If your friends have to talk you into taking a chance and not giving up too quickly, why bother with him? Don't go all in until you're excited.
When I was in my 20's, before Mr. Fantastic, I also kicked guys out pretty quickly... and looking back, I see no reason why I should have kept them around. Guys who were great on paper but boring or didactic... guys who were cute but boring... Only once did I blow someone off that in retrospect might have been a great match. But he had a super redneck accent!! The fact that I gave up for such a shallow reason shows that *I* was a bad match for *him* at that time. So *he* dodged a bullet there.
Don't assume that a widower has the market cornered on relationship skills. We're all just doing the best we can, and some of us have done more work than others. My Guy talks circles around me on the emotional stuff, but he's still working with ME. His relationship skills are only as good as his ability to relate to me. If you think about the friendships you have that you really value, you probably will see that none of them are perfect enough that you'd want to be married to them, but they all have some quality that is really important to you. Same with the romantic relationship. It has to work on both sides. Your friends' input is really pretty irrelevant. If you're not feeling it, why push it? If you hide yourself in a mediocre "relationship" you might miss a good one.
With My Guy, I'm coming to the realization that a good relationship isn't necessarily what I thought it was. I thought it was like Shrek and Fiona, or something like that, where you're laughing all the time. And at moments it is. But it's also all the times that aren't film-worthy, like when it's Saturday afternoon and I NEED to get the laundry done and he NEEDS to go for a bike ride and we have to figure out how to make our time work so both our needs get met and we still get time together. It's me getting used to how he feels about hot weather and his family and skiing and a whole bunch of things I never had to think about before. How well I handle his stuff and how well he handles mine is an important part of what makes the relationship good or bad.
Take some time not dating! I don't know if you're a believer or not, but a friend of mine who married later in life told me that she believed that if God made you to want to be married, that he would not put that yearning in your life without also giving you the opportunity to fulfill it. But you have to be willing to sit back and follow your instincts to find the path that gets you to the right person. Sure, it's important to put yourself out there, but it's also important to be available.
Thanks for updating! I'm glad to hear from you.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
