LOVE || “I Pretend They Died”

by Charl Pearce

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Before I get full swing into this post, I would like to draw your attention to this post… Women = Mental, where I pretty much defend the male of the species and admit that a lot of the time, when conversing with men women can tend to get a bit “boiling of the bunny” – so please do not assume that I’m some kind if righteous man basher.I want to address the issue of the men who mysteriously disappear off the face of the earth.You know when everything is going well with a guy (pre or post date), conversation flows, you spend a good proportion of your day exchanging text messages, talking on the phone, Skyping, getting to know eachother – and everything seems peachy. True to the Women = Mental post above, men are simple beings – if they want to talk to you – they’ll talk to you. I always think you can tell someones keen-ness by the frequency of which they text, whether they text you first or on who calls who – these are small but important indicators of how much a man is into you (in my opinion).Alas, I am wrong.God forbid you should take these tell tale signs that say “HE LIKES YOU” and metaphorically high 5 yourself for being all kinds of awesome, because, I have to break something to you – men aren’t that simple after all.

Something very strange happens…they disappear – for no apparent reason. There’s no cross words, no awkward revelations that might scare your suitor senseless.. one moment you’re having a perfectly normal conversation, the next. Silence. They don’t reply to your texts, they don’t answer the phone – Nada. Zippo. Butt kiss.

“It’s like those guys who you have the great 2nd date with and then you never hear from them again, I pretend they died.” – Miranda Hobbs

I don’t know whether I should put this out there for fear of mocking, or to jinx myself in the future, but this has happened to me a couple of times. Each time I get even more bewildered than the last as to the cause and have therefore started to assume that they do indeed, die. Or get abducted by aliens.  I thought this was just me so, so I took to Twitter for a poll and low and behold, the number of girls I had who said exactly the same thing was astounding.  Good to see I’m not alone.

After a couple of charming and witty “testing the water” text messages (which go unanswered) and a phone call (that also goes unanswered) it becomes clear that this “gentleman” – I’m using that term loosely – has well and truly died.

The self assured and no bullsh!t woman inside me is crying out for me to just think “his loss!”, delete his number and move on. But there’s this inquisitive little voice inside me, like Sherlock-fucking-Holmes or something that is intrigued by it all and just can’t seem to let it go. “What did I do wrong?” it asks, “what’s wrong with me?”, “why won’t he talk to me?” – it appears that my inquisitve sub concious turns me into some whiny and needy chick. And that is what annoys me – because that’s not me, at all.  But my sub concious seems to implode and makes me look fucking mental.

Sometimes these men miraculously turn up weeks later with excuses of a broken phone/a sudden move to Yemen and sometimes you never hear from them again. A lot of the time, it’s no great loss in the great scheme of things, but sometimes it can be quite heartbreaking when its someone you really liked. Either way, what gets my goat is that you never know the reason, and it leaves you wanting (I’m going broach a word that wouldn’t seem out of place in some psychiatrist’s office) …closure.

To conclude, I leave the gentleman among us who may be reading this with a closing statement:

I know you probably think in your man brain that its easier to just disappear and hope that we “get the hint” that you don’t walk to talk to us anymore/died – but unfortunately, its not. All this does is throw up a thousand questions/make you look like the biggest kn0bhead of all time and in turn, you become the bad guy. What doesn’t make you the bad guy is taking the time out of your Houdini style disappearing act to actually explain to the poor girl (ie me) exactly why you’ll suddenly cease to exist so that she isn’t left wondering where she went wrong. In short, that whole “disappearing thing” is what makes you an asshole.

7 Comments

  1. Kieron

    Couldn’t agree more than this – guys who do this are cowards.
    They think it’s easiest thing to do and it is…. but only for them.
    The easiest thing isn’t always the right thing either.
    My thoughts are – too many males these day don’t know how to be “men”.
    Men don’t treat women like that.

    Reply
  2. Jules

    From my experience (over 10 years ago) and from knowing a few knob ‘ed male friends who were awful to some ladies, sometimes it’s a case that the man is purely edging his bets by not contacting, and if nothing better comes along he will always call you up again and use some feeble excuse to why he never replied.
    You would’t want a female friend who ignored you in such a way so i feel that it is just a case of deleting the man from your existence.

    Reply
  3. Sophia

    Another fab post! I really do love when you write stuff like this.

    I’ve experienced this myself so many times. And usually, if I am honest, from guys who have expected me to put out straight away or on first meeting, and I haven’t. But guys like that, who do do a disappearing act, aren’t really worth the hassle and as I got older I realised that and stopped letting it bug me when it happened.

    I think the most frustrating thing about situations like these is that as everything seemed fine, you’re left wondering what happened? And like you said, it can plague your mind without it even being down to anything you have done.

    Reply
  4. Sarah

    Yes, this has certainly happened to me, on more than one occasion. I just tried to ask my boyfriend why men do this but apparently he has never done this to anyone.. my only thought there is potentially this is the problem. Maybe they just don’t even REALISE. I wouldn’t be surprised; boyfriend’s dad told me when they went on holiday as a family once a girl followed boyf – then aged 16 – around entire two weeks, madly in love with him. He didn’t even see her and this story from his dad was the first time he’d heard of it.

    I digress. I suppose it’s just like the King Fish swimming miles and miles up a river to swim in circles, in that it happens but nobody knows why, and you could spend ages thinking about it but really it will get you no further.

    So perhaps you are just better off thinking they’re dead.
    X

    Reply
  5. Jodi

    This used to happen to me all the time, I am good at confronting people, when I saw the lad i was ‘speaking to’ out, I asked him. Apparently he had been busy. BUSY?? I flipped my lid. You cannot be busy right up until bedtime, it takes no more than seconds-minutes in writing a text or picking up the phone, finding my name in his phone book (he doesnt even have to dial )and ringing me GODDAMMIT.

    Sooooo, I turned the table, and quess what….

    I am still searching for the ONE <3

    Reply
  6. Matt

    A great post!

    Men are idiots, no question! But when this happens it is just plain rude! When I’ve been in similar situations (and to my close friends actually) whenever I go abroad or somewhere with no signal (or probable no signal) I warn them that I will probably “dead” for the vast majority of my time

    Obviously there is a fine line, and if I do this too much, which I often do, it can come across as coming on too strong or a bit odd. Which I can only presume some men don’t want to do, or as you say, they’re just hoping people get the message by avoiding texts etc

    Brutal honesty isn’t necessarily the way forward, but, at least one way or another, it does form the closure that stops you digging further for the truth

    Reply
  7. Louise

    I hate it when this happens, especially on Tinder or Whatsapp where you can quite clearly see they’re still using the app. It’s just so rude, it doesn’t take two seconds to just send a quick text explaining things.

    This happened to me with a guy I was seeing, he was supposed to come round one night, ignored all my messages and finally replied two days later with a sudden ‘I’ve met someone else’.

    You couldn’t have taken two minutes out of your day to just text me that when I was waiting for you to arrive? Or, if that’s too hard or confrontational, simply a ‘I can’t make it tonight, sorry, will explain later’.

    It baffles me when there is no reason for it at all, too. Last month I was having a really good conversation with a guy on Tinder then suddenly radio silence. My friend knows him and got drunk and confronted him to find out why (I begged her not to do this) and he just mumbled and shrugged!

    Men truly baffle me.

    I often go with the excuse of ‘abducted by aliens’ (even when I see him online and active on Whatsapp)

    Reply

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