No Trees Were Harmed in the Making of this Love Connection

So I wasn’t ready to meet someone brand new. But what if I re-met someone I’d known before? Maybe someone I’d only chatted with but hadn’t actually met... someone I’d liked but perhaps the timing had been off... someone who had decent potential but had been overlooked back in my finicky dating days.

Surely in all the men I’d dated there would have to be someone who fit that bill? Turns out there was.

Marathon Guy. Without rehashing all the details, there was a theory that my decline in interest was directly related to the resurfacing of a previous crush around the same time I had met Marathon Guy. I also seem to recall going through a very high maintenance dating mode surrounding text messaging.

It couldn’t hurt to see what he was up to, I mean in the entire year since we’d dated I had only run into him once (earlier this summer, Maifest). At the very least it might make for a good blog post.

So I sent him an email. I told him I had run across an old email (which I had, in my sent box where I was looking for his email address) and that I had remembered he was planning to train for the triathlon or marathon or both. Since it was just past the Chicago tri, I wondered if he’d done it, and how it went? I threw in the obligatory “not sure you remember me” as well as a statement about him not needing to respond given the randomness of the email.

But he wrote me right back! Email chatting ensued that same night and into the next day, and a mere 3 emails later he asked if I was seeing anyone. Since I wasn’t I was happy to send him my number (initially he apologized for losing it in a phone transfer but after I told him I’d deleted his he owned up to having done the same) as well as text him while I enjoyed my usual pizza/wine Friday night with friends.

I think you know what happens next. Marathon Guy shows up at the bar I’m at, ironically with one of the marathon runners I had run with the year before. He hits it off with her, chatting about FOID cards and the different gang signs from the shady neighborhoods they grew up in, but more importantly he hits it off with me. We can’t quite remember why things didn’t work out between us before.

We stay way too late at the bar, and after walking me home we stay up even later talking at my place. We also make out. And it is good.

We hadn’t really made out before, and it’s unfortunate, because it might have been the factor that tipped the scales. I had an early morning planned so I dropped him off on my way out for a run, pretty pleased with the progress I’d made in the last 48-hours. I am nothing if not resourceful.