For the Girls Trapped in the Talking Phase (Fiction Short Story)

These days I wonder when I ever put out into the universe that I was interested in becoming some sort of commentator, talk show host, podcaster, or any other profession that requires constant conversations to no end. Did I accidentally pray to become someone’s permanent unauthorized therapist? Did I imply to God that I would like to be engaged in a perpetual loop of useless good morning texts and how was your day messages?

I took stock of all the male creatures I have engaged with this year and suddenly found myself assessing how I ended up in the realm of endless text messages. When I embarked on this journey called dating, I certainly never anticipated that these creatures would enjoy so much useless conversation. I thought they were like me – that they would be interested in evolving from talking to actually establishing an actual relationship – whether casual or serious. I find myself wrong about my assumption and currently perplexed. Concerned even. 

Am I giving off a vibe that says: “Please, branch here if you are looking for a talking buddy?” When men see me, do they see an unofficial therapy wrapped in the persona of a sexy date wrapped in the impression of being one of the boys? 

I never can tell how they rope me into this uncivilized real of Talking. One minute, we connect and we are flirting. The discussions are clearly outside of the “friend zone”. They take me out for libations, they pay (showing me that this is indeed a non-platonic engagement), and then they regularly connect with me intimately through cute messages such as the popular “good morning” texts. 

I have come to realize that these “good morning” text messages are the gateway to entering this world. It starts off with cute well wishes at the start of the day, then we get consumed with the nuances of the work day, then we develop strong interests in the activities we are both engaged in after work, we speak at night, and then we begin the whole routine again for many days at a time. Next thing I know, we are sharing an intimate relationship without definition, establishment of boundaries, or mutual agreement on the parameters of the affair. The worst thing about this is that when it ends, I am perplexed as to whether I can categorize the demise as a heartbreak. When the talking is over, am I entitled to feeling heartbroken?

Guy 1 and I were connected by my close friend who is also his cousin. The match seemed very solid because I trusted him to be on his best behavior due to my closeness with his family. I quickly assumed that the talking phase would be just that – a phase! As soon as his cousin gave him the blessing to approach me, Guy 1 sent me flowers and instantly entered the role of the good morning texter. Though he lived in another state and time zone, he quickly immersed himself into my day-to-day activities and created a communication routine that gave the illusion that we were an item. Our conversations quickly escalated from light gist to divulgence of intimate details of our lives. Over the course of two months, we developed the strongest phone relationship of my life. I had never been so committed to that device like so. In the hopes that our phone connection would become real, I became a servant of the device. The notification dings had an usual hold on me. It started to feel addictive. I needed to hear the ding every morning to be reassured that Guy 1 was a real character. One day, after he spent 2 hours discussing the perils of his cracked relationship with his father, that was my first realization that I was being turned into an unofficial therapist. The next day, I voiced this concern and urged Guy 1 to finally purchase a ticket to see me. He quickly agreed and apologized for not planning the visit earlier. 2 days passed and he was still “planning”. 4 days passed and he was still informing me of the difficulty in selecting a ticket that would align with his schedule. 7 days after my request for a visit (and after I had reached my phone slavery capacity), he finally confessed that he had a fear of relationships and would rather continue “talking” until he was. 

That was my first introduction to the phenomenon of being kidnapped into the Talking Realm. Fortunately for me, I had been approached by other candidates who were ready to introduce me to a world where one does more than talking, so I happily removed Guy 1 from my roster. 

Guy 2. Oh Guy 2! I would summarize my experience with Guy 2 as being gifted a Hermès bag and being made to believe that it was authentic, only to further inspect the logo and discover that it says “Herm3z”. 

