I’ve been spending a lot of time with or thinking about my ex these past few months, so perhaps it isn’t so strange I’ve felt myself falling more and more for him, despite having broken up nearly a year and a half ago.

He is set on moving on, and wants me to as well. This has been his message for a year, but somehow I haven’t believed it. But I’m starting to.

This year has been off to an interesting start. It ostensibly is one of the most exciting times in my life, as I finally separated from my job and have time to focus on whatever I want, something I’ve yearned for for years. Despite the separation coming sooner than expected, my finances were in a better place than ever in my life, so this should have been perfect timing. But then the whole stock market tumble through January happened, and I happened to have made some huge bets on credit on a particular biotech stock that has plummeted much faster than the rest of the market. So, I’m precarious at best, vastly overextended in an effort to avoid selling that stock while it’s so low. Perhaps I should cut my losses, but I’m holding out for now. This really better be the last time. It’s like the bitcoin incident x30, currently.

So, I’ve really been trying to focus on what I’m doing with my life. Inevitably, some of this focus landed on my lack of love life. Since moving to Japan and returning and traveling around the world, I’ve been unable to reflect much on my feelings. Physical instability seems to have masked emotional instability, but now that I’m sitting at home every day focusing on my life, I’ve found I need to deal with emotional issues that have been on the back burner.

When thinking about future love, I find I’m not quite as convinced I have nothing to worry about. More and more friends are getting married, and while I don’t feel rushed to do so myself, I do wonder if I’m doing more harm than good in holding out for an idealized polyamorous relationship structure I don’t even know for sure would work. Of course nothing’s certain in any area of life, especially in romance. But maybe I’ve been too easily dismissing the idea of one person and only one person forever. Lately I haven’t even wanted to meet new guys despite being single. I’ve just been yearning for the one who I no longer have.

Coincidentally, I’ve been working with him on a side project for a substantial number of hours in January and February. I’m sure that’s made me think even more about him, which probably contributed to a slight catharsis when he was last in town. I was clearly feeling like a boyfriend, and he felt he needed to make clear that fire wouldn’t (or couldn’t?) be rekindled. On the face I know there are many reasons I should happily accept this. He points out there’s much about which we disagree and have totally different ways of thinking, how he is mean, isn’t comfortable enough in his own skin to come out to his parents, and more. But still I find myself deeply yearning.

I am truly happy to still be his friend, one of his best, perhaps. He had insisted in the past on cutting ties completely, on more than one occasion. I fought this every time; it feels so unnatural to me. Through some fortune he has relented and remained in my life, and I realize I must not drive him to regret trusting me.

So, to move on.

For years I had resisted signing up for more dating sites, notably OKCupid. I’d heard that one was based on something scientific, so I figured I’d give it a shot. It was mildly exciting setting up a new dating profile. In retrospect, that probably started removing layers from my shell that’s blinded me to other guys so much recently.

Once set up, I browsed the supposed matches, but disagreed with the algorithms. The results, a couple of weeks later, have been mediocre, though admittedly so was my effort. I carried on a brief conversation with one person who seemed interesting, but he hasn’t been online to carry on the thread. Another person with whom I matched is someone who lives within a half mile, which I know through other location based apps. He is someone I’ve known of for a year or more, but have never met. After briefly chatting on the site, I figured maybe he really was a gem right under my nose, and asked to schedule a time to meet. Till then, I had only asked him on a whim if he was free, but never set something up in advance. This time I did, he said yes, and a few days later: he didn’t reply to messages. Later he said he had a hell day at work, but I lost interest.

Around the same time, I had a brief chat with someone on Jack’d. I thought he was super adorable, and he seemed interested. Only he signed off before giving me his number, and then didn’t check his messages for weeks. He signed on though, multiple times a day. So I sent messages periodically. But when you open a thread with someone and see a dozen unreturned messages, you feel pretty ridiculous. Of course this is excessive, but I rationalized since he showed interest before, and was not actually opening the messages, having sent many before didn’t count exactly in the same way as sending unreturned text messages did. Over this period, I became somewhat infatuated with him. I had a relationship with his photo that I loved. And familiarity breeds desire, I’ve read. I started to realize I was liking him way more than he possibly could be liking me, and in all likelihood, the way things were going, if we ever did meet, I could only be disappointed.

Well, finally, about 10 days ago, he replied! He told me he was sorry for not checking messages, and he gave me his number. We had a long text conversation and seemed to get along well. But he wasn’t free to meet for a while, due to school registration and other issues.

In the mean time, I reached out to another virtual friend who lives nearby but whom I haven’t yet met. I had known him for several years, but he isn’t one to meet someone by coming over to watch a movie and hang out, apparently, so we never met. I asked if he wanted to get dinner sometime, and he said a night this week would work. He wasn’t super communicative, but he did set a specific restaurant and time, so I felt he would at least show up. It was rainy, and I was 10 minutes late getting to the Marina, but we had our date and it went decently. It was my first such date since meeting my roommate Derek and meeting my friend Eric, separately, at the end of 2012. While neither of them became my boyfriend, they are both important people in my life. So I guess I was hoping for a lot, but I must say I’ve very little idea what he thought of me. Despite our having a good conversation at dinner, he’s remained as communicative after as before. Not in a clearly uninterested way, but definitely not in a clearly interested way. I’d like to get to know him more, but I don’t think he thinks I’m the one. I tried to ascertain his likelihood of hanging out working on projects together, since he is a software engineer at Apple, but it seems his passions lie in music and singing, so I doubt we’d have a lot to contribute to each other’s happiness right now.

After a that date, the other guy, whose number I recently got, said we should meet Friday for lunch. I was a bit sad I’d have to wait another two days after all this silly buildup, and a bit sad it would not be dinner that could possibly lead to hanging out after. But a lunch date is better than no date, so I gladly accepted.

Thursday I texted asking if he decided a time and place yet. And come Friday at lunch, he hadn’t yet replied. I finally told him after 1 p.m. that I had passed by downtown on a run, waited for his text, and had since returned home and was going to eat alone. He eventually replied and apologized, but I wasn’t feeling as loving, but I didn’t say anything rash.

As luck would have it, late last week when I was feeling particularly frustrated with a downward spiral, I may have met someone promising. I accidentally got into one of those app checking cycles where you realize you’ve wasted so much time looking for guys that you really want it to pay off, so you keep trying to find a good one. All unproductive day later, you get desperate. Well, I typically avoid faceless profiles, but this time I messaged one and he said he’d be up to coming to hang out. He sent one face picture that was somewhat blurry, but seemed cute enough.

Once he arrived, I was shocked how much I liked his face. We got along pretty well, and he walked with me to The Little Chihuahua so I could eat, though he had already eaten. In total we didn’t hang out that long, so I don’t know that much about him, but I think I’ll be seeing more of him. He came to watch a movie one night since then already, which is more than I can say about just about everyone.

I’ll leave this here, as I’ve been writing almost an hour longer than I though I would, and I really need to not screw up my schedule this coming week. Oh, and just there, a yawn.