Dating 9 - 5: Part 2

I met the only other guy from work I ever dated at a junior high school where we both taught ten years ago. What attracted me to him at first was that he was incredibly smart, so I’ll call him the Professor. He also seemed shy, and I’ve always had a soft spot for shy guys. One time we had a staff lunch, and no one even realized the Professor was missing until I went down the hall to get him. I remember distinctly thinking to myself, “I wonder if he would ask me out if I paid a little more attention to him.” So a couple times I went into his classroom to eat lunch with him.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, he stopped by my classroom and asked me out – as he stood in the doorway, a good 25 feet away from me. I found it endearing.

We went out to dinner several times. Even after I ended up quitting the job suddenly one day after a quasi-nervous breakdown, the Professor never held it against me. Since I was living at home at the time, he met my dad. They’d both been history majors in college, so every time we went out, we would come back to my place and he would talk to my dad – at considerable length – about history. The day after I lay down on the living room carpet and fell asleep as they chatted away about esoteric topics I knew nothing about, I realized that he was a better “match” for my dad than for me! That’s when it became clear that the Professor and I were just friends.

Well, it became clear to me, anyway. Although he always refused my offers to pay for my share of dinner, I thought, “Oh, he’s just old-fashioned.” We had never so much as held hands, let alone kissed, and never had any sort of relationship-defining talk, so I assumed he also felt we were just friends.

I moved to Boston for a year, then moved again to settle in New York City. The Professor and I had known each other about three and a half years when I became unemployed again and began spending my time focusing on my social life and dating in earnest. One night my boyfriend at the time answered my apartment phone when it rang. It was the Professor.

When I got on the phone, he acted like everything was normal. But when we met for dinner a month or so later, he suddenly asked, “Who was that guy who answered the phone at your place?”

“Oh, we’ve been dating for the past couple of months,” I said.

“Really??” The Professor looked astonished, then became quiet. He didn’t say too much after that.

Until a couple months later, when we went to the beach. We didn’t bring swimsuits or anything, just walked along the water and had dinner. I was standing on the sand, gazing at the beautiful blue water, when the Professor moved to hug me – and then he kissed me! On the lips! I was stunned, almost literally!

So I did what any sane, mature person would do: pretended it hadn’t happened.

We went to dinner and then got in his car to drive home. But eventually he turned down the radio and asked, “Do you ever think of me as ‘husband material’?”

!!!

Of course I had to say no. I just didn’t feel that way about him at all. I explained that he was way too smart for me, that sometimes he talked about topics in a discussion I had no hope of contributing to, that he should find someone more traditional from his Orthodox church to date, etc.

And that, I thought, was that. We stayed friends, though as the years went on, we saw each other less often – every three to four months, on average – and most often when I went home to see my dad (the Professor’s true love :).

But just last week, we met for dinner one night, and I was telling him about my friend’s upcoming wedding. He asked if it was difficult for me to watch “everyone” getting married.

“No, not really,” I said. “Not all of my friends are getting married. And it’s not like I haven’t been dating.”

He nearly dropped his fork. “Really!?” he said. He was quiet for a minute, staring down at his plate. Then he looked at me and asked, “So I still don’t factor into the equation at all?”

It was so awkward! He talked about how we’ve known each other for nearly ten years now, how good we are together, we communicate so well -- though as two of my good friends said, apparently we DON’T if he really thought we still had a shot together!

Then he said, “I’ve asked you to marry me four times!”

Now it was my turn to nearly drop my fork. “What are you talking about?” I said. “A proposal is getting down on one knee and giving a ring. I don’t remember anything like that!”

“It was close enough,” he said. He considered the kiss at the beach a proposal, as well as another time a few years later when he looked at me and said, out of the blue, “You’re going to marry me one day.” (For the record, my response was, “No, I’m not. We’re friends.”) As for the other two times he supposedly proposed – I really have no idea.

So I had to explain again that I just didn’t feel that way about him, that he was a great guy but just not for me, etc. He wanted to know exactly why I didn’t like him in that way (“Is it my glasses? Are they too thick?”). I felt terrible. We talked for a long time, though, and finally he seemed to get the idea.

“Even though this conversation didn’t having the outcome that I’d hoped, I’m glad we talked,” he said. “I was craving intimacy. Not sexual intimacy, but spiritual intimacy.”

I know there’s something reassuring and comforting about a friend you’ve known for a long time; I can understand how for some friends, it turns into more. And it would’ve made my life so much easier if I could’ve just fallen in love with the Professor. If I had, we’d probably have been married for six or seven years by now. But after ten years, I think it’s safe to say it’s never going to happen. Hopefully he finally understands that.

Sigh.