Follow Up: Defining the Relationship, or Rather, Non-Relationship

A couple of you were kind enough to comment on last week's post and praised Jamie's succint rejection of Josh. In the same breath, you also criticized me for my inability to follow suit. But that's ok - I totally agree with you. I am a coward in this area!

On the plus side, though, I tend to end up with funny stories to share with others (and write about in this blog) as a result of my middle-school behavior. And, turns out, I'm not the only one who doesn't like to define the non-relationship.

My experience with Cory and the embarassing situation at O'Sullivans (where I unsuccessfully tried to hide my face behind my scarf, a girl's back and finally the collar of my jacket to avoid being recognized) was bad - but my friend Julia's got me beat on the mortification factor.

In college, we spent a summer in London, and after spending the second half of the trip hanging out with Matt, she finally went on a date with him when we got back to school. Except, turned out she really only liked him as a friend (and she was busy being infatuated with her eventual husband who she met at the same time). In Julia's words:

So Matt was the proverbial "nice guy" -- nice, funny, but not exactly Heath Ledger (who's always been my fav). We became good friends when we studied abroad together, and upon returning home, he asked me out. I thought to myself, "Why do
nice guys always have to finish last?" and set out to change the world by saying
yes.

The night of our date came, and I decided to wear slacks and a nice shirt -- an in-betweenly dressy outfit because I wasn't sure where we were going. I opened my dorm room door to find Matt in jeans, a T-shirt and dirty tennis shoes. Uh-oh, I was overdressed, but, seriously, at least a polo to impress a girl on a first date would have been nice.

He took me to a hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean place, which had good food but not good first-date atmosphere. Afterward, we played bocce ball on the lawn in front of my dorm, which turned out to be a fun post-dinner activity.

We talked and laughed, but I still wasn't feeling "the vibe." I had conveniently made plans after the date as an escape clause, so I mentioned it was time to go. He walked me to my car, and as I proceeded to awkwardly end the date with a handshake (yeah, I'm lame, I know), he swooped in for the kiss.

There's no way to describe that kiss besides that I thought a salamander was in my mouth. All I could think was "Get it out!"

Not that Matt himself was horrible. It could have been my own mortification that made the kiss weird, but we just didn't click.

But rather than just giving Matt the "let's just be drinking buddies" spiel, Julia instead became very, very busy in the next several weeks.

To further put a nail in his dating coffin, I had met my now-husband the night before my date with Matt, and I ran into him at the party I went to with friends after our dinner / bocce ball evening.

There was no hanky panky going on there, but, unlike my experience with Matt, I felt the vibe right away.

When Matt called a few days later to try to set up date No. 2, I made up an excuse. When he called later on, I let it go to voicemail and never called back.

There was just one problem - Matt, like the rest of us, was a journalism major. And rather than stalking Julia incessantly with text messages (crazy I know, but this was back before we were all attached to cell phones), he chose to write a column about it in the Maneater, Mizzou's student newspaper.

Framing it as a how-to guide about blowing him off, Matt shared with the entire student body (around 27,000 at the time) exactly how he felt about the situation in "Hey girls, don't let Pierson happen to you."

The column was clearly based on his experience with me, and I was ashamed and embarrassed. I should have just done the mature thing and told him it wasn't going to work, but I thought I was sparing his feelings by not saying outright: "Matt, I don't want to be with you and your salamander tongue."

Guess not.

So I'm not the only one with problems.