Maneuvering friendship

I think I may have gotten soft with age. What else could explain how I was foolish enough to give my phone number to Stalker Guy? He called last night to see if I wanted to go out with him sometime. Ummmm ... NO! Actually I told him that I'd have to think about it and I'd call him back. Eh. I take it back. I'm not actually getting soft per se. I've always had a great dislike of conflict. If I can avoid it, then all the better. Maybe it comes from having to hear my parents scream at each other for so many years. Back then I'd head to my room and turn up the volume on either the TV or the stereo to drown out their voices. I also attribute this recent change to Grasshopper. She is much more comfortable being the "bad cop" than I am. She is still chastising me for not letting her properly handle Stalker Guy. I should have.

Grasshopper is much better at this whole dating thing than I am. She, of course, had a fabulous date on Monday night. The bad thing is that every now and then I catch myself telling myself that this is a really good thing. And it is. It really is.

Part of our bond is that neither of us has a great number of female friends. We both have a distrust of women and tend to spend time around men. I think her experiences have been mostly catty women. Mine have been the catty ones as well as those who were using me because I got invited to places that they didn't. Then there's that other part for me. There are the other ones who once a man enters their lives look at me as the option for if they don't have anything better to do with their time. Jade can be one of these types at times. I don't know if she even realizes that she does it.

So I've been going along nicely all these years going out on my own and all. Then I get this friend and now, if old patterns hold true, this friend may be disappearing. If that does happen, I'll get over it. I've gotten over worse.