I figure that once someone wants to break up with me, that I should take her at her word. Last year, my then girlfriend broke things off - and it hurt me much more than expected. Our after-breakup dispute caused us to say and do things that hurt each other, ruining what should have developed into a solid friendship. I'll always feel sorry about that.
Why do I mention this?
Well, FH is a nice woman. But I think she's uncomfortable trusting me. No, I'm not talking about dealing with my dual-gender life, though that is an issue. But it is something much more mundane - trusting me to know what I'm doing, when I don't know all of the details about what I'm doing. Without a certain amount of trust in the person, neither a friendship or a romantic relationship can work for long. But for now, it seems that we are filling each other's needs.
The other day, I was over FH's place, and she asked me to figure out what was wrong with her printer. Details that should be coming in as solid black were being printed in a bluish gray. Since she had replaced all 4 of the print cartridges a couple of weeks before, I had my doubts of whether a new print cartridge was needed. And if it was, I had to make sure which cartridge needed to be replaced, as color printing is an "additive process" and I didn't want to buy a new cartridge unless it was really needed.
When I started my diagnostic process on the printer, I was getting a little flak from both mother and daughter. The error message they saw said that toner was needed. Yet, the printer status reported that the black toner was at the 95% level. FH overly depends on her daughter for anything related to technology. In several ways, she's training her daughter to be the "man around the house", letting the daughter take the lead in things such setting up computers, assembling "kit" furniture, etc., when I feel that FH should have been using these opportunities to show some grit around her daughter instead of indulging her. (At times, the daughter seems to be 21 going on 15.) So mother and daughter argued about whether they should buy more toner, while I wanted a little bit of peace to figure out what was really going on. As a result, I was using my call phone the way people might use a fidget spinner - a distraction to keep from focusing on something frustrating me.
Once I finally started to make some progress, seeing what was really going on, I decided to find the printer's manual, and read an online copy. In that copy, I found a section related to printer calibration. So I decided to run that process, as they had installed new toner cartridges 2 weeks before. About 5 minutes later, we were able to print a document - and the black areas printed as black areas, without a touch of the blue/gray print we saw before.
Now that I was done, FH was very thankful. Unfortunately, it was time to leave, and it was back to Croton for the night.
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Before Thanksgiving, I "Swiped Right" on a woman in New Jersey. I made the mistake of responding to her direct message. She peppered me with questions, some I answered and others I didn't. Overall, I got a very bad feeling about this woman. She mentioned that black men seem to be very loving. (So, what? I identify as White, though I have Black ancestors from over 100 years ago.) Then, she peppered me with questions that she had no right to be asking at such an early stage of knowing each other. Add to this, she wanted my FB information (which I wasn't going to give), and it felt that she was trying to set her hook into someone who had a few extra bucks. She wanted to rush into a video chat, and yet, when I mentioned Zoom, she didn't bite. Something was very far off. Once I found out that she had 4 rental properties in the Philippines, warning lights came on for me. She may have lost her family's prior American "Sugar Daddy", and saw me as a potential mark. Once I saw her using the English language in a very flawed manner, I knew that something was very wrong. So, I unmatched her, and let her move onto another mark.
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As you can guess, there are other women with whom I communicate. Until the pandemic lifts, I will have a hard time meeting any of them. But if I do meet them and things work out, I'll be sure to let them know about my female side earlier, not later, in the developing relationship process.
