Don’t Mistake My Listening To You For Caring About You

The white webbing between his fingers stretched to transparency; his  knuckles, flattened into the hard flex.

His eyes were fishbowl large, his gaze, intense. The tightness around them signal extreme vulnerability, loneliness, fear of abandonment.

My eyes returned to his hands bracing his dinner plate. Pleading hands, but not for me.

For her.

For her to come back to him.

His meal is getting cold, but he hasn’t broke a beat yet. I smile a feint of solidarity.

Again with this shit??

Vishnu is laughing his blue ass off…

In the last few weeks, I’ve been on three dates; lady, guy, guy – 20s, 30s, over 55. And every. Single. One of them. All about the ex/maybe ex/whatever the situation. Mind you, the pretext was “we should hang out” “I want to get to know you better” “we haven’t had a chance to talk with everyone else around” so I was under the silly assumption that the date person wanted to, um, get to know me. Nope! Apparently I’m shaped as a dumping ground for relationship baggage, and here comes the frontloader with a hefty pile of bullshit.

I shouldn’t say that. It’s not bullshit. Each displayed sincere emotions towards the person that has “wronged” them. Unfortunately, I lack empathy, and while I know how to deploy it, I just don’t feel like exerting that level of energy on someone’s one-sided, unjustified boo hoo moment.

Girl date engaged me because I came off as strong and someone who can solve problems. One of the guys noted he could be himself around me. The other liked that I am an excellent listener.

Of course I’m an excellent listener. When you have representatives from the Department of Transportation sitting across from you explaining why a route expansion in a disenfranchised neighborhood would be a “difficult endeavor,” you become a skilled listener.

When a political profiteering group disguised as a non-profit organization pleads their case to earn a large grant that you’re tasked to distribute, you become a skilled listener.

When you’re eavesdropping on the two highest ranking officials operating a large campaign in your district, you become a skilled listener.

While I never will qualify to be a relationship expert, I seem to be an emotional intelligence expert. Every person who engages in a committed relationship with another person is going to experience emotional challenges. As the years progress, changes in values, ideology, philosophy will occur individually, and that may cause some fissures in the relationship. But once those values, ideals, etc. start veering away from the foundation of the relationship, well, it’s natural to feel you’re grasping for the ledge, as the fissures now widen to chasms, separating the two entities from each other, compromising the foundation to near collapse.

In other words, time influences commitment status.

Lemme dare to quantify it: for every 3 years into a commitment, vulnerability exponentiates by 2. So a committed relationship of 3 years won’t have so much of a vulnerability, but a relationship of 15 years would be heavy on emotional vulnerability.

Back to the dates…relationship length equals 3 years in, 6 years in, 14 years in, relatively. Me? Neither of them asked about my relationship status at all. And why would they? I could’ve been wearing a huge blood diamond on my left hand, dressed in a wedding gown, neither of them would’ve gave a shit. They were so into their problems, they didn’t realize there was an opportunity sitting across the table. A wee part of my insides bitched, this is so unfair.

The insecure person’s constant fonting is a popular method of clubbing the earfucked victim into submitting to pity sex. I don’t do handouts! So for each, the evening ended with their expression of appreciation for my listening, then a predictable offer I immediately refuse, followed by me going home, to my bed, alone…