Out of the Woodwork
Late August seems to signal FOMO
I dated two out of three of them. The third one was just a phone friend that also never progressed into an actual meeting for good reason, too. Things didn’t go anywhere for a reason in each case. I was therefore very surprised when they contacted me seemingly out of the blue.
Bob started texting by reminding me we had met at the diner last year and wanted to know how I was doing. It wasn’t that I disliked Bob. He knew I was dating someone when he met me. Bob had a disability, too, so I think he thought we’d be a match made in heaven.
He was hoping we could have a monogamous relationship. I made it very clear that we were not going to have much more than dates. It turned out we just had the one at the diner. He was, however, very interested in reading my work. There were some emails and random texts over the course of a year.
I asked him what prompted him to contact me again. He replied he came across my number when he was going through his contacts in his phone.
A week later, I got a similar text from Joe. I think we went on three dates last year. There was zero magic, but a definite good friendship vibe. I may meet Joe again next week.
Just last night, I got a message from Anthony on OKCupid where we had connected four years ago. We never met. We had a lot of phone contact. He kind of flaked when we once made plans to get together. Now, he wanted to talk to me on the phone again. I called him, and we had the same silly kind of conversation we had four years ago about everything and nothing in particular.
For my part, I decided to call Michael just to see how he was doing. We went out maybe four times last year. It was during this conversation that I concluded he is an alcoholic and not worth getting involved with.
He started a long winded story about how he is about to lose his license in large part due to the “asshole cops” in his town. I was gratified I was able to spot this red flag quickly after learning the hard way about relationships with alcoholics. He asked me to stay in touch with the aim of going away together for a few days. This won’t happen.
All of this seeming random contact with old romantic acquaintances made me wonder if there is something special about this time of year that makes us want to reconnect with people. Maybe the approach of the end of August makes us think about what we may have missed over the summer.
