A personal reflection... thoughts?

[fascinoma]

New term of the day: the What-If Boyfriend or What-If Girlfriend.

That person who you hold in the back of your head as someone you almost got with and think you still might get with, but you never actually get with them beyond an intellectual exercise. Sometimes you even use them as a barrier to protect yourself from falling in love with a stranger. The What-If could also be called the Almost-Boyfriend or Almost-Girlfriend.

I've had a few of my own What-Ifs. In some cases, I was dumped for a What-If, in other cases I was the What-If or they were mine. Everyone has What-If Relationships.

In the unfolding relationship I was almost in with a coworker, he had a What If Girlfriend who was not quite materializing into a real girlfriend. He ended our dating as soon as it began, citing some other reason and saying he had to take things more slowly, and decided he had to see how his What If was going to turn out. He kept flirting with me the whole time he was dating her. He tried to keep me on the back burner. He was obviously interested in me the whole time; after conversations in my cubicle, I'd see him march outside and stomp back and forth, muttering to himself like a guilty married man.

And in going after his What If, we became, for a while, each other's What If. I'm probably still his What If Girlfriend. He's not my What If Boyfriend anymore, because after our moment passed, it passed for good. His handling of the situation also singed me too badly, and I never really forgave him.

This person's What If Girlfriend and he actually dated for a while, but he tried to be my friend while there was too much chemistry for friendship. Every word, every look, was loaded with dangerous subtext.
It blew apart in glorious pieces. Finally I tried to put the thing on the table "Look, I like you, you like me, why aren't we going out?" and he confessed to being in a relationship. I stopped being his friend. I stonewalled him - even cold looks, silent treatment AT OUR JOB - for about two months before he came to my cubicle finally and had a really glorious tantrum complete with red face, popping veins - I found out his girlfriend had broken up with him.

I guess now at 34 I don't blame him for pursuing his What If Girlfriend instead of me, given I've put all my "what if's" behind me. Playing the What If Game is something I did before I got married. I'm in a relationship of my own now. I'm proud to no longer have any dangling "what if" boyfriends or "what if" girlfriends. They've all been resolved. They've turned into people I frankly don't like and am glad not to be with, or they've turned into reasonably nice people with whom I'm just not compatible. There is nobody in my past I harbor any wondering about.

Later on, he tried to contact me again, but went about it in ways that always had the plausible deniability of being about interest. He'd contact me about offering me a job opportunity or such. The initial basis of our "friendship" was work, and we never managed to move it past work even after we no longer worked together.

He never actually asked me for a date. Every couple of months, these contacts would take place.

As interested as I was when we had our initial contact, I never regained interest in him. I evolved and began pursuing a number of spiritual paths and took up about five different hobbies in the interim, and he continued to be the same person. I outgrew him. My world became too big for him. There was no way I could ever broach the subjects of the avenues I'd trod, in our absence. No way I could bring the subjects up.

Somebody out there will marry this stable, rather boring, religious man who is good parent material, someone who isn't me, who wouldn't find the experience soul killing.

I never played the "waiting in the wings" game very well. Probably having the traits of ADHD, I am not good at patiently waiting for someone else to proverbially poop or get off the pot, now as well as then. It makes me very, very angry. Whenever I've "waited in the wings" for someone, or tried to patiently wait for them to warm up, I ended up "blowing it" and putting the cards on the table at some point.

I finally swore off this tactic altogether and vowed I would only date the explicitly, unmistakably interested and they had to be interested in me now, ready for a relationship now, and interested in me for who I am now. Not two weeks from now, not after they took care of their (fill in the blank). They couldn't have anything left to do before getting with someone.

Anyone who didn't outright, explicitly show interest in some way, got disqualified. They had to outright want to date me and they had to say so.

That was the trick that broke my losing streak; after years of waiting in various people's wings, I got a husband, then when we divorced, another relationship a year later.

Just my thoughts.