I reflect feelings, if they're true

This report covers a fifth date with the subject referred to here as M., held on Saturday, May 30, at 7:30 pm, at Wren and Wolf, a restaurant 20 minutes from my house, and at a bar afterward. The date ran 240 minutes. The cost was $367.00, paid in full by me. I drove 135 minutes.

It is the longest date in the arc, the most expensive by a factor of 2, the first I did not spend alone in a car, and the first on which the subject told me, unasked, how this was going to go.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 240 minutes
• Travel: 135 minutes, round trip, including collecting her
• Questions asked by me: 10, approximate
• Questions asked by M.: 10, approximate
• Phone checks by M.: 0
• Phone checks by me: 0
• Out-of-pocket costs: $367.00
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Disclaimers issued: 5, across the evening and the following day. Arc total 7.
• Assessments of me offered by M.: 1
• Positions stated by me: 1
• Follow-up: pending at filing. Confirmed later by text.

Cost per hour in person: $91.75, the highest rate in the arc. Cumulative: $812.94 across 5 dates.

The reminder

The report filed on May 20 closed by recording that 2 dates were offered on May 8, that I asked for both, that she agreed to 1, and that the second had not been mentioned again.

On Wednesday, May 27, M. mentioned it.

She sent a screenshot of the May 8 thread. Her line reads “…Wednesday or the following Saturday (30th)”. Mine reads “I’m usually not greedy, but both please.” Beneath it she wrote:

“This is your reminder”

I replied:

“Thank you for holding me to it. I can’t wait.”

For 4 dates this file has been the only ledger in the matter. On May 27 the other party produced one of her own, retrieved a line I wrote 19 days earlier, and returned it with a date attached. It is the first thing in this arc not initiated by me.

Three options

I sent 3 options for the evening: a blues club, a restaurant, and a production of Shakespeare performed drunk.

M. replied that she wanted all 3.

I told her we had to prioritize, and to choose one.

Read that against the screenshot she sent 1 day earlier, in which I am on record asking for both of 2 available dates while describing myself as not usually greedy. Presented with the same move from the other side, I ruled it out of order. She chose the restaurant. I booked it and sent the link.

The evening was proposed by me, reminded by her, offered as a menu by me and selected from it by her. It is the most balanced procedure this file has recorded and it took 5 dates to arrive at.

The drive

Wren and Wolf is 20 minutes from my house. M. lives 45 minutes from my house. I drove to her, collected her, and drove us both to a restaurant near me, which produced 135 minutes of driving on the one evening the venue was on my side of the map.

It is also the first date in this arc not to end with 2 cars in a parking lot.

On the way there I told her about research I had done on women from the country she is from, and what such women are said to come to this country looking for, and the phrase I used for it was securing the bag, and I explained that the bag meant a man with money.

I am not going to reproduce the research. What belongs in this file is that I did it about a person I had by then spent 570 minutes with, and said it out loud in a car I was driving her to dinner in. It is the same instinct that carried 4 prepared questions to a first date and chose a cuisine as an instrument for a second one. I keep trying to learn a person by category, and I keep telling her I am doing it.

M. said that was part of her plan.

The first disclaimer

That is the third disclaimer on file. The first was April 25, when M. said that if I asked for more frequent communication she would oblige. The second was May 6, on a walk after the third date, when she said she preferred to take it slow physically.

The form defines one as a statement in which the subject accurately describes what she is going to do. It is entered with its date, its location, a car in motion, and the note that I raised the category myself. It was not extracted and not hedged, and it answered the question I had actually asked rather than the one I thought I was asking.

The question she asked

Later, M. asked how I would respond to walking in on a partner cheating.

I said:

“I would make my presence known, then walk out.”

I asked why she was asking. She said that is what had happened with her and her ex-husband, and that she had done the same thing.

The question was a hypothetical with an answer already behind it. I answered a scenario and she was describing a Tuesday. All of it arrived before the check did, on the strength of my having asked why she was asking.

The second disclaimer

After dinner, walking from the restaurant to a bar nearby, M. said:

“I reflect feelings, if they’re true. I don’t show them if they haven’t been shown first.”

That is the fourth, issued minutes after the last, on foot, between 2 venues, with no question in front of it.

On the same walk she added that she does not use words of affirmation, and that they are difficult for her. That is the fifth.

She also told me that her temper was something I would have to watch out for in the future. That is the sixth, and the plainest of them. The others describe how she operates. This one describes a thing that will happen to me, dated forward, and it is the only disclaimer in this file phrased as a warning.

I recorded it as candor, which it is. It is also a disclosure of a known future cost, made by the party who will impose it to the party who will absorb it, 40 days into an arrangement in which that party has absorbed every cost on file.

