So… My Bad?

Marathon Guy and I may not be able to recall the particulars of why our initial sparks died out, but it seems all of my girlfriends do. When relaying the story of my recycled find I received the consistent response that I had been to blame for things ending the first time. They touched on the same reasons I remembered, although R may have captured it best: “I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but I think you were the one that screwed that up.”

Uh, thanks gal pals. Perhaps the time to have told me this was last year? When I was still dating Marathon Guy?!

All right, so maybe I was to blame (and maybe I wasn’t), but what was with the overwhelming support Marathon Guy seemed to have within my circle? Almost everyone was in support of reviving this particular interest, having only good things to say about him despite us having only gone on two dates and talked for at most a few weeks. I can only assume they loved the stories I told about him, because of course they hadn’t met him. And let’s touch on that for a minute. I tell a good story, but it’s entirely colored by how I feel about someone, as I’m sure everyone’s stories are. They liked him because I liked him.

It’s funny, how we ask our pals to weigh in on guys or relationships, when at best they’re only getting one side of the story. A side very possibly crafted to place the storyteller and/or the guy in the best possible light, often by omitting very relevant, if unflattering, details.

Really I should wait until they can form their own opinions, by directly interacting with that person. Which is exactly what Marathon Guy said to me on our (second round) first date. He wasn’t referring to my friend’s opinions about him of course; it was about not wanting to read the blog. I had told him about it during our extended, drunken chatting, but he said he didn’t even want to read it, that he preferred to get to know me for real, the old-fashioned way. It was sweet.

As was the date, an unintentional recreation of our original first date in which we played bar trivia. Only this time we ate dinner as trivia had unfortunately been canceled. It felt... like the start of something that had somewhere to go.

Fingers crossed that I don’t mess this one up. Again.