Prompted somewhat by Ivy's comment about mentioning someone else on a date on a previous entry.
I don't want to throw other people in a girl's face, cause I do not want to create a sense of competition. Cause it's not. I hate being in competition, I hate putting people in competition. On the other hand, I'm single. People who don't agree to a level of commitment beyond let's hang out together again sometime maybe
aren't going to get any commitment from me. So they'll have to live with the possibility that I will date someone else. I learned a hard lesson last year after making a one-sided commitment. It put me in a position where I wasn't getting what I wanted and I gave up looking for it in the hope that eventually my commitment would be rewarded with what I wanted. (It was not a bad relationship. But it wasn't what I wanted.)
I decided to do something different. I'm not an open dating
guy. Because I want commitment. I want to be the reliable person. I want to have a reliable person. I want to be exclusive. But my old M.O. was to focus exclusively on one person regardless of the chances of getting what I want from the relationship. I'd pursue one person for a few weeks or months until it became clear that it wasn't going in the direction I wanted. Then I'd turn my attention elsewhere.
I'm not giving that exclusive attention anymore regardless of my real chances. If it's a first date. When I reach some kind of mutual commitment with a woman, I will gladly direct my attention exclusively. Does that make it a competition to get me? In some respects yes. It can't be avoided. At some point I'll make the commitment and someone will win.
But in most respects no. I'm not comparing people I date against each other to see who scores the highest. If I spend time with you I am thinking only of you. I will make a decision on that commitment based only on how well the sparks go between me and you.
There's probably holes in that somewhere, so feel free to flame away. And not everyone will be comfortable going on a first or second date with me based on those guidelines. A few years ago, I would not have been okay with those terms. If someone was interested in someone else as well, I would feel like I was a back up plan
and that didn't sit well. In some cases I might have been. But in most cases I was not. I've since figured out that this jealousy was something in myself, not in how other people were treating me. (That's a whole nother discussion.) So if someone reading this wants me to forsake all others without agreeing to go steady
in some manner, don't go out with me. Perhaps I'll come around to my previous way of thinking in time.