Been talking to this person for a little while, but...

I'm having a tough time resolving exactly how to handle this. Maybe it's just the bigger situation that we're all in right now that is making me question myself.

About a month ago, someone made contact with me on Match who lives in the next town over. Despite the crisis and everything in our state being locked down, I responded to her, we chatted on the site for a bit, and we decided we'd talk on the phone, figuring we would meet up in person some day when things got back to relative normal.

Over the last three weeks, there have been five phone calls totaling about eight hours. If we were actually meeting up for dates, it's like the equivalent of that first meetup over coffee plus a couple of dinner-and-a-movie nights. At that point, I would have a decent handle on how I felt about that person and whether I wanted to continue dating them.

Right now, my answer would be no. This person has a lot of great qualities, but there's not much of a conversation going on. It's like someone is trying to fill up every second to talk at me, rather than with me. There's very little back-and-forth, it's mainly her going nonstop, and me trying to get a word in edgewise.

I know there are extenuating circumstances here. The business she owns is facing major challenges which she's handling extremely well, but it's stressful for her. And of course, we're all dealing with being isolated and lonely, and we don't know when this is going to end.

But in these conversations whenever she asks me about a challenge I am dealing with, I never get to finish the answer because she bulldozes over it with something she's going through. It's not like the challenges are the only thing we're discussing, of course. She could ask me to tell her about a movie I enjoyed recently, and I'll be a sentence and a half into talking about it where she will just break in and go on for five or ten minutes straight about three or four movies she saw.

I am trying to imagine myself actually going out to dinner and coffee with this person and feeling exactly the same way. Then sending a blame-free text the day after the third date like, "Hey, X, I had a nice time on our dates but I am not feeling a spark." She's really not an asshole, she is a good person, but I feel like if we're not compatible on this basic level, it's a bad sign.

How would you handle this?

Submitted April 25, 2020 at 11:49PM

I'm having a tough time resolving exactly how to handle this. Maybe it's just the bigger situation that we're all in right now that is making me question myself.About a month ago, someone made contact with me on Match who lives in the next town over. Despite the crisis and everything in our state being locked down, I responded to her, we chatted on the site for a bit, and we decided we'd talk on the phone, figuring we would meet up in person some day when things got back to relative normal.Over the last three weeks, there have been five phone calls totaling about eight hours. If we were actually meeting up for dates, it's like the equivalent of that first meetup over coffee plus a couple of dinner-and-a-movie nights. At that point, I would have a decent handle on how I felt about that person and whether I wanted to continue dating them.Right now, my answer would be no. This person has a lot of great qualities, but there's not much of a conversation going on. It's like someone is trying to fill up every second to talk at me, rather than with me. There's very little back-and-forth, it's mainly her going nonstop, and me trying to get a word in edgewise.I know there are extenuating circumstances here. The business she owns is facing major challenges which she's handling extremely well, but it's stressful for her. And of course, we're all dealing with being isolated and lonely, and we don't know when this is going to end.But in these conversations whenever she asks me about a challenge I am dealing with, I never get to finish the answer because she bulldozes over it with something she's going through. It's not like the challenges are the only thing we're discussing, of course. She could ask me to tell her about a movie I enjoyed recently, and I'll be a sentence and a half into talking about it where she will just break in and go on for five or ten minutes straight about three or four movies she saw.I am trying to imagine myself actually going out to dinner and coffee with this person and feeling exactly the same way. Then sending a blame-free text the day after the third date like, "Hey, X, I had a nice time on our dates but I am not feeling a spark." She's really not an asshole, she is a good person, but I feel like if we're not compatible on this basic level, it's a bad sign.How would you handle this?