So the guy from the cruise…we’ll call him PBC (Peanut Butter Cup). I honestly thought that PBC and I were just going to be a vacation fling, but I heard from him the very next day after the cruise. We would chat every day on gtalk and on the phone too. A couple of weeks after the cruise he asked me if I would come visit him for Memorial Day in 5 weeks. I told him I’d look at airfare and if it wasn’t too expensive I’d visit. Every day he asked if I had bought my ticket yet. Finally, the fare went down and I booked it. We made plans for my long weekend there. His niece was graduating from high school, so I was going to meet his whole family at a graduation party. YIKES! We were going to go to my favorite restaurant from when I had visited his city years ago. The trip didn’t go exactly as I thought it would, but when I left we still had plans that he would come to NYC for 4th of July in just a month and I felt confident that we were moving forward together. Well, PBC did still come to New York, but that trip went even less how I expected it to. The short version is that PBC is not ready for any kind of relationship, much less a long distance one. But, me being the positive person that I am, tried to find the good in the experience. Here are the lessons that I learned:
1. Look outside the physical. There was this one guy on the cruise who at first I was kind of smitten with. He was so cute and seemed to be everything I wanted. But he was BORING. I found PBC attractive in a non-traditional way, but what really hooked me was his wacky sense of humor and his twisted intelligence.
2. I can’t be afraid to say what I’m feeling. On my visit to PBC we had a lack of communication that caused some confusion…He wasn't communicating and I was confused. But I finally spoke up and asked him what was going on. In the past, I never would have said anything and I would have left upset and angry and more confused.
3. I need to be more open to strangers (in a safe way). One of the things that amazed me about PBC was how he would just start talking to people. We would go out to a bar and he would just start having conversations with strangers. I never would do that. Maybe it's the cultural difference between NYC and the South. I vowed to try to talk to people I didn’t know more.
4. When a guy says “it’s not you, it’s me” HE’S TELLING THE TRUTH! He was dealing with some issues at the time and I’m glad that I can recognize that he just wasn’t ready or capable of a relationship instead of thinking that there was anything I could have done differently. There wasn’t.
So thank you PBC…you made my cruise an incredible experience. I learned a lot from my time with you and I’ll always have fond memories of Miami Beach.
