I spent all night with XW..........on the phone

[AntoniaB]

25 years you're very right on the idea that if someone says they have no clue what happened a year later, that's a problem. For this guy it was 2 years later. He also didn't have any custody of his kid, which he kept breaking into tears over, and that's sad, but when I asked what happened there, he said "I don't know." My radar went off like crazy with him...one minute he was telling me that he was a very respectable guy in relationships who didn't sleep around and really respected women and was ready for rel., the next, I was told by a friend that he went up to the busboy to ask him where the "hot honeys" were because he wanted to "hook up" that night. This guy has spent a long time going into this restaurant and from what my friends there have told me, he laments about his terrible hand he's been dealt to anyone who will listen, but he does not do anything to "work on himself". He just finds women to distract him. At this point, when I or my friends are at the bar/restaurant and he comes in, we leave. The workers are calling him a leech ;-)

I went on a total of 4 hours of "dating" about 7 months after my divorce was over, and really it only amounted to 4 hours of talking to someone in a first meeting since we met in an online service. I felt instinctively it was far to early for this, and I guess everyone is different, but it's now another 5 months past those dates and I just don't look anymore because I feel like I'm still working on being ok with "me." I also don't think it's right to pull someone else into your vortex when you're still going through healing or transition. It's just not fair to that person. It's really no different from the WAS's behavior when they plunge into a new relationship. If you can be on here and talk about detachment and your words and actions express that you are "there", then date with no reservations. But Tad, your level of ATTACHMENT is so extraordinary in the face of such rotten and mean behavior, that in my opinion you have serious work to do on asking yourself why you have that level of attachment to pain before allowing any other women to think they have a chance in a relationship with you.

I mean, maybe these other women you've dated are attracted to "men in pain", but that isn't very healthy either...