Look, I am an eternal optimist, and I am seeking to find my forever someone to share my rich life with. This means, admittedly, I can rationalize red flag when I see them, and seemingly always to my detriment. I want to believe that people make mistakes, or miscommunications happen, or not everyone is perfect, and therefore, something that should be a red flag might just be a misunderstanding, or a cultural difference, or a lovable quirk. And maybe I have a red flag of my own - I allow the drama to unfold until I am absolutely certain, beyond the benefit of the doubt, that this guy is no good.
Enter the Nonner. Sure, that's what we'll call him. (His name is Paul, but since I dated a real live human named Paul, I'd rather not confuse the two.) Things started off well. So good! Magical! How was he single? He seemed so level-headed, so even and cool. He may be a bit introverted but that's not a deal breaker. He loves traveling for the experience. He doesn't have a life list of things to cross off, he just wants to enjoy wherever he is. Amazing! What a different perspective, but beautiful. He was open to me planning trips and he'd be a great travel partner. He is good at directions and his mind is a steel trap for dates, times and numbers. Wonderful - he makes up for my shortcomings! And when not traveling, he was eager to cuddle up with me and chill, do whatever I want to do and give me all the physical affection I want. What a dream!
We seemed so aligned on what we wanted and our compatibility, and I knew I had a bunch of work travel coming up, so I suggested we meet up. He said he appreciated my directness, but wanted to do a call first, adding as a joke in parenthesis that it would also serve the purpose of confirming we're both real people. He was kind and unassuming, saying if I was open to that, I could tell him my availability. So sweet, and okay maybe I was rushing things.
We had a call, and it was honestly really nice. The conversation flowed easily, he got to hear me laugh several times, there were no issues at all. In fact, I felt like we could have kept talking for another couple hours, but he indicated we should wrap it up shortly after an hour. I know introverts will sometimes feel drained during high-intensity social interactions, so I assumed this was his energy waning, or he wanted to save some conversation for our meet up.
And even though he was the one who made the joke about confirming we were human, I had my suspicions based on some of his responses, which were alleviated once we chatted. I was even more excited to meet up with him, but the clock was ticking - as I had a business trip to Phoenix coming up. Interestingly, he also had a trip coming up to Gilbert, a suburb of Phoenix, and it was going to overlap with my trip. He had inquired if I would have time while in Arizona to meet up with him. Since it was such a short trip, and back in my old stomping grounds, I told him probably not, because I'd go swing dancing one night, had plans with a couple friends and would be working long hours otherwise. But I told him I'd let him know if that changed. And he promised to send me lots of pictures and tell me what he was up to.
In the meantime, we kept texting with a really nice banter and he was so flattering. I'd share pics of various things and he would gush with compliments for me. Then I tried again to test the waters of meeting up. His response was a little rude, "Gilbert, remember?" I admitted I didn't recall the exact dates, and hadn't realized he was already there, and that I generally don't have a good memory for dates and numbers. That was when he told me he could compensate because he was great with dates and numbers.
Then things started to get weird. I hadn't heard from him for a couple days, which is fine, if he was busy. I was busy, too. I had traveled to Phoenix and had my first day at Luke Air Force Base. So as I texted him on Monday afternoon, I was a bit surprised he had nothing interesting to share about his 3 or 4 days in Gilbert. I playfully pressed him on sending me pictures of anything, and he said, "This place is desolate! You want some tumbleweed pics lol?"
Tumbleweeds in Gilbert? I mean, maybe way out in the rural part, but Gilbert is a thriving city with tons of restaurants and shops and streets. I couldn't recall ever seeing a rogue tumbleweed there at all.
Ok friends, this should have been the first glaring red flag. But I skipped right over it. I replied, still trying to be playful, "What? How dare you! It's beautiful here! Best sunsets in the world."
"I wouldn't know, I'm [usually] doing other things that I never notice the sunsets," was his reply. I don't love that, but fair enough. The natural progression seemed to be, "What have you been doing?"
Defense, deflect, don't answer!! He replied, "I meant I generally never notice sunsets. When's your dance get together?"
Okay, I was onto him now. Or at least, I was sus. And I was feeling bold, and still trying to be playful. So I went for the gut punch, but cute. Call him out, but add the lol: "Lol wow changing the subject!"
