I forgot to mention something that struck me as important:
He decided to be an hour late to band practice so he could spend more time with me. At first he said he wanted to go at 7.30 (instead of 7 as we orginally planned), and I pointed out at 7.15 that I knew he needed to get going. Then we kept talking for another 45 minutes. In the end he left at 8 instead of 7.
I actually disagree that it is more of the same. To enumerate the things I felt were different: -The overall feeling was much more open, relaxed, and genuinely friendly. The tone was completely different than our last meeting, or any of our previous post-bomb meetings. -He asked to meet me at a vegetarian restaurant called "caravan of dreams" (um... that sounds sexy to me). -He apologized twice for having to leave ("I'm sorry to cut things short"). It seemed like he wasn't just apologizing out of politeness, but that he actually wanted to spend more time talking to me. The last time we saw each other he didn't apologize at all that he had scheduled a conference call directly after our dinner meet-up. -He asked/offered to see me even though he was only in town for about 48 hours, had taken a red eye that morning, had two rehearsals, and was running on 4 hours of sleep (that he had gotten in two hour increments). Add to this the fact that he decided to be an hour late to band practice, it looks like, basically: he was making it a priority to see me. He absolutely did not have to do this. -The day after we saw each other, he sent me an extremely thoughtful email to try to encourage me more. The only thing near to this in the past was when he emailed me after our first dinner in June about 1800contacts. This time instead of being worried about my eyeballs he was concerned that he hadn't been encouraging enough to me.
Whether or not that means he wants to jump my bones, it is different than before. I am actually extremely happy to truly be in the friendship stage.
I want to celebrate what is working and what has shifted!!! At this point I am not interested in looking at what isn't yet there.
