Updates: “Bad Luck Dater” Responds
It’s time again for “Dear Wendy Updates,” a feature where people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing now. Today we hear from “Bad Luck Dater” who wrote in last week about the guy who stopped responding to her even when she texted him to come over for sex. “I could possibly accept being friends,” she wrote, “but it’s the fact that his behavior went from being a really nice guy to being nonexistent that gives me pause.” After the jump, she defends her behavior … and explains the “knife” incident.
Let me put in a bit of a timeline, as I may have not made that clear. We texted casually for a few months while I was still at the company – texting was really the only way to communicate, as I had little to no reception at work and was working crazy hours in a bad location (by that, I mean hours away from where I lived) that meant no social life. After I left the company, we started having more dates and more time together, mostly because we didn’t work at the same place anymore, and although we saw each other more, I did not jump into bed with him. I went into this with a casual mindset, as I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and I knew about his situation. After about three months, he had to keep leaving the state for various family things, and I was busy with my new job and some charity events, so texting was the only option.
I contacted him for sex when he was back in town, and he said “I’ll think about it,” to which I wrote him off for good. He then texted me a week later saying that he’d been working crazy hours and wasn’t trying to avoid me, but didn’t really apologize. I didn’t answer. I have not texted him since – he has been the one contacting me multiple times.
I contacted him for sex because I wanted sex. I wasn’t trying to win him over, or think I could change him, or think I could make him my boyfriend. A small part of me would like a relationship one day (not with him, necessarily), but is it bad that I just wanted sex? I have seen so many bad relationships around me lately, and to be quite honest, I just want to focus more on my career and other things rather than a relationship.
To those who claim I’m desperate: if I really were, I would have stayed with those guys who are going to stay in the book. I don’t like to lead people on, and if it doesn’t work, I cut it loose. To the person who said I was “very desperate” because I’m thinking so much about something as simple as friendship – over the past few months, I have had a string of guy friends whom I’ve known for years suddenly decide that if I didn’t sleep with them, I would be wasting my life. They harassed me about it until I firmly cut them out of my life. So yeah, I’m overly cautious about it for good reason, not because I want to cling on to the guy I was seeing. For keeping my distance and being wary about his intentions, if that makes me “very desperate,” then so be it.
Oh, and about the knife – it was a friend of mine who had asked to spend the night while going through town. I said yes, and when we were about to enter my building, he pulled it out (it was not a pocketknife) and said, “I had this in my pocket. Do you want me to leave it in my car?” I told him yes, and then he gave me grief about it, claiming someone could attack me in the middle of the night. I told him that it was my place, I can protect myself, and if he kept giving me grief, he could sleep outside. It just came out of nowhere, and I was rather taken off guard, and I’m not sure why he was carrying it around anyway. After that, things got really weird (a random “poetic” message on Facebook about how he wished he’d slept with me that night), and I just chalked it up to people change, and I need to just cut my losses and move on with my life. So I did.
Again, thanks for your advice – I really appreciate it.
Good luck on your search for friends and luvahs!
If you’re someone I’ve given advice to in the past, I’d love to hear from you, too. Email me at [email protected] with a link to the original post, and let me know whether you followed the advice and how you’re doing now.
You can follow me on Facebook here.
If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
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Interesting update LW! Sounds like you have your stuff together =)
Dude, where’s the update on the POTUS guy?
That’s the one I really wanted to hear
I don’t remember this letter!
I still support my new rule where if “texting” or “texts” plays a role in the relationship problem then you must move on automatically to save time and agony, even at the expense of a salvageable (sp?) relationship. (On another note, this is also true if “facebook” plays a prominent role in your troubles – move on, now.)
But, I’m glad you took the time to focus on what *you* want like Wendy advised. No, there’s nothing wrong with just wanting sex … but is that what you really want?
My other new rule is that if you start an update letter with something like “let me put in a bit of a timeline, as I may have not made that clear,” then you’re backtracking per se. It’s fun to see how often the rule is right…. I’m not making any judgments about whether the rule works here, I’m just sayin’ the new rule.. I’m really big into crafting new rules lately.
The LW wrote to tell us that the only reason that she contacted Wendy is because she doesnt care.
Ha, good point. And so much quicker to read than all of that above. You should be our official cut-to-the-chase, summarize-the-issue-in-one-sentence-or-less commenter. Then if we don’t have time to read it all, we can just jump to your comment and get the cliff notes version.
