You need to try casual relationships

This report covers a sixth date with the subject referred to here as M., held on Tuesday, June 9, at 7:00 pm, at Postino, a wine bar in her area, 45 minutes from my house. The date ran 120 minutes, a figure set in advance by her. The cost was $119.68, paid in full by me.

Two columns on this form move for the first time. One of them had held for 930 minutes.

Summary of charges

• Duration: 120 minutes, capped before the date by M.
• Travel, round trip: 90 minutes
• Questions asked by me: 10, approximate
• Questions asked by M.: 10, approximate
• Phone checks by M.: 1
• Phone checks by me: 0
• Out-of-pocket costs: $119.68
• Amount contributed by M.: $0.00
• Follow-up: none. The next date took 19 days and a negotiation.
• Kisses: 1, requested by M.
• Physical initiations: 2 mine, 1 hers

Cost per hour in person: $59.84. Cumulative: $932.62 across 6 dates.

The answer about the temper

The previous report closed on a disclaimer: M. had said her temper was something I would have to watch out for in the future. In the days after it, by text, I asked her what she had meant.

She wrote:

“since you haven’t been in a relationship [in a while], you may have forgotten about women and mood swings. You need to try casual relationships lol”

I replied:

“Casual relationships? Is this your way of telling me to slow down?”

She had been asked to explain a warning and answered with a recommendation, and the recommendation was that I want less than I want. The word casual is doing the work in that sentence, and it is the second time in 10 days that it has been applied to me as a thing I am not.

The lol is recorded as sent.

Chemistry

She went on. Her example was reality television dating shows, and the point she drew from it was that you do not know who a person is until you have spent time with them, and that I should experience the chemistry rather than talk about it and analyze it.

On May 30 she told me I was intense, and specified that I was not playful or casual, in conversation or in the direction of the relationship. In June she named the mechanism: I talk about the thing instead of having it.

I have no rebuttal. I received that message, considered it, and filed it under date 6 of a numbered ledger that runs to 930 minutes and $932.62. She has now described this document 3 times without having read it.

Scheduling

We talked consistently until Thursday, June 4, when we agreed on the wine bar for Tuesday, June 9.

Then nothing, from either of us, until Monday, June 8, when I sent a message confirming the date. That is 4 days.

It is the second silence this file has recorded and it ended the same way the first one did. On May 5 I broke 5 days of quiet and described it, in writing, as space I had been granting her. This time I recorded no explanation at all, which is either progress or a failure to file.

She agreed to meet me there. Dates 1 through 4 ended with 2 cars in a parking lot, date 5 did not, and date 6 returns to 2 cars.

The cap

M. set the length of the date before it happened. She said she was not going to get a sitter for her children, and 2 hours was what the evening would be.

That is the first ceiling in this arc, and it is the first figure on any of these forms that was set by the other party. Every previous duration was a result. This one was a decision, made in advance, by the person who was not paying for it.

For the record, a sitter is a cost. The decision not to hire one is a decision not to spend, taken by the only participant in this arc who has not spent anything. I record that as a fact and not as a complaint. Her children are not a line item, and the reason the evening had a ceiling is better than any reason I have offered for anything.

The phone check

The conversation was good. Questions came out even a sixth time, 10 and 10.

At some point M. checked her phone. She had missed a shift at work. I told her to take the call.

That is 1 phone check, the first in this file. The column has read 0 and 0 on 5 consecutive dates across 810 minutes, and the streak ended on the shortest evening but one, for a reason that had nothing to do with the evening: a job, a missed shift, an obligation that exists whether or not I have booked a wine bar in her neighborhood.

I did not check mine. That column still reads 0 across 930 minutes and 6 dates.

The kiss

During dinner I held her hand, and at some point I put my hand on her leg. Both are mine and both are on the record as initiations.

At her car, M. asked me to kiss her.

It is the first kiss on the mouth in this arc, it was requested rather than attempted, and kissing has been a feature of every date since. The only earlier kiss on file is May 6, on the cheek, which I asked for, which followed a look rather than an answer, and which came 24 days after she said she preferred to take it slow physically.

I am putting it directly beneath the phone check and the 2-hour cap because all 3 belong to the same 120 minutes. In one evening, capped in advance by her because she was not getting a sitter, she asked what I meant by wanting something serious and recommended I try casual relationships, she checked her phone once for a missed shift, and she asked to be kissed.

The evening this file has been reading as the one where she told me to want less is also the evening the physical record begins, and she opened it. Both things happened. The form has a column for the phone and a column for the questions and no column for this, which is a fact about the form.

Findings

Phone checks: 1 and 0, ending a run of 810 minutes at 0 and 0.

Questions: even a sixth time. 6 dates, 6 balanced counts, and no other column on any of these forms has balanced once.

Silences recorded: 2. Both broken by me. Duration 5 days and 4 days.

Disclaimers: 7 on file, 1 from date 2, 1 from date 3 and 5 from date 5. The June text is not entered as an eighth. It is advice, not a disclosure, and the distinction matters to the form: a disclaimer tells you what the speaker will do, and this told me what I should do.

Limits set: 1, hers, being the 2-hour cap. The running figure is 2 in her column and 0 in mine.

Physical initiation: 2 and 1. It is the first evening in 6 on which the other party’s half of this column is not 0, and it took a kiss she asked for at a car to put it there.

Costs

• Food and drinks: $119.68
• Total: $119.68

Cost per hour: $59.84, against $91.75, $21.17, $61.88, $84.02, and $47.91 on the 5 before it. The hourly rate on this arc has now been above $59.00 on 4 of 6 dates and has never been explained by the venue.

Running position: 6 of 6 dates held, $932.62 out of pocket, 930 minutes in person, 585 minutes of road, $0.00 contributed by the other party.

Status

The follow-up field reads none. The next date took 19 days, 1 phone call, a memo, and a postponement I issued and then withdrew, and it is filed separately because it will not fit in this section.

We talked consistently for 3 days after this date and then not at all for 4.

The account is open. It records 7 disclaimers, 1 rationalization, 2 silences, 1 phone check, 6 even question counts, 0 agreements reached in person, and 1 instruction, received in June, to stop keeping the account.