He freaked me out. And to this day I don’t regret ending contact with him. We only met up once a full year ago and he had been incessantly stalking my Facebook and Instagram accounts ever since. Just about every status update and every photo uploaded was met with a ‘like’ and some sort of over-the-top compliment within mere seconds. Seconds.
I owed him nothing and he made me incredibly uncomfortable so I ended contact. His texts were creepy and intrusive and his compliments were ridiculously intense. We couldn’t engage in a normal conversation without him interrupting to say things like, “Wow! You’re super freakin’ beautiful and intelligent.” I don’t care how nice he is, that is neither normal nor comfortable.
“Thirsty” wasn’t the immediate adjective that came to my mind. I was just uncomfortable and told him that his behavior was a little unsettling. My girlfriends’ opinions ranged from, “Eww, thirsty creep!” to “Aww, he seems sweet but just be careful in case he’s a nut.”
After his refusal to tone it down AND an incident when he proceeded to pry into a personal matter to ‘make me open up’ to him I was finished. I refuse to be uncomfortable or to be MADE to do ANYTHING, least of all by some guy I barely know.
Later on, I started thinking about what we desire in relationships and a million questions came to mind. Don’t we all say that we want a man who adores and dotes on us? Don’t we say that we want a man who tells us we’re beautiful and makes us feel special? Are we so used to chasing down the praise-withholding, two-timing ‘playas’ that we mistake the really good guys for thirsty lames?
Was this particular guy thirsty or just a man who really knew what he wanted and needed to tweak his approach a bit? How do we tell the difference? Is there a general definition or is it all relative? Have we been looking at dating behaviors all wrong? Are we conditioned against the good/genuinely interested guys? Why do we even use the word ‘thirsty’?
Being as objective as possible, the only all-encompassing answers I could come up with are 1) ‘Thirsty’ absolutely is a relative term and so oft misused that its original meaning has become very cloudy. While we don’t want to mislabel the good guys who are persistent, we do want to ward off those who give us an uncomfortable vibe. And while we shouldn’t reject anyone out off hand based on any number of superficial factors – we also shouldn’t be made to feel badly for steering clear of creepy situations.
I go completely by comfortability, forget thirst. If you’re coming on too strong or too weirdly, I address it. If you continue as before then, “Deuces!” Solid boundaries, block features and ‘report harassment’ pages are effective tools in keeping the crazy out.
All the labels are immaterial and a bit childish. We cannot continue to depend on our girlfriends, reality tv and popular terminology to guide us when it comes to dating. The range of subjective life experience alone will have us spinning our wheels. I may get my girlfriends’ advice but at the end of the day it is my decision to make as an intelligent adult. And in my experience, the guys who win are those who know how to respect boundaries while still showing their interest.
La Truly’s writing is powered by a lifetime of anecdotal proof that awkward can transform to awesome and fear can cast its crown before courage. La seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change among young women through her writing. Follow her on Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly and AboutMe http://www.about.me/ashley.hobbs.