He responded, "Was there anything left to probe? Not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Figured my statement on sunsets was definitive [thinking emoji]."
Ok, he doesn't understand how basic communication works. I mean, he is single at our age, so there had to be something wrong with him, right? Alright, I'll be nice, because, of course. I responded, "I was hoping to learn what you've been doing… Literally anything other than not doing anything [pout emoji]."
It went on an on like this. He pretended to be hurt or not understand, and when I'd explain how basic conversation works, he would express that he understood, would not answer appropriately, and change the subject. "Honestly? Nothing too exciting. I've mostly been exploring, checking out some local spots, getting outside a bit, and trying not to melt in the heat."
So, another non-answer. Full court press. Use his robo-accusation back at him. "That sounds interesting but vague enough you might be fake. [yeesh emoji - IDK what its called but it’s the face I make when I say, 'yeesh'.]"
You ready for his response? I don't think you're ready for this. "[Laugh emoji] Fair enough. So how's Phoenix been treating you since you landed?"
Now I am pissed. Full court press. No excuses. Drop the friendly teasing. This guy is actively putting up walls and I want in. I worked really hard on the response. "Ok sorry I was being a little snarky hoping it would playfully nudge you. But to be honest this is actually annoying me now. I was really hoping to see pics or something of your time here and you sent nothing for a couple days. And then I ask a few different ways for you to share and you keep being vague and changing the subject. I think I've demonstrated I'm an open book, I'll tell you anything you want and I over share. But I want to know you. And if you're not going to share your personal life with me then that's not very encouraging."
You can tell in his response that he is very good at affirming, calming language to diffuse situations. "Got you - I hear what you're saying. Nothing too structured, just been out around Gilbert, grabbing coffee and walking around a bit."
Still unsatisfactory. But so sweet, right? Arrrrgh! It went on like this so I'll skip ahead a beat. Without any specifics, I told him I appreciated him sharing a little more, but asked if he is usually this quiet over text, and told him it felt one-sided. He again used that affirming, understanding language, and said he'd work on it. Point being made, I finally let him off the hook and answered his question about the dance.
The next day, after wrapping up work and texting a little update to him, trying to lead by example(?), I asked how his day was.
"Fine"
Oh my gosh. What did we just talk ab- nevermind. "Just fine?" I probed.
"As opposed to?"
I am furious. Breathe, Laura.
"Brilliant! Rejuvenating! Hilarious!"
He explains himself now:
"I never use those adjectives
"To describe my day
"I'm not as expressive as you. I've very low key, chill, mellow."
Why am I so patient? I tried again. "That's ok. But will you tell me something about your day?"
"Help me understand the assignment [smiley face]
"If I told you I had tacos for dinner, would that satisfy your curiosity about my day, or are you looking for something else?"
I have two problems with this. One, the assignment. Maybe it was said in a cutesy way, but it could also be taken as I'm putting an unwanted burden on him by asking him to elaborate beyond "fine." Also, he never ACTUALLY said he had tacos, he just asked if…
So I tried to explain. Gawd I hate my level of patience sometimes. Absurd. He doesn't deserve me. "What you did gets 50%. Other 50%, relate it to you, or tell me why it stands out to you. e.g. Were they tasty? Too spicy? Was it difficult to order because the cashier only spoke Spanish?" All fair questions for someone visiting Arizona. But he is a master of defense, not a visitor to Arizona, as we'll discover later.
"This feels like a journaling prompt [smiley emoji] What did you do + how did it make you feel".
Yeah brah, that's kind of the point. I told him, "There's probably a reason for that [wink emoji]."
And then, I mean honestly, MASTER of defense, says, "I'm not built for chronicling my meals like a food blogger. I stay in my lane."
Do you know what food bloggers do? How much they write? If they wrote, as I suggested above, "the tacos were a bit too spicy for my taste," and nothing else, that would be the WORST FOOD BLOG EVER.
But he didn't have tacos. He couldn't blog about his Arizonan culinary quest because he wasn't on an Arizonan culinary quest because he wasn't in Arizona. Sorry, jumping ahead again.
I'm doubly pissed now (but still so nice - why?). "Ok but you say you're focused on experiences, so I'm trying to hear about your experience." I continued with more questions and he continued with more defenses. "I am succinct," was a good (bad) one. I told him it reads as if he's putting up walls, and explained that he didn't have to be a "food blogger" or "expressive" to carry a basic conversation. I asked him if he felt unsafe to share with me. He said no, and pointed to one time a while ago when he texted me, "Thinking of you."
