Effect without a cause

or is it just wishful thinking that has me wondering what is up with the world?

I've been rather on again off again in regard to e-dating and the whole social experiments thing as you well know. For the most part it has been one episode of 3s Company after another. I haven't learned a lot outside of what I already knew: God/the Universe/Fate has a sense of humor. Men know themselves as well as women do and that isn't a lot. We are all a bunch of chickens when it comes to relationships. And then, there is the rare occurrence that baffles me completely.

Using a fake name here to save my hide from further pointless chewing, we'll call the individual in question "Teom".

A couple of months ago I got a bunch of emails from guys named Teom. One stood out in particular as being very interested and very affectionate in his correspondence. Unfortunately due to scheduling issues I haven't gotten to meet him. That is not so unusual. It happens a lot. And on my end mostly because I go through periods where I realize a. there is a real life Teom that I am interested in and anyone else is just for passing time and b. I question if I even have the ability to incorporate a guy into my life and c. email is boring after a while. Realization A is the greatest reason that nothing goes any where. All the other Teoms and all the other everybody Else's just don't compare to real life Teom. So what happened is this:
Real life Teom was getting closer and closer to making up his mind about what he wanted. And email Teom's emails were getting as frequent and interesting as real life Teom. Real life Teom and I suddenly and unexpectedly reached an impasse in negotiations. And then email Teom stopped emailing. It's been ages since I've had meaningful communication with either.

Last week I ran into real life Teom. Cordial, convivial and conversational, discussions resumed the normality that had been lacking. Oh, make no mistake there is no passion in the conversation and there is no further negotiating with real life Teom. There were no veiled or unveiled flirtations just good, honest conversation. The very next day email Teom sent the traditional morning offline text. This morning my inbox gave me his special brand of prose. Coincidence?

I'll tell you, the quanta tells me there is no such thing as coincidence. Yet the mystical ways of the cosmos tell me there are. What to believe? If there is no such thing as coincidence then the Teoms are one in the same. And yet, I find that hard to believe. The character in the email and the character in life are dissimilar to the point of being able to disprove the coincidence theory. Yet one Teom emails after declaring a truce with the other Teom...

Reason says that the picture on the profile doesn't match real life Teom. But I've helped a girlfriend built a fake profile to catch a cheater. It is not out of the realm of possibility that a fake profile might be the mode by which a lost opportunity is recovered in much the same way that programming patches recover lost data.

Of course, as is always possible when dealing with the mystical side of life, I may have simply had the wrong Teom in my sites from the beginning and settled on real life Teom because he doesn't live several hours away. What do the cards say? Nothing helpful in the clarity department. Only confirming my hope that I don't have to be alone forever. And no... not a word about how to incorporate anyone else into my life. The only thing the cards have to say is Communicate, forgive, focus on goals and everything falls into place. Yes, logic and friends say the same thing. And no... I don't know why I spent 18.00 on a deck of cards to be told what my friends tell me for free.

Oh wait yes I do. Because I want a different answer than Communicate, Forgive, Focus on goals an everything will fall into place. I want the cards to lay out a step by step process for how to get what I want. And provide an iron glad guarantee that I am not, so to speak, barking up the wrong tree.

But I will tell you this much that I know for sure. There is no way that I am ever going to make any assumptions about real life Teom. No guessing. No hopeless holding my breath. If he changes his mind he's going to have to be frank, forward and as direct as a slap in the face about what he wants. His subtly, more than anyone elses goes right over my head. And whatever I do with my life in the mean time is my choice. As things stand now real life Teom hasn't asked for a hold while deciding on a purchase. If I decide to go some where beyond email with the other Teom, he can't complain because as far as I know there is no chance with real life Teom. And if they are one in the same I'm going to, most likely, be pissed on a level no one but me will understand.