Cat-Man-Don't

As much as I enjoyed my emails with Cat Daddy, I just couldn't think of him without laughing. At him, not with him. Any man that calls himself Daddy when talking to his cats needs to keep that shit under wraps until he finds a woman who is so completely in love with him that she thinks its cute. I am not one of these women. At least not with him.

So knowing that I had to end things and that I honestly did think he was a nice guy and I wanted to be kind, I sent him a message that would hopefully let him down easy. I basically said that while I enjoyed getting to know him, I didn't think we were a good match. I was polite, sensitive and tried to make it painless. No one likes being rejected, but at least I'm letting him know instead of ignoring his calls. And I wanted to give him the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say before I closed him out.

Here are some choice bits of his response:

• "What specifically didn't work for you?" Are you freakin kidding me? You want a detailed account of all the ways you turned me off? Is that really what men want to hear? In my response to him I said "I'd rather just say that I didn't feel a connection over the phone because that's thetruth, but if you want me to be specific I can." I then gave him a few reasons why it didn't work for me. #1 We had agreed it would be a short conversation and it was very long. #2 He spent the majority of the time talking about his cats. #3 I felt like he wasn't interested in getting to know me because he didn't ask me any questions, just talked on and on. I also said it wasn't any one's fault, there just wasn't chemistry.
  

• "I'm feeling a bit discounted at the moment. I mean, here I spent all this time writing you thoughtful emails, trying to get to know you... It troubles me that you're willing to throw that all away because of a phone call." I'm not sure what he thinks the point of an online dating service is. Or maybe I have it wrong. I thought you get matched up with people with similar interests, get to know them and then decide if you want to take it to the next level (phone, meeting, sex, whatever). Do I have to have long intimate relationships with every person I email on eHarm? Because if that's the case I'm doing it all wrong. At any point I should be able to evaluate my feelings and decide whether I want to continue with him or not. I responded to him with "I know you spent time getting to know me and I'm sorry you feel it was wasted. I spent time getting to know you too, but choose to see it as a fun time where I got to know more about someone. It's not wasted, it just is what it is."

• "I was tired and I didn't much feel like talking." You could have fooled me. You rambled on for 75 minutes without taking a breath. And no one forced you to call me. I realize this is his attempt to save face because in his eyes I just dumped him. It's still crap!
  

• "I hope you'll reconsider, but if you don't, well, you can step in line with all the superficial people who've given me the same lack of consideration." Whoa! Back up the train of tears here buddy. Why am I superficial? Because I got to know you and didn't feel the chemistry? That's completely unfair. I responded with "I didn't feel the chemistry on the phone. I don't think it's any one's fault, but you can blame me if it makes you feel better. You can hate me if it makes you feel better. I just don't feel we are a good match." And if he really wanted me to reconsider, this might not have been his best tactic.
  

I thought I might have been a little tough in my response, but I had tried the nice approach and he wasn't accepting it. So I amped it up just a bit in my comeback. That might have been a mistake. Who knows.

Here are some snippets from his response to me:

• "I didn't want to do most of the talking or talk about my cats, but you weren't giving me anything to work with. If I wanted to do all of the talking, I would just talk to myself into a tape recorder. I had to fill the space with a bunch of junk that didn't interest me just so there wouldn't be dead silence." I honestly couldn't get a word in. I spent the last 50 minutes of the conversation waiting for him to take a breath so I could say I needed to go, but it never came. And if it was so horrible talking to me, why did he stay on the phone for so long? Is this more of him trying to save face? If he was controlling the conversation couldn't he talk about something that interested him? Why would you talk about something that didn't interest you if you were carrying the whole conversation? When I talk to myself I'm very entertaining.

• "It is not a man's job to entertain you." I think he's wrong. It's not every man's job, but the man who is trying to have a relationship with me? Yup it's his job to entertain me. And it's my job to entertain him. Not all the time, but for short intervals. We should be entertaining to each other. Clearly we were not.
  

I guess I can understand why he's angry and lashing out at me. Even though I didn't want to hurt him, he's hurt. But if he really felt about me the way he claims, he should have closed me out long ago. He did close me out right after he sent he last message. And that's OK with me. He can think whatever he wants about me. I'll always remember him as the Cat Daddy and giggle just a little.