I Wanted Him to Know I Made a Mistake
Hello?, he said softly.
Hey!, I chirped, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. I screwed up.
It wasn’t that George didn’t know who was calling. He knew it was me. He just wasn’t clear why a random girl from Hinge was dialing him at 7:45 am on a Tuesday morning.
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I’d matched with George a week or so prior and we’d been chatting ever since. His texts annoyed me at first—they were a little too consistent and inquisitive. I didn’t want to chat that much. I associated someone who wanted to text that much with someone who wasn’t present in their own life, someone who leaned on the world of dating apps more so to entertain themselves rather than actually meet people.
These were all of my thoughts. None of them would turn out to be true.
It didn’t matter at the time, though, because I’d also returned to Hinge in an attempt to distract myself. I was already seeing someone, though not exactly exclusively. We were in that period of letting things breathe and attempting to get to know one another without judgment. But I was bored. From the start I’d felt obligated to continue seeing this person because he was kind, ignoring the fact that I wasn’t particularly attracted to him. He was communicative and easy-going, but I struggled to muster up deeper feelings for him.
So about midway through what would become a 6-week hookup with Mr. Kind, my fingers found their way back to Hinge and landed on George’s profile. A week into texting, but mainly punting his attempts at getting together in person, I called him.
I shouldn’t have been on Hinge, I said. I’m in the midst of seeing someone. We’re not exclusive, but I need to figure out what I’m doing. I think I was using this as a distraction.
Wow, he breathed. I totally get it. Dating online….it’s all so...weird.
I know, I’m sorry, I said.
It’s ok. I’m so touched you called. No one does that anymore, he said.
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We hung up and I went back to entertaining Mr. Kind. It’d take another month for me to decide to officially pull the plug on that.
After I did, I thought of George. I’d kind of given him the runaround. Maybe he wouldn’t want to hear from me? I decided to try anyway. It wasn’t the first text I’d sent to someone I wanted to get to know where I ran the risk of them not responding.
Hey there, it’s Clara. I sorted out what I was going through and was wondering if you’d still be up for that walk? I’ll be in your neighborhood this Saturday and could meet you then.
George would later tell me he had to return to Hinge to recall who ‘Clara’ was. That at first when he got my text, he wasn’t so sure, but he recalled my earnest phone call with fondness. He waited a good seven hours to respond, and even then, his messages were curt and cold. Prior to meeting on Saturday, he informed me he had plans later that evening so would only be free for a few hours. In other words, he was making clear he was only giving me a bit of my time.
No problem!, I responded, not letting the nature of his communication influence mine. I understood why he was feeling apprehensive.
I, too, thought to myself: What am I doing? Should I really be exploring someone new this soon? Maybe I should just not date right now.
We’d both recently adopted dogs so we decided to meet at the dog park. I got there a few minutes early. When I spotted him at the gate, his eyes hidden behind dark shades, my first thought was “Oh this guy….”. A few hours later he’d tell me when he first pulled into the parking lot and spotted the lime green coup parked next to my white Volkswagen, he feared the fluorescent vehicle was mine. We were steeped in judgment.
But as we moved around our pups and watched them play, as we chatted with other puppy parents in the dog park, as we just hung out together, things started to soften. After about an hour at the park, worn out by the cold, George said:
Would you like to get a coffee?
Definitely, I replied.
We spent the next four hours talking about anything and everything. That original phone call as a linchpin, we’d already made grounds for direct communication. We knew we could level with one another, whether we were clutching coffees or dog leashes.
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Women often describe to me how they’ve messed up, how they don’t know what they’re doing, how they don’t know what to say or feel, think, or text. They work themselves into a frantic tizzy trying to suss out and create the most pristine interaction. The one that will make it all go smoothly.
As we work to release the reigns of this idea of how one should be and just start being, they say things to me like:
I just told him how I feel.
I just asked.
I just said what I wanted and held my breath.
It’s not “I just” as in “I just don’t care anymore.” Oh they care (as do I). It’s “I just” as in “I put down this notion of who I thought I was supposed to be and just was.” I just said the thing. I just was me. They later say to me:
It was terrifying. But also freeing.
One of my group course member’s recently said to me, “I thought this course was going to teach me how to date, but really, it’s teaching me how to be more of myself. But then that’s also teaching me how to date!”
I’m so glad, I told her. I’m so glad.
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I didn’t call and come clean to George because I thought it would make me more attractive. It wasn’t some backhanded attempt to play hard to get. I did it because I’d strung along another human being—him in this case. I’d been flakey and elusive. I wanted to apologize. Even more so, I wanted him to hear the words straight from my mouth. I wanted him to hear the genuine tone in my voice. I wanted him to know that I’d made a mistake and I knew it.