I choose to believe we can all be better when it comes to dating behavior…

I understand that the dating and relationship world that we live in these days is fraught with bad behavior and a new term for a unique brand of that behavior emerges almost every day. However, I am still shocked when I run into humans in the wild behaving badly. Maybe I look at people with rose-colored glasses, or I am a hopeless romantic who likes to only see the good in people. Regardless, it is always surprising to me when I encounter a man completely disregarding me as a human being in the dating realm.

A few months ago, a friend of a friend saw a picture of me on Instagram and started heavily pursuing me. At first, I said absolutely not for various reasons; mostly, a substantial age difference and an aggressiveness on his end that I am just not used to. But, still this man continued to message me and tell me how beautiful I am and how much he wanted to go out with me, how much I deserved to have someone take me out. After declining numerous times, he left me alone for a few weeks, only to resurface at a time when I was especially vulnerable. I had just ended things with someone I had been casually seeing periodically for years, and I was upset. It's as if this younger man could spidey-sense my vulnerability and pounced when I really needed a dating win. I agreed to a date, and we started to regularly text.

Now, I was well aware that this was not a man who had future potential for me. He is seventeen years younger, is not at all the type of man I am generally looking for and was not at all respectful of my boundaries. In fact, he bulldozed over most of them. Part of me was impressed with the audacity, part of me was flattered by the attention, part of me wondered if this could actually be something real and another part of me really just wanted to have sex with him. I figured a little casual fun for the moment couldn't hurt.

The first time I saw him, he went on and on about how much he wanted to date me and how he wasn't interested in a casual thing and how I was his now (hello, red flag) and that he couldn't wait for us to spend all this time together. The love bombing was off the charts and unlike anything I have ever experienced before. At this point, my curiosity got the best of me, and I really kept talking to this man to see how far he would take this. I was well aware that the things he was saying were overly exaggerated, but the problem with these things is that I still got a little joy jolt from hearing them. Logically, I knew that he was full of shit, but my love-starved heart did a little flip of exuberance anyway.

We never even went on an actual date. For all of his grandiose claims, he was completely non-committal about actually going out with me. Over the course of two months, I only saw him twice. Even though, he swore to me that he did not want something casual, all he ever wanted to do was come to my house with zero advance notice so we could have sex. The lack of consistency was staggering (although, it was predictable). Finally, I told him that the way things were going was not working for me. I was not at all getting what I needed from the situation, and his lack of respect for me and my time was not okay. I should have seen this coming, but he told me that he would do anything he could to give me what I needed and wanted, as long as it meant that he could still see me and have a casual situation with me, since he wasn't able to give his heart to anyone right now. I was happy to finally have some honesty from him about what he wanted, so I gave him some ground rules and agreed to see him again. I told him that we needed to make plans in advance to see each other, so we made plans for the next day. He proceeded to text me all day about how he wanted to open up to me more and to have a sleep over and talk to me all night.

The next day rolls around and there was radio silence from him. I checked in a few hours before we were supposed to meet up. No answer. The time we had agreed to meet comes and goes. No word from him. Not even a peep. Finally, before I went to bed that night after being completely stood up, I texted him that this is not going to work for me; that he is clearly not available for what I want and need, but that I wish him the best. Over a week went by and still no response, no apology for standing me up and completely ghosting me. Nothing. This man heavily pursued me for months; there was no chasing on my part. There is no way he would actually ghost me, right? I knew he was a flight risk all along, but still!

After a day or two of silence, I was actually worried that something had happened to him. Was he dead in a ditch somewhere? Had there been some sort of freak accident? There is no way that someone would actually be such an asshole, right? I'm often accused of being too nice, and this is why. It would never occur to me to ghost someone, but that is exactly what he did. The man knows I follow him on social media and could clearly see that he was alive and well and going about his life, without a care in the world. At least I knew he hadn't met an untimely death that had caused him to miss our date.

The sheer disregard for another person's feelings is extremely distressing to me. I understand that disappointing someone is never pleasant, but how on earth does anyone think that it is better to completely disappear on someone instead of being honest and kind and respectful? I will never understand this trend or how anyone finds it an acceptable way to treat another human being. I guess I should be grateful that this is a very rare occurrence for me, which is sadly quite unheard of in modern dating. Maybe that is why it hurts so badly, because I am not desensitized to this type of behavior.

Even after this mistreatment, I still don't hate this man. I had many glimpses into the difficult things he has gone through in his life and how starved he is for love and affection. I was really trying to be kind and sweet to him, to even be open to the possibility of really being with him, but he deflected at every turn and chose to lead with aggressiveness and douchebaggery instead. It broke my heart a little to see that. My empathetic nature prevents me from being angry at his behavior and instead only sees the hurt in the man who could treat me so poorly without a second thought.

For the sake of everyone out there keeping their hearts open to the possibility of real love and partnership, my wish is for those in the dating world to be a bit kinder and more compassionate with each other. To treat other people with respect and kindness, even if they aren't interested in pursuing a relationship with someone. It takes moments to be kind, but could have a ripple effect in the lives of others.