Snap! No, really, ouch.

This guy from my grad school, but a different program, moved at the same time to this current city. He was at least 12 years older, and something about him just felt creepy. He was so into meditation and spirituality in such a conscious, affected way that I wondered what was wrong with him before he got into meditation. He seemed into me, so lonely and needy, yet sophisticatedly aloof. This is how I described it at the time:

A good-looking older guy across the neighborhood I know from grad school has photogenic weirdness such as speaking earnestly and openly about spirituality and illness. Regrettably I feel discomfort and have a constant urge to flee him. He's the one who made me take the morning off to drive him to get his wisdom teeth out, and then left email and voice messages for the next few days about dry socket.

I wish I hadn't constantly felt like I had to flee him, but that's how I felt because he seemed so extremely needy. He came by to return a DVD he'd borrowed, coincidentally at a time when I'm sitting around in workout clothes feeling unproductive and a bit pitiful and conversely something about him made him look extra good-looking, confident, and more in shape than usual.

In saying our goodbyes, he said how successful and impressive I am. I said I'd feel successful if I just had a permanent job and a husband.

"I don't know about the latter, but I'm sure you'll meet your professional goals," he said. "You're a rock star. You'll be on the cover of People Magazine."

He continued, "I know that the right woman for me is in my new city. I didn't feel attached to this city, so I never tried to date here."

I'm hoping I'm just taking that the wrong way, but ouch that really hurts. It's one thing if someone says that it's never possible to know what relationships will bring because that's true. It's another thing altogether if they say they're sure they'll get married in a city they don't yet live in and aren't sure about someone else.

He also thanked me for being so supportive which also felt double-edged. Yes, I took half a day off of work to drive him to the dentist, but I also delayed answering his calls and emails embarrassingly long. Though quite a lot of them were things like, "I'm recovering from hand surgery. Can you drop off a gallon of 1% milk in the next 4 hours?" or "I'm taking a walk in 15 minutes. Do you want to join me?"

Not that any of this matters.