My dating saga continues…

I left off with my current dating life two articles ago where I met M– in Vegas…as friends. From now on, I’m going to call him, “Vegas”. After that trip, Vegas and I spent tons of time on the phone, IM, email, text messages, you name it. Virtually inseparable.

Oh! Let me do tell what ended up happening with The Crush. The crush came to see me one weekend as we wanted to meet in person to see how things went and go from there. It was our first face-to-face meeting, and it failed miserably from the very beginning. No chemistry. None. Zip. Zero. I feared it would be a long, very long, weekend. At first I thought, eh, maybe I’m just nervous; maybe the chemistry will develop. Maybe I’ll feel something after I kiss him for the first time. Yeah, no. I felt really badly about it, too.

Now, I have to digress and tell you about my views on kissing. To me, kissing is probably the most connective, passionate act between two people. Yes, more so than sex to me. Any two people can have sex, and it’s usually going to give at least some pleasure. But not kissing. Sex you can work on. Sex can get better. But kissing…oh man, if you’re fundamentally flawed when it comes to kissing, I think it’s unfixable. If a guy can’t kiss and make my entire body tingle to the very fiber of my being, then he really doesn’t stand a chance past the first date. Kiss on the first date? You bet your ass. I have to know if this guy can inspire some serious heat in me or there’s no sense in moving forward. I could make out for days on end, over and over, and get worked up more than pretty much any other way. Being kissed by a guy who’s just the right amount of aggressive, who holds his hands with just the right amount of pressure in your hair, on each side of your face, around your body, hell, even on your ass…that guy who makes my heart beat outside of my chest, who can cause my breath to catch, my face to flush, the guy who causes my entire body to positively hum – that guy is a godsend to me. He’s as wonderful as an unexpected Christmas present.

Now, where I’m headed here is that there was none of that when I kissed The Crush. No heart-pounding. No breath catching. No toes tingling. Nothing. It’s so disappointing. Between the lack of chemistry and a few other character traits that I was wholly unimpressed with and fully put-ff by, The Crush went away at the end of the weekend relegated back to the friend status. No, not the friends-with-benefits status either.

Now, Vegas’ first trip to see me down south from waaaaaaaaaaaaay out west was a good trip. An excellent trip. A mind-blowing, heart-pounding, panty-wetting trip. It was after about three months of being in near-constant contact, and I was really looking forward to it. I knew we had the chemistry. I knew that when he kissed me, my toes tingled, the blood drained from nearly every part of my body and was focused in one area, my breath hitched, my heart nearly exploded from beating so quickly, my head spun, all of it. All of everything I loved feeling from a kiss, I felt every time I kissed Vegas. Story of my dating life, though, was that here I was getting hooked on someone who lived too fucking far away to do anything about it (you see, I’m not as love-lucky as Michele and turtle). The trip goes by so quickly that it’s almost as if it didn’t happen at all, but I know from the complete disarray my bed sheets are in and the spinning of my head that it did indeed happen. Well, that and the whole, “I love you” thing.

The next couple months are an interesting and sometimes sad couple of months. Vegas and I decide to not have a long distance relationship, per se. We weren’t going to commit to an exclusive relationship but wouldn’t necessarily seek out others to date. Interesting, but we’ll see. I’m a pretty possessive person when it comes to relationships, so this would be new territory for me. I’m pretty confident I failed miserably, by the way, if you want to know how it ends.

We go for a bit, and it’s a good bit. Vegas is a wonderful person, friend, confidante, supporter, and lover. Everything I could ask for from someone 2200 miles away. I was completely and madly in love with this man who started out as just a friend.

BUT…I realize at some point that Vegas has commitment issues even with the small amount of non-exclusive but not seeking out others commitment we do have (clear as mud, right?) Even the small amount of commitment we had seems to be too much for him. Too caged. Too confining. Too whatever it is that (mostly) men feel when they have commitment issues. He starts disappearing here and there on weekends, and he’s completely out of touch on at least two weekends after having told me he’d “call me tomorrow”.

After the second such weekend, I decide I simply can’t deal with this anymore. I can’t deal with feeling like I have this pseudo-commitment to someone who, in reality-or perhaps subconsciously, maybe consciously, hell who knows-doesn’t want this level of commitment despite how loosely we’re using that word. I can’t deal with having expectations blown to hell. I decide I just want to go back to not having any expectations. I tell Vegas this, that we need to just go back to being friends (yes, benefits, please), and it’s received as well as a thorny suppository. Not the benefit part but that I’m so upset and want to just end that whole other part. Long story short, we talked through everything. The bottom line was I just need to be able to be friends so I have no expectations from him.

Fast forward to now-it’s been almost eleven months since we first talked, and he’s now (and has been for a bit) one of my closest, most incredible friends I’ve ever had. He’s come to visit two more times since the first (one being as recent as about 5 weeks ago), and I was able to see him when I was out west at a client meeting back in June. He knows all about my kids, and he asks questions about their schooling and sports and just life in general. He still turns me on like no other, and yes, I still love him and he loves me. He’s become my sexual standard against which all others will be measured. Thank you for everything, Vegas.

The latest odd role he’s playing is that of the friend who asks about the other dates I’ve been on in the last couple of months.

About those other dates…

DR knows that sometimes the best friends were lovers once.

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