Dating analysis or "how I spent the three day weekend"

I spent the weekend on the West coast visiting a friend I'd met last Fall (see new entries for Nov 7th and 15th 2008). I was with a woman who I had "fallen in love with" the first time I met her!

Turns out she's doesn't have any solid plans for returning to the East coast after all, but she was kind enough to invite me out for the weekend. Little did she (or I) know how much I'd learn from the visit.

Just another example of how ironic things are - I bought an iPod last week and loaded it with podcasts (audio recordings - like radio programs) to listen to on the long flight. Of course there turned out to be a podcast about relationships and the phenomenon of "falling in love". :)

Julie and I spent the weekend hiking, going out to eat and meeting a friend of hers Saturday night. I'm always amazed when I hang out with two people who have been friends for some time and as I ask questions and learn about one person the other person is amazed at all the things they never knew about their friend. Go figure.

The number one lesson I learned over the weekend is that it's possible to talk about and set interpersonal boundaries and feel good about them. We agreed to "be friends" right off the bat but it didn't preclude us from talking all about relationships and from considering that maybe something would evolve between us in the future. Somehow in the past my models for relationships were limited to (1) only being friends, or (2) dating. I'm not even sure what the "dating" model is except it always makes me wonder what type of kissing is appropriate/acceptable. ;) I was excited to find that Julie knew all the same dating lingo that Alex has taught me - for instance if two people are dating they should "check-in with each other" every few dates and see if their expectations are "tracking each other", i.e. are they developing interest at the same rate.

Well, so the other thing I accomplished for the weekend was putting a damper on the feelings of "falling in love". I've gotten pretty good at analyzing a dating partner's strengths and weaknesses in a dinner date or two - imagine how productive I can be after spending three days with someone! Of course, I couldn't say I wouldn't have tried to make it work if she had been interested (smile) but she definitely didn't have the same degree of interest - we weren't tracking very closely. :)