We met on an online dating application and quickly decided on meeting in person. He stood out from the dragons on the apps because he presented to be intentional. He called me before the date to ask about my purpose for dating and what I was searching for at the time. For razzle and dazzle, he even appeared to me a man who had sought therapy as we spent some time discussing psychology topics such as attachment styles, effective communication, and other fake-deep intellectual topics. Prior to the date, I was confident that I would not be stuck in the Talking cycle with this one. On our first date, he opened up about wanting love and wanting his own family with ease. Surprising ease. I was so surprised that I couldn’t reciprocate the vulnerability displayed. On our second date, he kissed me which further solidified my theory that there was no way I would be a victim of perpetual Talking. Soon the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th dates came and continued to remain romantic. We transitioned from going on dates to spending comfortable nights on the couch binge-watching shows. In my mind, we were transitioning from talking to exclusivity because we were making commitments to only watch certain shows when the other was present. It felt like a new level of intimacy was unlocked with that small agreement. We were entering the 3rd month of dating when I realized that our conversations were not extending beyond superficial topics – nothing about our wants, our ambitions, a potential future, or even taking a trip together. I realized I felt stunted. So while we were watching a new show, I found the courage to ask the questions most women dread having to ask: “Hey, we’ve been dating for some weeks. Is this a fling or is it more to you?”. His response? “No, it’s not a fling. It’s not a fling.”  My eyes were squarely tuned into what his lips would say in expectation that he would buffer that declaration with details about building a relationship – graduating us from the talking stage. Yet, he added nothing. After much probing days later, Guy 2 admitted that he was comfortable in the talking phase because he was having a hard time coming to terms with being with a woman who was not the same ethnicity as him. Ha! And that is how my Hermes bag became Herm3z. 

After Guys 1 and 2, I was confident that I had learned the tell tale signs of being unwillingly forced into unending talking. However, it seems Guy 3 was sent to shatter this theory of mine. He appeared to come and deliver the TKO punch that would inform me that there is another universe within the Talking Realm. We met at a time where I decided to take a break from dating. He approached me at a bar and we enjoyed witty banter and other flirty conversations that let us know there might be potential. At the end of the night, he confessed that he would be relocating across the country for a new job. I bid him goodbye remembering the tragedy of me + Guy 1. I was proud of myself for quickly detaching from my fantasy of potentially dating him. This pride was premature because he found my social media page and opened a communication channel starting with leaving seductive comments on my posts. At the time, I did not realize that I was being lured to this planet once again. This is how he subtly made his way into direct messaging. He would strategically send me memes about jokes we had began to privately share. When we found ourselves sending paragraphs on social media, he suggested that we upgrade to text messaging. 

This request made me raise an eyebrow. I felt protected keeping our engagements strictly on social media. I would tell myself that our conversations didn’t hold meaning since they were centered on memes. [Of course I was lying to myself because I sought out his messages each time I opened the applications]. Nonetheless, I ventured into sharing my phone number telling myself it couldn’t do that much harm. 

Unbeknownst to me, the introduction of text messaging was going to be the charm that would finally finish me. Guy 3 expeditiously infected my daily activities. He started with the most charming “good morning” texts. Then he moved on to mid-morning video calling while we consumed our pre-breakfast beverages. I became engrossed in his work life, the dynamics of his colleagues, his professional goals, and other details I had no business being involved in. He soon learned about my close family and friends, that he began to confidently ask about them by name. We even unlocked those small, but critical, levels of intimacy such as sharing carefully curated playlists, starting new series together and planning to only discuss them in-depth with each other, asking each other to remind the other of a random important errand.. At this stage, I knew I entered a level where the interaction was now risky. Initially, I actively dismissed thoughts of being together because I convinced myself that he was clearly looking for friendship. After all, who tries to date someone as they are leaving the state? 

By Day 62 of this Talking engagement, I summoned the courage to ask him how he was feeling about our interaction. He confirmed that he was interested and would have initiated being exclusive if he was not living out of town. The response was settling but unsettling. Unsettling because he did not follow up with exploring long distance or potentially visiting. Wanting to stay in my naive bubble, I decided to ignore this and bask in the thought of “he likes me a lot”. 

Not only did we continue to interact intimately with no boundaries, our conversations got deeper. We shared aspects of our lives that we truly had no business revealing to one another. I didn’t just like him, I loved his thoughts, I loved speaking with him, I began to look forward to hearing his opinions, I wanted to know what he thought about the latest movies, I loved hearing about how he was dealing with conflict. 

By Day 80, he shared that he would be visiting as the holidays were coming up. I found it suspicious that he didn’t express that part of his visit was to see me. Instead he chose to be evasive and claim that his long visit would be strictly due to family visits and the holidays. Should this have burst my naive bubble? Yes. But did I carry on? I did. 

I was unimpressed by his sudden avoidant nature, but I refused to believe 80 days of talking would be easily dismissed. So I continued to remain cheerfully engaged in the conversation, willfully participating in the flirtation by texting, and stupidly keeping up with the “how was your day” inquiries. My commitment to this non-committal relationship seemed to be paying off because by Day 90 he asked if we could “link up” when he arrived in town the following week. 

