Ignore-A-Text

I suck at dating.

I hate hurting people's feelings or letting someone down. I'm genuinely flattered by someone's interest, but I also get sick of people way too quickly. I consider it nothing shy of a miracle that I've been in 4 long-term relationships, although I'm just realizing now that all of them (including my marriage) were long-distance for the most part. It's now less surprising that I put up with those people for so long, but I digress.

People.

Upon moving into the city, I had decided that I was going to meet lots of new people whether at school, at the park or through friends new and old. I planned on having an open mind, going on dates and just having fun, so I did. I met new people. I went on dates and I had fun just being out, but I'm stuck with what you might call some "clingers" now.

Avoiding future "dates" by being "super busy" didn't solve the problem, so I decided to gently lay it all out on the table with the age-old "I'm don't feel like I can get involved" line. That didn't seem to work either. So now I'm just straight-up ignoring the texts. Lucky for me, the phone hasn't started ringing. If it does, I might have a meltdown.

These were genuinely nice guys: they were kind, funny,  attractive and they had jobs (bonus!). For about a week, I thought I was really into one of them but that faded after his 476th text. Another I only met once for coffee, but he's asked me out about two dozen times since then. I haven't responded to the last text asking me to go out this week. I've run out of excuses and "Sorry, but I'm obviously less interested than you are" just seems a little too harsh.

Maybe I'll just be super busy for another little while until they run out of energy. Or interest.

Whichever comes first.