Michael Makovi has generously agreed to share the true story about the two week period when he learned a lot about women.
Michael. Check out his blog by clicking on his pic.
Back in April / Nisan of 2008, I happened to meet a young woman on Facebook, whom I could tell had a damn good head on her shoulders. (She was communicating on a group I belonged to, about Maimonidean rationalism, discussing proofs that the Zohar is not an authentic part of the Jewish tradition.) I said that we should “meet up”, and we scheduled a meeting. Read that very carefully: I said we should ”meet”; I would pay the price for my ambiguity later.I used the word ”meeting” very deliberately. Suffice it to say for now, it was not a smart move by me. So we had our first “meeting”, and then, a few days later, we went on a date (*a* date, not *another* date). That night, I got to walk her quite a ways home, even though she kept telling me that she didn’t need an escort.
Over the next few days, meanwhile, we were having very long phone conversations, sometimes for three or so hours at a time. Sometimes, we were both getting up out of bed too late for class, because we kept talking to each other first thing in the morning. (I remember the highlight of my day being waking up, to see if any messages from her had come while I had been sleeping.) I actually still have saved all the text messages we sent to each other; I count ninety messages from her. So it was a rather intense relationship, I suppose. In fact, on our first meeting, which lasted several meetings, we made plans to meet again that same night! The plan fell through, because she got sick, but still, when you plan two meetings with the same person on the same day, you know something promising is afoot.
Meanwhile, for some reason that I no longer remember – probably because the “reason” was too stupid even for a sea-sponge – I got the idea in my head that perhaps, she wasn’t romantically interested in me. But of course, I didn’t want to sound like an idiot (which I think I was), so I didn’t actually ask her. Because that would be too obvious, of course.
So she called me one day and asks me if I’d like to meet up with her, right then, at that moment. I went to the appointed spot, and she had several friends with her. We proceeded to spend the next hour or two going clothes-shopping.
(Most.boring.time in my life. Look, this girl could have been a scantily-clad supermodel, and it’d still have been boring enough to drive a man near to suicide. I highly recommend to all the women here that you *never* take a man to a clothing store. *Ever*. If you have to, drop him off somewhere en route, and pick him up later. For the love of G-d, please, *never* take a man to a clothing store. And for some reason, my friend Neti also took me clothing shopping, but in her defense, I was in fact making romantic advances towards her that she was repeatedly declining, so she has an excuse. If you want to tell a guy you aren’t interested in him, just take him shopping for clothing.)
So, I had already had thoughts that she wasn’t interested in me romantically, and the fact that she took me with her girlfriends to a clothing store only cemented this thought in my mind. I thought maybe she was trying to subtly distance me from romantic-type thoughts so as to spare my feelings. I consulted with a female friend of mine, and she confirmed my suspicions.
Then, in my inexperienced, insensitive way, I *called* her – on the *phone* – to apologize to her if my repeated flirting and such had made her uncomfortable, and had made her feel the need to try to distance herself from me, etc. Of course, in doing this, I had unilaterally assumed how she must be feeling, without ever asking her (cf. http://habitza.com/2010/09/23/does-he-want-a-second-date/). Well, wouldn’t you know it, but she up and burst
into tears on the spot! In between her sobs, we had a conversation something like the following:
Her: WHAT DO YOU THINK WE’VE BEEN DOING THIS WHOLE TIME?
Me: Err…I don’t know…?
Her: The second time we were out, wasn’t that a date?
Me: Oh, the *second* was a date? Then what was the *first* time we met?
Her: You asked me if we wanted to “MEET UP”!!!! Ergo, it wasn’t a
date! But wasn’t the *second* time a date? And if not, why did you
walk me home the whole way?
Me: Err…oh…crud…
I then explained to her how I thought she wasn’t romantically interested, and was (to my sea-sponge-esque intelligence) trying to distance me, and such, and she asked me why I didn’t simply ask her. I told her that I didn’t want to sound stupid.
Meanwhile, for the past several times we had had conversations, she often accused me of not listening to her. She would tell me about her problems, such as her not knowing how to balance her desire to stay in Israel with her desire to finish her degree in America. Then, I would give her practical advice on how to solve that problem. Repeatedly, she’d say I wasn’t listening to her, and I’d respond that given my point-by-point practical advice, I was most definitely listening to her every word! But our conversations on this topic always ended at an impasse, with no satisfactory conclusion. We had several such conversations.
So a few days after the conversation of her sobs and my cluelessness, she called me and said we had to meet up again. She told me how much she liked me, etc. etc., but that too many times, I had failed to listen to her. Furthermore, the sob-conversation didn’t help. She told me that I reminded her too much of her father, who loved her but was too emotionally-dense to ever tell her that fact during her entire childhood. Plus, she had to return to America to finish her degree. On top of that, my lack of college degree or livelihood-earning-capability didn’t help either. She told me that she’d return to America, and that we should both date other people in the meantime, but that if and when she returned, we could resume dating. So that was that. I saw her one last time, when I saw her off to her bus en route to the airport.
Oh, and even after she left Israel, we were still communicating, and I managed to offend her yet again, when she was telling me more about her problems, and I yet again offered her practical advice. So then, with a rabbi with whom I had a havruta in learning Orhot Tzadiqim – this rabbi doubling as a marriage counselor – I discussed my supposed inability to “listen” to this girl. He told me that when women tell you their problems, they want emotional commiseration, *not* practical solutions to their problems. Finally, I understood why she thought I wasn’t “listening” to her, and finally, I understood why my defense (how could I offer point-by-point practical advice to her unless I very carefully listened to her) did not assuage her. Following this conversation, my rabbi would occasionally make a funny impression of me being an emotionless hyper-Yekke. (This rabbi learned under Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits – FTW!!!! (What’s FTW?) Also, I *totally* want him to be my chatan teacher when the appropriate day comes, but I digress…) So I asked the girl (by now in America) what would have happened had I followed this rabbi’s advice to give her emotional commiseration and not practical advice, and she straight-up told me, “We’d still be dating.”
And that was the end of that. Six months after she left Israel, she was engaged. Oh, and our entire relationship in Israel, with all its bumps, lasted one-and-a-half *weeks*. Yes, less than two weeks!
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