She visited me twice. Most lately this July. Both were very brief, chaste afternoon strolls. I mean that quite literally. She went on two long trips this summer; during the first one (two weeks in May), I e-mailed her often. During the second one (four weeks in July and August), I didn’t e-mail her at all. Our e-mails since her return have been sporadic, ranging from terse and occasional to buoyant six-a-day conversations like old times. Last week she e-mailed me to ask that I please stop telephoning her, she no longer had the time. (I had called and left three messages for her in the previous seven days.)
So, I wrote a confessional e-mail saying I was wild about her; she wrote back and said she wished she felt the same way, she had no doubt I could make a woman happy. She didn’t sign the mail and that’s been it.

So. Now I pretty much feel like Wile E. Coyote at that moment where he hangs in mid-air after running off the cliff, and holds up the little sign that says “the end.” See, over the past couple years, my pen pal has grilled me repeatedly and at length about what I think makes long-term relationships work, what I like and don’t like about weddings, hinted that her mom is prettier and better-built than she after all these years and kids, flirted quite suggestively (well, a couple times, anyway, and usually before a visit was imminent), revealed the salient points of her sexual history, and asked me my thoughts on what I wanted out of a marriage someday. Seemed like sort of a guided path IMHO, one I was pretty much gleefully rolling and tumbling down. She also let me invite myself down to visit her as recently as July, hinting that the sooner I arrived, the better it’d be.

So, my mistakes of late have been the abrupt stop to e-mails when she went abroad, sending her flowers before she set sail (too eager, especially with the poem and all), and then falling on my face at her feet last week with the mushy e-mail. Waaaaay too eager. At least I think so – that sort of thing should be said in person, which is why it’s taken me two years to open up. She was supposed to visit me in February (you might be able to guess the date), but that trip was cancelled. I had rehearsed at least 57 varieties of emotional confessions for that weekend.

So, here’s what I wake up and fall asleep thinking, and I’d like you to either offer your thoughts on a good one from the list or from your own head that might win a lady over. A lady who is a bit of a catch and has more trouble with guys asking her out too much than the alternative.
1. Forget her. I did in fact already throw away everything that reminds me of her, anyway (maybe I am really a girl).
2. Try to re-open e-mail communication with light-hearted “wow, what a geek-out that was on my part last week/two/three weeks ago, let’s forget about it and go right back to normal” messages.
3. Call her, and try to do the same thing with voice.
4. Send fawning, hopelessly sentimental gifts and then call/e-mail. Already have half a dozen possibilities ranging from the sentimental to the maudlin ready to be bought and thrown into tissue paper.
5. Drop everything, drive down there like a kamikaze, show up on her front lawn unshaved, hungry, and twitchy-eyed. This one makes me laugh so much I haven’t completely dismissed it, just because it’s so fun to think about.
6. Drop everything, fly down there, call from a hotel, offer some benignly false story about “being in town for business meetings/classes over the weekend (but with lots of free time to see her).”
7. Move down there and stalk her.
8. Just sprinkle some fairy dust on the whole thing and have a happy ending – where can I buy some of this, please?

What I am most worried about is that I have hurt her by not writing as often as I did, and then embarrassed her with my fulminating proclamations. How long is too little/too long to wait for these things to subside before I face-plant again?

There’s not too much chance that any new boyfriend she might have would be big and strong enough to whup me (my only saving grace here is lots of time in the gym), but maybe I could embarrass myself in front of him, too, if such a man exists in her life. No such man did exist, as of a point-blank question she answered in July. I was pretty paranoid until that visit, about life in general – I quit pulling tubes the day of her visit, and feel more productive at work, happier, less fidgety, better-rested…and more smitten with her than ever.

Any thoughts? Thanks if you even read all this, let alone tried to figure out a way to edit it for publishing. To say nothing of answer it.

Tom

Dear Tom,