That bubbly excitement a girl is supposed to have when her crush asks her out was not quite the version I experienced. I felt like I had been offered a deflated souffle. On one hand, I was excited at the prospect of going out on a proper date with my semi-imaginary lover. On the other hand, I was being asked to “link up” by a man who has been listening to intimate details of my life for 90 days. This was the first real inkling I received that this was going to be another failed Talking Phase, but I struggled to accept it because how could someone who engaged in this level of connection allow this fizzle out? 

Feeling iced out by his lackluster invitation to a date, I reeled myself in and began to mentally socialize the idea that the other shoe was finally going to reveal itself. The week leading up to what was supposed to be THE date cementing the feelings that grew over the last 3 months, he began to display a variety of abstruse behaviors. He continued his cadence of communication, but he downgraded the depth of conversations. Though we were on the same time zone, the “good morning” messages became “Hey, how’s it going?” messages being sent in the late afternoon. His responses to my questions about his day were met with cold, generic answers. He was pushing me away, but still giving me enough to not notice being shoved. 

By the day of the meet up, I began to give myself a solid pep talk. The gist of this talk was that I needed to adjust my expectations, that I was just going to dinner to satisfy my curiosity, that I just needed to match the conversation with the face one last time, that I would just accept this as a platonic relationship and move on. As I was already reducing the worth of this budding relationship, he did not shy from displaying acts of disinterest. Amusingly, he selected the restaurant for our meet up a few hours before the agreed time. Then he pushed back the time by 1 hour. Every time he displayed signs of withdrawal through these messages, I would chuckle. I told myself it was too late to cancel, because I couldn’t even admit to myself that I needed to understand how this would dissipate into nothingness like the others. 

I waited in my ride-share car until he signaled that he was seated at a table. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting for him to walk in. I knew thoughts of being stood up would consume if I had to wait even one minute. I walked into the restaurant with low morale and personal plans to use this link up as a way to get closure on whatever this was. However, the way he embraced me for up to a minute upon my arrival challenged these plans. His excitement at seeing me again, his eagerness to revisit all the topics we had been discussing over three months, and his selection of a restaurant that I didn’t expect to be impressive. All of it confused me. As someone experienced in encounters that resulted in nothing but annoyance, I was sure this was going to suffer the same fate. In the middle of me enjoying this reconnection, I began to get irritated – irritated by the fact that he actively detached himself the past few days but was not fully engaging as if he did not just display a series of evasive behaviors. I decided to ignore this irritation for the sake of having a decent date. 

After that 5-hour date, he resumed his regular communication as if he never withdrew from me. He resumed the calling, the playlist sharing, amongst other things. No more, no less. I began to feel like I was a yo-yo toy that couldn’t get past this Talking Phase. Three more wonderful dates, but after each date I didn’t feel like we went forward or backward. Each date confirmed to me that there were indeed feelings for me, but I could also see that he was deliberately avoiding conversations that required confronting those feelings. He always found a way to prolong our time together. He always found a way to make eye contact with the gentlest gaze. He always found a way to revisit topics we already visited multiple times. Yet, he did not once take the opportunity to address what he wanted from me… from that. 

I spent days in a self-designed mental rollercoaster. His greetings started to irritate me again. Him wanting to continuously inquire about my life annoyed me deeply. All I kept thinking was “but why are you here?” I started to feel invaded, except it was with my permission that he had invaded my thoughts. In the middle of seething in anger and annoyance, I received one of his usual messages asking for my thoughts on one of our shows. I finally realized that he was perfectly content with this intimate-for-nothing non-relationship we had established. Unfortunately for him, I was ready to get out of this realm. I called him immediately and asked him whether his interaction with me was platonic or something more.

And that’s when he confessed that he met me 4 days after burying his girlfriend of 5 years. I reminded him of her, apparently. Talking to him was easing his mourning because he felt like he was still connected to his newly old life while seemingly moving on. He confessed that he knew it was an unfair coping mechanism, but that’s what it was. That’s what I was – his coping mechanism. 

I thought I had mastered all the realms of the Talking Phase. I thought I understood all the various reasons one might be stuck in a cycle of engaging in interactions that never become relationships. Thanks to Guy 3, I had now experienced a new form of pain: having my heartbroken by just talking. 

I now find myself traumatized by the Talking experience. How will I date if I no longer want to engage in this phase? How do I skip this? I have no answers for now, I have chosen to disengage altogether.