By the way, do cliff note still exist? i may have bought some for books i was supposed to read in high school. but kids today can just google books and read summaries online. god, it must be so much easier and cheaper to slack off in school these days. i hadn’t thought about that. kids today are such lucky shits.
I mean, do kids today realize how easy they can cheat? When I was in high school and had a book report or whatever due the next day, I had to: drive to the mall, walk a mile to the book store past all those wonderful-smelling prezzles and cookie pizzas, hope that the little turn stile of Cliff Notes had my book, and fork over SIX OR SO DOLLARS on it?! then of course the cliff notes don’t read themselves, so i had to skim really fast all night long. Exhausting and expensive.
You know, I work as a tutor, and you’d be surprised how clueless a lot of these kids are about how to use Google correctly. Sometimes I am amazed at how little work they want to do, even though Google seems so darned easy. Sometimes they don’t even know how to look up simple news articles. And these are high school students, as well!
Way too easy to cheat now. My daughter tried to do cliff notes and then something else online on a book last year instead of reading the book. When I found out she was doing that she was told she had to read the book and by that I meant she had to be reading it in the presence of an adult in the family so we’d know she was actually reading it. She thinks I suck!
I think you’re awesome!
Also, why does LW say she has little dating experience, but has gone through enough to write a book about it? I am confused about the intentions of both letters.
That’s a lot of justification for something someone doesn’t care about. That’s a lot of effort for a non-relationship someone didn’t want in the first place, apparently. Also, I would reconsider writing a book, because I’mjust going on a limb, but the one weird thing these dating experiences seem to have in common is the letter writer.
Or she can just put them on MVWD. Memoirs are kinda a hit and miss genre as well. Since so much of it is based on perceptions that may or may not be true. AND easily refutable if the other involved party chooses to take offense at their portrayal.
He had her at ‘I’ll think about it’.
I imagine that, if she’s honest, that’s what bugging her – he didn’t even put the effort into making up a decent excuse.
I didn’t comment on the original post because this woman seemed, for lack of a proper technical term, seriously whack. Moreso on the repost.
The craziest thing about the original post was the question ‘is he just trying to get back together with me for sex?’. Well, no — LW texted this guy for months, they have multiple dates and during all this time, by her account, he’s not pushing her for sex. She says she deliberatley taking things slow. She pushes him for sex and he flees. I would certainly not count that as just interested in him for sex.
In original letter, she says her friends say she’s desperate. In the re-telling, its obnoxious co-workings saying it, sexually harassing, her and, you guessed it wanting to get into her pants.
Then the story of the guy with the knife. In the first telling, the guy wanted to get into her pants. In the second, he seems to have agreed to leave the knife in the car, made no moves on her, and her objection is poems, in which he says he wanted to get into her pants.
In original letter, her dating life has been horrendous, to say the least. In the re-telling, not so bad. Although she doesn’t date much at all and says that is not at all important to her.
Now she complains that responders are saying she’s wrong because she just wants sex. Huh?
Some major problems here, methinks.
So, all I could really glean from this update is that LW is kind of a weirdo. Being a weirdo isn’t a black mark on your personality, & I’m not trying to be catty for laughs or anything, but it’s just the only word I can find to describe this girl’s particular mix of characteristics (at least, you know, the parts that come through in the writing)
The 1st letter (as well as this one, maybe more so) remind me a lot of a friend I had in middle school/beginning of high school. She was unique, creative, & highly intelligent. At her worst, she either took herself too seriously or decided she didn’t like herself & tried to be somebody else. To others, she often came off as different & weird. My impression, LW, is that you’re not appearing to your prospective dates the way you’d like to appear. Maybe you’re trying to appear, or be, a certain way that you aren’t & that’s why people are getting thrown off?
I don’t want to pick apart the whole letter, since it’s just an update, but those are just my thoughts. P.S. Make sure you tell DW when you’re book is out, because we’d probably allll read it…
oldie made some good observations…but what I’m most interested in is why you would want to write a book about dating experiences when you don’t date that often and it isn’t that bad, but you typically find yourself uninterested after a couple dates and say no thanks?
I mean…where is the aspiring politician who’s day job is a party clown that has the whacky idea of building his political base at a “young age” through 5 year olds…? Or the guy that creepily and obviously followed you home after parting ways post-date? Where are the crazy (both or either weird and psychotic) experiences that you would expect in a book about someone’s dating experiences? I would not be interested in reading about how a guy chewed with his mouth open the whole date and that was a turn off….or you were really disappointed that he voted for *insert any politician here* so you called it off….I don’t know…
Also if it was a casual relationship why were you so burnt when he turned you down for sex once?
