The Urban Dater is About to Choke Someone.

This post’s title cer­tainly isn’t the friend­liest one I’ve come up with, is it?  I think the next one will be called “Nin­jas That Cud­dle with Pup­pies.”  Deal?  Great!  I have to vent.  I like dis­pens­ing advice where it con­cerns rela­tion­ships, I have this blog on the very sub­ject.  I feel I can draw on my expe­ri­ences and impart some of my wis­dom… But what do you do when one of your friends just won’t lis­ten? You throw that friend into the sun.  Period.  Or not.  I feel like toss­ing my boy, Gre­goire, into the sun but that solves noth­ing except for my need to see peo­ple get­ting tossed into the sun.  I know, weird.  Right?

You see, Gre­goire is in a rela­tion­ship with a woman, Tina, with a sig­nif­i­cant age gap over him, ten years at least.  He’s younger, but that isn’t really the crux of the issue here.

Here are the key points to this relationship:

• Only a casual rela­tion­ship, not meant to be seri­ous.  They do not label each other boyfriend and girlfriend.
• Gre­goire wants to have kids some day.  His girl, Tina, doesn’t want any… and she’s prob­a­bly at her age it may be ill advised…
• She’s in her mid to upper for­ties and he’s in his early thir­ties.  Not an issue, but a key point, I think.

They are in a weird place right now, as their rela­tion­ship hangs in the bal­ance.  You see, the prob­lems began to occur when Tina moved in with her folks.  That strained their rela­tion­ship as Gre­goire didn’t always feel com­fort­able at Tina’s par­ents.  Gregoire’s place is akin to Soma­lia, just the part where the coun­try is a dis­as­ter, not the whole piracy thing…  The point is that time spent with one another was becom­ing an issue since nei­ther Tina’s or Gregoire’s place was entirely suit­able to hang out.  Gre­goire, though, finally began to take charge of his place and cleaned it up, with Tina’s help.  He sug­gests that Tina can stay over more often if it would make things eas­ier on her for school, or just her own san­ity from her nosy parents.

I think that’s not all that odd.  They have been dat­ing about a year, if a lit­tle less than that.  How­ever, Tina took excep­tion to this and seemed to have a prob­lem.  The issue, as she put it is that Gre­goire is get­ting too close and too seri­ous.  He doesn’t see it that way and thought he was merely help­ing and has said as much… Any­way, the story con­tin­ues and gets more frus­trat­ing the longer it goes on, so I’ll end the story here.

My thought and advice to my friend is that he needs to be a dri­ving force and find out what’s really going on and cut­ting through the bs. I believe Tina is the one actu­ally devel­op­ing feel­ings and wants to push Gre­goire away.  I can’t be sure, but this a clas­sic play in rela­tion­ships, espe­cially for those that “want to keep it casual.”

I tell my good buddy to really get to the heart of the mat­ter, but he keeps get­ting hung up on the mixed sig­nals he’s now get­ting: Tina will say, “We shouldn’t hang out any­more” and yet they end up kiss­ing and being inti­mate.  She says, “I want you to see other peo­ple,” yet she ven­tures off for the week­end with him and they share inti­mate moments together…

My advice is, “Dude.  This is crap!  You need to know where you stand and you need to tell her where your feel­ings are at.  She needs to tell you so you know if there’s some­thing there to work on, or if you should move on.”  It’s clear that this thing isn’t casual any­more and prob­a­bly hasn’t been for some time.  I do casual rela­tion­ships and they ain’t cut­ting it on the casual front!

All I get from my friend is a reluc­tance to act.  He clearly really likes this woman and wants to be in a rela­tion­ship and I sus­pect she does, too.  How­ever, for all of their talk­ing and chat­ting, they’re not say­ing ANYTHING.  In fact, their actions tell the story here.  If Tina wanted out of the rela­tion­ship, she’d have walked long ago… Yet she con­tin­ues spend­ing time with Gre­goire.  Gre­goire is in the same area, I think he’s a lit­tle more hon­est with his feel­ings, but not enough.  I would like to shake my friend and his woman and say, “Look you and you!  Look at me, look at each other!  Embrace and ‘Let’s Get it On,” in the style of UFCs Big John McCarthy.

Gre­goire and Tina, just have your make up sex already, you kids are irri­tat­ing me!

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