After a few humorous conversations in the last few days about my man adventures lately, I got thinking more about the comment my friend made to me that he put in 60% of the effort and I should have met him there. Sigh, this is why when I went to see “He’s just not that into you” I had a few reservations that it would apply to NZ culture as we tend to be a lot more reserved than Americans or practically anyone else on the planet.
You see, I’ve always gotten on pretty well with guys and in my younger days had a lot of guy ‘friends’, I was probably a bit dense and didn’t realise that guys probably wouldn’t be friends with you unless they were interested. But, we also are pretty relaxed about the guy/girl thing sometimes in NZ – we share houses, have co-ed dorms (or halls of residence) at University where you get to see young men in all there glory(sometimes a bit too much of them if you get my drift) and we tend to hang out in groups a lot as well. So it’s not surprising that confusion can result. I’ve found in church and non-church circles I am absolutely rubbish at trying to figure out if someone is interested in me and am greatly relieved that now I’m in my thirties it generally is pretty easy to tell, somehow guys finally get a backbone and pluck up the courage to… um… send a text or IM! Yeah that takes tons of courage 
So my radar for those dodgy married dudes who think it’s fine to text me when they’re in Auckland on business goes off pretty quick. Thankfully I can figure out what their motive is and yes, it did happen more than once when I first moved up here.
But, in the past I’ve had some funny experiences with guys that really only with a lot of hindsight did I figure out what was going on.
Like the guy from church when I was about 28 who was really nice, but two years younger than me so I think I didn’t really consider him. He hung out with me a bit and then suddenly announced that he had written a song for me out of the blue one night serving at church. It sorta spooked me I think and then I didn’t see him for a few weeks and by that stage he was dating at least one other girl as he thought I wasn’t interested, I just take a while to get my head around things I think. Put up a fight dude – if your song was that good then wouldn’ t you want me to hear it? To this day I’m devastated I don’t have a copy of it – did he try to rhyme words with my name… wearin’, carin’, sharin’? Those are the only words I can think of that sort of rhyme! Or was it much more deep and meaningful? In any case he really didn’t know me at all at the time, so I doubt he got much insight to create deep and meaningful song lyrics.
So we know about the 60/40% guy as well? The ‘he’s just not that into you’ people wouldn’t get that mentality at all would they? They’d say that if you have to go 40% he’s just not that into you. Well, it’s like nine years since I last saw him and he still wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t gone to the UK to play rugby and had stayed here. I’ll tell you what would have happened – we wouldn’t have gone out for his farewell and ended up kissing would we… we would have continued to not get each others hints that we were dropping! And anyway, a month or so before he left I’d actually invited him over for dinner and cooked a great meal (that he still remembers) how much more can a girl do?
Looking back, I know there are other guys in my life that I’ve completely missed the cues on as well, I won’t write about them as some of them are close friends or married to friends of mine now (yes, true) so I need to respect their privacy and not wonder about what could have been with them. I’ve actually been doing a bit of soul searching about it lately and what I hope is that the man I’m meant to marry is man enough to actually chase me and make it obvious so I actually realise.
