Mode. There are a few red flags that I’m not ready to deal with since I’ve kept us in Dating Mode. His almost poverty-level income for a forty-year-old is one of them (dude is fucked if his landlord raises his rent after the eviction moratorium). His wonky situation with the soon-to-be ex-wife is another one. I’m still on the fence with my feelings about his occasional weed consumption (I’m old school when it comes to drugs but it’s legal and I can’t give a logical reason for my distaste).
I’m unsure of how to navigate this. There are only so many times that I can repeat that I’m not accepting commitment right now and that I make no promises about the future. At what point am I responsible for his feelings? Thomas is an adult. Isn’t this on him to manage when I’m the one pulling back on his runaway emotional train?
As I’m typing this, Sean texts and asks about my day. And so continues my saga of unsuccessfully juggling my dating life.
