(Don't Wait To Be Asked), Just Tell

If you spend any time at all on match.com and have any girlfriends at all who do the same, eventually the inevitable happens and you find yourself exchanging email swith someone who has also exchanged emails with a girlfriend of yours. When this happens you have an immediate irrefutable obligation to share any pertinent information you have about this person, up to and including voicing a clear and succinct, "Friends do not let friends go out with this guy."

Lainie was very clear about this when I let her know last winter about some emails I had received and a date planned for a Tuesday evening.

"There's no way you're going out with him. The man's got more hands than an octopus and less brain cells than a hamster."

Not quite believing an octopus had actual hands and entirely sure she'd never audited a hamster's brain cells, I had to push the issue. "He seems very nice. I should give him a chance."

"You should give him a whack upside the head," she said, "and if you go out with him I've got one for you. Trust me."

"But I still think - "

This warranted a dramatic rolling of the eyes which is what Lainie does when she's just about at the end of her patience. I'd seen the look many times on weeks where she had her two pre-teen boys at home. "OK, fine. I wasn't going to tell you this but here you go. He's married. He's just not real up front about that."

"Well why didn't you just say so?"

"I didn't want to discourage you. You know, have you start questioning your judgment or anything."

As if that would happen. Unless, of course, she suggested that it might.

I went home, sent off a fictionalized, 'sorry, but I've met someone and would really like to see where it goes...' to Mr. Married Man and avoided logging onto that site for the next three weeks. Bad enough I couldn't intuit those who were actually 6' as listed and turned out to be 5'6" and the borderline manic depressives whose profiles referenced them as 'upbeat' and 'positive' and then cried during dinner, from those actually upbeat and positive. Apparently now I couldn't even discern the married from the single.

Still, I appreciated the advance warning.

Having met someone incredible, I am no longer on the dating site but still respect the unwritten rule of information sharing otherwise known as 'Don't Wait To Ask, Just Tell'. So when Claire came by my office last Friday and mentioned she had a date lined up that evening with an athletic coach at the nearby university, I immediately said, "You're going out with Max?"

"How do you know?" But she did know, and gave me a look that said, 'spill it'.

"He's very cute," I offered. "I think you two would be cute together."

She waved that off. "And--?"

"Well, I only went out with him once," I said. "We met for breakfast on a Saturday." I shrugged, trying to pull anything remarkable from the morning and retrieving nothing. "I don't think I was his type, Claire. I mean, he never emailed again, his texts stopped and honestly, it didn't hurt my feelings. I think the only thing we really had in common was our dogs."

"The pug." She produced her cell phone and there he was.

"The pug who goes to Little Dogs Day Care."

"What else?"

I really couldn't think of anything. "Claire, you'll like him."

"He texts -- a lot. And emails a lot. And he calls a lot."

OK, that rang a bell. I remembered that part and it was fine, albeit past a certain point felt more like surveillance than an actual expression of interest.

"Go and have fun," I finally said. "Like I said, I think you'll like him."

Friday came and went and when I saw her Saturday she seemed upbeat enough. They'd met for a drink, laughed -- a lot -- and he'd wanted to see her that night too, but she had plans to go to a barbecue.

Today's update was a bit bleaker. He'd called, she said, nine times while she was at the barbecue. Texted fifteen times. They were meeting for drinks tonight and she didn't know what to tell him.

"Get an unlimited plan with your cell phone or give me some room?" I offered, and then added, "if you like him, let him know you're feeling a little..."

"Stalked?"

"Overwhelmed," I corrected. "You do like him, right?"

"Well, I could like him. I really could."

I digested that because I'd been there myself. Claire may not yet have reached the point I came to that a second date was a great idea, but not if I hadn't really been struck by someone. Maybe I'd become cynical, overly picky or skeptical (Lainie said all three) but life was too short and I did have a lot of books at home I hadn't read yet. Claire wasn't there yet but she was a smart woman and she'd figure it out. If you never settle for anything less than that connection you'd like to find, it'smuch more apt to find its way to you.

Hence my current situation of being not on that site and therefore of little help in dispensing my thoughts on various profiles to my friends who are.

I don't miss it.

But I don't regret having been on there in the first place. As I said, I've met someone. I haven't written anything, really, about him and in all honesty perhaps there's a part of me that doesn't want to jinx the happiness the universe has besowed by putting him into words. Even Holly gets only limited details and she's about the most persistent person I know and expert at interrogation. I can't even have Diet Coke for fear of her reaction, let me put it that way.

We will see how this evening works out for Claire. I hope she and Max can come to an understanding. And if not, I'm sure eventually she'll be found by what she's looking for.

Call me a romantic, but I think the universe kind of rolls that way.