At a loss for words, I left him on read for a while, and then responded "Ok," and left it at that.
And then he continues. Succinct my ass! "I don't mind at all if you want to narrate your day if its something you enjoy, I'm here for it. Laura, I enjoy talking to you. I'm not trying to shut you out." I mean, how much condescension can one put into words? He hasn't even met me and already he's supporting me in my flaws, of being, you know, a human being who makes conversation with a guy she's interested in talking to. "If its something you enjoy." I just, I, wow.
He shared nothing interesting over the next few days, clearly not putting in the effort he claimed he would. But we continued some of our silly banter and hypothetical questions. I waited patiently - so patiently - for anything to come through. I gave him a challenge to try to make plans to see the sunset and send me a picture. Nada.
Suddenly, and without warning (at least, he thought), I was on the plane to South Padre Island. He thought it was in July. Not so good at those dates, eh? But I reminded him that he had no reason to be jealous since he wasn't even going to be back in Texas until a few hours after we left. He confirmed his flight, clear as day, "Yep 430 flight 12th." Yada yada yada, lots of texting, all good banter, still not giving me a lot of personal details, no sunset pics, but fine whatever. Things were good. 
On the 13th, at 10:50 am, he sent me an airport selfie. I should have been grateful. A picture! Of him! And he explained the close crop because the guy next to him got in his shot. But, the timing was all off. "I thought you were coming back yesterday…" I said. "I got it wrong," was all he had to say for himself. Mind you, he had told me he was really good at remembering dates and numbers before, and had gone and confirmed his flight details to me earlier in the text thread. And the time wasn't even right. Why would you be at the airport at 10:50 am for a 4:30 flight?
But it was worse. It wasn't the PHX airport. It was the DFW airport. I could tell from the signs. So he was at the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong day, AND he had no pictures or interesting tidbits to share from two weeks visiting Gilbert, Arizona?
It was a fake trip. There is no other explanation. He used a pretend trip to get out of meeting up with me. He fabricated the whole thing, AND got his made-up dates and times wrong.
But I was on vacation. I may have had plenty of time on my hands, but I had no interest in combing through the messages to trace back why I was confused. Just let it go, and enjoy the selfie. He even joked the selfie was proof that he was a real human and not a bot. I mean, sure, but the trip was fake, my friend!!
After more cute banter and me oversharing pictures and how great of a time I was having on vacation, I was feeling wanting of male attention, so I asked again if we could meet IRL (cute, right?).
And this is where he gets the Nonner nickname. Because not only is he a non-food blogger, he is a non-everything. Non-anything? Non-all of it, Nonner. Because when I asked if we could meet, he gave me the non-iest non-answer a non-answerer could non-answer.
"We'll see [wink emoji] depends how the timing shakes out with all the crisscrossing travel going on"
For me, "we'll see" equates to "no." But I pressed, ever patient, uncertain if I told him the specifics of my upcoming Greenville work trip or not. "Do you have more travel planned?"
More non-ing: "Possibly. We'll see. More importantly, did you wind up getting the matching tattoos?"
WHOAAAAAAA! Three non-answers in a row and a quick non-sense pivot?!? What'd I tell you? He's a master of this.
"Another non answer. Got it. Ball's in your court I guess. I'm done asking. Good night," was as nice as I could be. I was livid.
The next morning, I get a long winded text about how he's so confused by my irrational reaction. Because, obviously, I'm the problem. This blog post is longer than I intended - I was going to summarize all of this - but the reality is too good not to write it all out, so let's go.
"I'm honestly confused. One day we can talk and banter for hours with no issues, and it feels like we're on great terms. Then another day, it feels like you suddenly have a problem with how I communicate. From my perspective, that's hard to reconcile because I don't feel like I've changed. Can you help me understand what's going on?"
I mean, gaslighting and blatant dismissive lack of accountability aside, it's a reasonable request to ask for clarity. But I was pretty done-so at this point. So I crafted a long account of what I now realized had transpired.
"I can help you understand. It's not a sudden problem with how you communicate out of nowhere. It's that your actions and timeline completely contradict each other.
