Space in one's life

Well, Sarah wasted no time in recovery.

We had a short email exchange Friday, and at the end of it, I finally had to tell her, look, I am not coming back.

I never heard from her after that, but this morning, her profile (with one new picture) reappeared on Match, with minor edits to verbage that put a very negative slant on her profile and which aren't likely to attract the sort of guys she seems to like. Put it this way: I wouldn't respond to it the way it's written now. But, if she needs it as a purgative, fine.

Still, I'm surprised that she wasted no time in getting back into the online dating world. True, I've been back out there, but that's me. I never made any bones about that.

Speaking of online, Martha and I have had an intriguing email and phone dialogue going for the last several days. Both of us are trying to be realistic, mostly about the distance, but also about whether we really do, at our ages, have a place in our lives for another person. Not everyone does... I wasn't entirely sure that Melody has enough space in her life for another person.

We agreed we both do, but what we realized was that having a space in your life for someone else, and having a space that fits the person you want there, are different things. I have a pretty large space that I want to reserve for someone in my life, but I am not sure the walls are flexible enough to accommodate someone of the sort of psychological shape I like. I like smart, intense, energetic women, but I am not sure that the space I have in my life is well-suited for such a person. Oddly, I've gotten along better with more passive women over the last couple of years... or at least, I felt they fit better in my life and I in theirs.

Martha has a similar outlook. She's not sure she can be as flexible as she would need to be to have someone like me in her life. I know what she means. Maybe, she suggested, we should just stay where we are and have a long-distance affair or something. We'd never have to drive each other nuts with day-to-day stuff, because there wouldn't be any.

Problem is, I really like having someone around a lot. I really liked seeing a lot of Melody and Penny, for example. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't have done it.

Oh -- she used the C word and the E word in describing her personal tastes... "classic" and "elegant."

I drool far too easily these days.