It is also, as far as this file is able to determine, a complete and accurate description of the preceding 40 days. Every proposal in this arc is mine. Every venue, until the reminder, was mine. Every bill is mine. Every silence was broken by me, and the record shows no silence longer than 24 hours because I did not permit one. On May 5 I described 5 days of quiet as space I was granting her, and on May 30 she explained the mechanism plainly: she returns what is shown to her, at the size it is shown, and she does not go first.

Nothing in this report contradicts it. The one instance of her going first, the screenshot on May 27, was a reminder of a sentence I had written.

I am not recording this as a grievance. She said it clearly, in her own words, at the start of the evening’s second half, and she has behaved consistently with it since April 20. It is the most accurate line in this file and I did not have to pay $367.00 to get it, although I did.

The walk back

On the walk after dinner I reached for her hand and she obliged. At the end of the evening I hugged her.

The hand is the furthest this arc has gone and it went there 24 days after she said she preferred to take it slow physically. She obliged, which is the same verb this file recorded on April 25 about the communication switch, and it is the verb that describes every physical event on these 5 forms: I go, she obliges, and the column reads 1 and 0.

The assessment

At some point in the evening M. told me I was intense. Her elaboration was that I am not playful or casual, in conversation or in the direction I take the relationship.

I have no rebuttal to file. The document is the exhibit. This is date 5 of an arc in which I arrived with 4 prepared questions in a fixed order, chose a cuisine as a way to learn about a person, offered a menu of 3 options and ruled her request for all of them out of order, conducted research into a category she belongs to and delivered the findings from the driver’s seat, and have numbered every minute and dollar since April 20.

She needed one word. This file has spent 5 entries assembling the supporting exhibits.

The following day

On May 31, the day after being told I was intense, I asked her by text how she shows someone she loves them, and I used her ex-husband as the example.

She said it was a hard question. Then she said physical touch.

I asked nothing further and she continued. What she prefers to receive is acts of service, gifts, and affirmation, and then:

“all of them.. maybe I’m just selfish”

That is the seventh disclaimer and it is also, structurally, the same sentence I sent on May 5.

The lexicon on this site holds an entry for the phrase love language. It records that each category carries a unit of account, gifts billed in dollars and acts of service in Saturdays. It also records that I chose my own in the back of a Lyft in about 90 seconds, on the basis of which answer would sound least needy, and that the answer was acts of service.

What she gives is physical touch. What she prefers to receive is acts of service, gifts, and affirmation. Across 41 days I have supplied 495 minutes of driving, a table she chose from a menu I wrote, 2 sets of flowers, a card with $70.00 left on it for her children, a reservation I booked and linked, every broken silence, and $812.94. There is no category on that list that is not on hers.

I am not going to characterize that. It was volunteered, in writing, by a person asked a different question, and she appended her own audit in 5 words. On May 5 I explained a strategy in 17 words and corrected it in 2. On May 31 she explained a preference and corrected it in 5. We have now both filed the same document.

Findings

Questions came out even a fifth time, 10 and 10, approximate. Phone checks were 0 and 0 for the fifth consecutive date, across 810 minutes.

Contact ran daily. No silence exceeded 24 hours, and every one was broken by me.

Disclaimers issued: 5 on this date. Four on May 30, one on May 31, all volunteered, none extracted. The file’s running total is 7, the first having been issued on April 25 and left unacted on, and the second on May 6 on a walk of the same kind as this one.

Positions stated by me: 1, the answer about walking in on a partner. It is the first entry in that column and it was given to a question she asked.

Plans recovered: 1, hers, being the screenshot of May 27.

Physical initiation: 2 and 0, being the hand on the walk and the hug at the end. The column has read narrator and zero on all 5 dates.

Self-corrections appended by the speaker to their own stated policy: 2. One from each party, 26 days apart.

Costs

• Wren and Wolf: $333.00
• Bar afterward: $34.00
• Total: $367.00

The evening cost more than dates 2 and 4 combined, and more than twice any single previous date. The $34.00 spent at the bar bought the walk there, which is where 3 of the 5 disclaimers were issued, making it the best value on the form by a distance. It is the first date whose venue was near me and it produced the most driving.

Running position: 5 of 5 dates held, $812.94 out of pocket, 810 minutes in person, 495 minutes of road, $0.00 contributed by the other party.

Status

The follow-up field reads pending. No sixth date was set at the restaurant, at the bar, or in the car on the way back; I asked for it and it was confirmed later, by text, which is now 5 dates and 5 agreements reached the same way.

The account is open. It now records 7 disclaimers, 1 rationalization, 0 agreements reached in person, $0.00 contributed by the other party, and a complete explanation, in her words, of why every column in this ledger looks the way it does.

None of it was hidden. It arrived inside 26 hours, mostly unprompted, and the part I asked for was answered on the first attempt.