"For someone who told me you have a 'great mind for dates and numbers' the math here doesn't add up. You told me you were flying back on Friday the 12th on a 4:30 pm flight. Then you sent an airport selfie on Saturday morning - standing right in front of the DFW Terminal E gate sign - and you said you 'got the date wrong.' Even if you meant you flew back on Saturday, a morning selfie at DFW would make zero sense for a 4:30 pm flight out of Phoenix. Now you're using vague potential travel as a reason we can't meet up. You sent no pictures and nothing real about Arizona. It seems likely you weren't there at all actually.
"I have genuinely enjoyed some of our conversations, and our phone call had a great flow. But when I try to ask straightforward questions to bridge the gap or move things forward, I get vague non-answers and deflections. Telling me you're 'honestly confused' right now feels incredibly indicative of gaslighting when its your own conflicting stories causing the breakdown.
"You have consistently avoided actually meeting up. If you genuinely want to pursue this, the next step is a real, concrete date - tell me the day, time and place. If you aren't ready or willing to make actual plans to meet me in person, then please stop wasting my time."
To this direct confrontation, he pulled out all the stops on gaslighting: "I hear you. I'm not going to go back and forth on timelines or details, and I'm not trying to mislead you or waste your time. If that's not something you're comfortable with, I understand. If we meet up, I'm open to keeping it simple and seeing if we click in person."
There are soooooo many problems here - for starters, it's me who isn't comfortable with lies? Yeah. And let's keep it simple aka don't ask me anything that will further confirm I've been a big fat liar this whole time.
I wasn't sure I'd respond, but then he sent another: "I can meet you on Wed, Jun 24, at Hop & Sting Brewing Co in Grapevine. I'm available between 4 and 7:30 pm."
Gotta love that he came around, right? I mean, giving specifics like this really works for me. There's just one problem. I was in Greenville that week. Did he know that? Was he doing it on purpose to prove a point that I'm the one who is unavailable because I travel? I looked back through the messages and couldn't find anything that mentioned the specific timing of my trip. But I probably blabbed about it on the phone, and I have a poor memory for whether or not I told him specifics. So, honestly, no clue if he was doing that on purpose or not. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt, shall we?
But rather than admitting his assertion that we have travel plans that limit our ability to meet up, I was focused on how far out he had put the date - over week from now. If he was eager to meet up (indeed, he had joked about joining me on my beach trip before we realized he wouldn't be back from Arizona yet - presumably, anyways), then surely, asking him to meet this week shouldn't be an issue, right?
So here I go, one last time. "I really appreciate you putting out a specific plan - the place and time window work perfectly for me! Since we'll both be back in town this week, I'd love to not wait until next week. Can we make it happen this week? I have a few days that work - I can do this Tue, Thur or Fri afternoon during that same 4 to 7:30 pm window."
And the nail in the coffin was his response: "I'm going to stick with the availability I sent you, if that doesn't work for you, no worries and we can skip meeting."
The word "skip" here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. He went from wanting to cuddle all the time, and not being a good texter so therefore wanting to just spend time in person with me, and travel the world with me to "skipping" the meeting part?
By offering a hyper-specific date a week out—knowing I likely mentioned my work travel on the phone—he engineered a trap where he got to look reasonable ("Look, I offered a date!") while ensuring the meeting would never happen. And even if, per chance, I was able to move the work travel to make that date work, a week out seems like enough time to engineer a new "crisscrossing travel" fabrication or create another situation where he "got it wrong" again. It was never about a schedule; it was about control.
Done. I was done. No response. Left on read. Then a few days later, he had the nerve to bait me into picking back up where we were good, like a system restore back to the latest uncorrupted copy of the relationship. "Be honest: what's the one story from the beach trip that you'd tell if you only got to tell one?"
I'll be honest. This sounds like a bot. I was with my beach travel companion at the time, and so when I read that to her, she fell for the bait, even though she knew the whole back story. She started telling me which story I should choose. I had to stop her. "Girlfriend, I'm not f-ing responding."
I really hope he texts me again. Something tells me it's not over. I mean, any prospect of dating this (likely robot) Nonner is over. But, please gawd, let the drama continue. It can't end like this. I need more non-blogger, non-essayist, non-traveler, nonner nonner energy in my life.
