Reflecting on the Cheryl fiasco of 09

This is part of an e-mail from friend Camus Girl:

Hi Ed,

I read your posts last night and for whatever reason, I feel that this woman, Cheryl has a genuine interest in you. I think you are just too intense at times, and it might be more than a woman can handle at the time. I know your urgency to reproduce, but sometimes you have to slow things down a bit. Remember the old saying about quality vs. quantity. Now who's lecturing who?

Here's my response:

Hi Camus Girl,

I just want to clarify that Cheryl was not a promising breeding prospect for me. She was 40 and still working on her Master's. I wanted Cheryl for Cheryl, not her baby making ability.

I don't think my problem was intensity. I would have given her all the time in the world had it been clear that she liked me. But it really wasn't. My gut was giving me a strong sense that I was being jerked around by another fickle women. And I got pissed-off and irritated, not at Cheryl but at the entire institution of jerking me around. After Ji-Ho I just became fucking fed up.

Understanding my pathology does not help me to alter my behavior. All I can do is avoid women like Cheryl, even if they do actually like me. I have ran through the entire incident a million times. I really don't think at any point I could have behaved differently as I was unable to subjugate my feeling of being jerked around and humiliated. I underestimated the difficulty of the phone conversation, but I was tactically aware before I made the phone call that this was a dangerous move. I rely on body language to read people, and it actually serves me very well. Without body language my paranoia gets the better of me and I think I'm being fucked. I considered the possibility of bypassing her request to call her, and attempting to make the second date via e-mail. But this is a woman who answers her e-mails once a week. Doing this might also breed bad feelings because it might of been seen as a reluctance on my part to play ball. Now I think that, tactically, this was the better option, but there was no good option. I was a victim to the events that unfolded due to my defensiveness. But whatever. She's gone. I will chalk this one up to an evil universe, but whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. We weren't a good match because of our different dating styles. I need a woman that's going to be in my face, letting me know that she likes me and wants to be with me. I'm not looking for a slave, just an abundantly clear message. Otherwise my paranoia will get the better of me.

Camus Girl was right. I had blown it. And it make me feel even more horrible, despite the fact that I knew there was nothing I could do to stop myself from derailing things. There's not going to be a lot of Cheryl's left. I'm running out of them.

Perhaps I should add to my profile that I am an intense guy. And if you can't handle the intensity, get out of Intensive Care! Or stay in Intensive Care. Gotta work on that...