I Object!

So, the bad news is I’m not dating anyone anymore. The good news is that I’m not dating Eric anymore. Here’s how it all went down…

Life went on as normal after our ridiculous child-raising conversation. I extended an offer to Eric to come on a Family Field Trip. One of the teachers has been having Saturday “field trips” for her students and their parents. She invited me to come, and I decided to join them on a mini walking tour of the stereotypical D.C. monuments. I asked Eric if he was interested in coming because it was something different and everyone else would have a family member with them, and I would have no one with me. I told him there was no pressure to come and that I wouldn’t be offended if he said no. Well, he said he would come, and he didn’t seem weirded out or anything by the idea of being around students and their families. The day before the field trip, Eric made some pushy comments, again about him wanting more from me than what I was willing to give, and he said, “If you’re going to make me do boyfriend stuff like the field trip, then I should get other benefits of being a boyfriend.” Ohhhh my Lord. Really? This guy clearly didn’t realize that I practice law in my downtime so I went ahead and prosecuted him for being a jackass. And I won. I hadn’t been feeling particularly confident in him as potential boyfriend material; the more I reflected on it, the more I realized I was actually embarassed by him. He didn’t have much of a personality, he wasn’t that friendly, and he had this sort of “I don’t care” attitude that I don’t think he even knew he displayed. Since I was about to jump the fence to freedom away from him, I quickly asserted my case and told him that he didn’t have to come on the field trip, I didn’t mean anything by it, I thought it would be something different for us to do, and that he’s not my boyfriend so he can go do whatever he wants and I won’t care. I’m pretty sure at this point I even told him to go date someone else. I repeated that I would not do anything physical with him and if that’s what he wanted then he needed to find someone who would do that because it wouldn’t be me. I guess it must be my prosecutory charm because he didn’t leave. He simply said, “All right, well you go into D.C. and call me when you’re back.” We went on for a couple more days, but during that time I kept asking myself why I was in this if I didn’t want it? He wouldn’t be a huge loss, or any loss at all actually, so what was I hanging on for? Since I was used to being single, I decided to go back to what was comfortable.

I showed up to his house a couple days later so we could “go out to dinner.” Only I was there to end things with him. I walked in, sat down for a few minutes while he played video games (I try not to judge but the video game thing was really annoying me especially because he wouldn’t even look at me to say hi), and then when he stopped playing I blurted out, “I can’t go to dinner.” He asked, “Oh, did something come up?” I wasn’t sure how to say it so I just went with whatever came out of my mouth, and that was, “No, I don’t think we should see each other anymore. It doesn’t feel right to me.” He seemed pretty shocked, although I’m not sure how since things weren't exactly blissful between us. He asked if I was sure I wanted to do that because he could “easily go out and find someone else” so he would be okay. Um, yeah, I’m positive I don’t want to be with you, especially with an attitude like he had, thinking he was the hottest guy out there. As I said in a previous post, I wish so badly I could put up a picture of him. He was tall and had a nice car—those were his two best physical qualities. I told him I was sure, and that I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time so with that I walked out the door and happily skipped my way to my car—well I didn’t really skip because that might look silly, but I did have a huge smile on my face since I was finally done with this one! As I move on with my search, I have learned that I need to trust my instincts. My filtration system is getting better and better so I shouldn’t have anymore Erics to deal with.