I’ll still reiterate (at least I think I said this the first time around) that writing a letter asking for advice doesn’t imply that you don’t care. I wouldn’t fault her for caring or asking for advice. But I don’t think anyone was that off-base to interpret the letter as someone who wanted a guy to be interested who wasn’t.
Updates really make me crabby.
There’s some revisionist history all over that update… and unfortunately without greater self-awareness (or self-esteem) I don’t see the LW finding a relationship anytime soon. Good thing she so clearly doesn’t have any interest in one at this swinging sexy time in her life 😉
Am I the only one who got the impression the knife in question is like a little Swiss-army knife? My parents gave me one when I was like 10 and which I kept on my keys until I was 25. Hardly worth making a fuss about.
I feel as if the original letter and the update were written by two different people.
Okay, then…so long as you’re fine with everything, great, I guess.
Also the knife story is still just as weird to me as it was before. He asked permission to bring it into your home, and then when you said no, he threw a fit? That doesn’t make sense. Definitely an odd situation.
What. The. Hell.
If a guy gave me grief about bringing a knife into my apartment, even if he eventually caved, I would barricade myself inside, call the cops, and sleep with a weapon, the house phone, Skype open with a friend on the other end, my cell ready to dial 911, and a can of mace under my pillow. And by sleep I mean sit up in bed with my Lisbeth Salander face on.
But I grew up with a mentally ill mother with extreme paranoia. She made me pray the devil out of the phone when I was 5. Maybe I’m overreacting?
Now, if you wrote a book about dating, I’d read it! That’s more book-worthy than anything she’s mentioned.
I don’t know if I could write a book about dating. Right now I’m trying not to feel my heart breaking into tiny pieces. Dating is not on my agenda. Writing about it is definitely not on my agenda.
But I am writing a book (several, actually). And the second one gets published I intend to blab on here incessantly about it to ensure you all read it!
how are things going? how are you doing?
sorry i just saw your update in the forums!
I just updated it again. 🙁
this LW seems to have much bigger issues than “does he want to have sex with me”…
who attracts this many creepos?
I just couldn’t follow this update honestly. I didn’t try very hard because I have little patience with writing that jumps all over the place like this, but still. I read the whole thing, and I have no idea what happened after the advice was given and what was just a continuation or editing of the previous story.
I THINK what she was trying to say was she’s not desperate because she’s not actually been out on that many dates nor did she want anything more than casual sex, despite our projections onto her. In fact, she’s the one being pursued all the time, not the other way around.
I also think she was trying to say her dating life was not all that crazy (despite her initial claim and promise of a books worth of stories), she was just adding a little artistic license to make it interesting.
As far as the actual situation she wrote in about. Yeah, I’m not sure. I guess nothing.
I think.
She sounds even more desperate in this letter. And, no, LW, you probably cannot protect yourself in your own home; so many women think they are so tough and powerful and strong, and perhaps they are, mentally. But physically, it’s a different story.
I dunno. I don’t think I could “protect” myself in my own home, I just seriously doubt I’d ever need to. I think random home invasions, while a terrifying prospect, are a relatively low risk.
And truth be told, if someone was so determined to get into my house and do me bodily harm, I’m not convinced just being armed would be enough. Thankfully, I doubt I’ll ever likely be in that situation.
I worry more about something like my seat belt failing.
You know, it’s really ok to admit to yourself that it stung when you propositioned this guy for sex and he said “I’ll think about it”. I don’t care who you are, if you ask someone for sex and they say “I’ll think about it” and then don’t text back for weeks…ouch. That hurts.
Oh, for sure! There she was thinking this guy would want her, thinking how cool she is for being honest with herself and admitting she just wanted sex… And then she got turned down. Of course that would sting. I just don’t think she was offering the no-strings attached sex she thinks she was offering. She obviously has a history of weird relationships with man, as per her own admission, and she’s probably shared this with him at some point, about her eagerness to write a book about guys she’s been on a few dates with… He’s probably thinking ” do I like this girl enough to risk becoming one of her statistics?”
I think there should be a no “defensive retort” or “let me clarify” updates rule. Those sorts of updates aren’t worth reading anyway.