Met a girl my third year of college. She was tall (like 6’), and I’m tall, so why not, right? We hung out a bit, and went on a couple dates. I did hold her hand and we snuggled a bit, but it was all over the course of a week, which was pretty far in my opinion. On top of that, she was in her first year, like three months out of high school, which was pretty young in my opinion.

Pretty quickly she started dropping hints that she wanted me to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet. One of those situations where she wanted to go much faster than I did. When she dropped the, “when it’s right, you just know, right?” line, I knew it couldn’t go on. But I was a little awkward, and didn’t know how to let her down gently. I tried to do a few clumsy hints, but it can be hard to dissuade a young lady with serious intentions. Should have just been a man about it.

Instead, I got this crazy idea to let her know there were other girls in the picture. Made plans to meet her at a basketball game, but was already sitting with another girl when she arrived. I went so far as to scratch the back of the other girl while we were all sitting there. We weren’t exclusive or anything, at least in my mind, and I’d hoped that she’d would see and understand that we weren’t as serious at that point as she thought. I misjudged. I went to talk to someone quickly, and she left in tears while I was gone. That one is on me. We did have an official DTR talk a few days after that, buy I think my message has already been delivered.

Weird part is, I saw her somewhat regularly for another couple semesters when she had classes near mine. She’d always make jokes about it, a little bitterly, and I could tell that if I ever wanted to take her out, she’d be willing to go. I’d hooked back up with my wife, though, so I never did. Not sad how it ended, she was way young and I feel pretty good about how it ended for me. But wish I’d been more confident to tell her straight and see if I could do that without making her cry.