Responding from the solar plexus

Caroline Myss is this wacky, New Age-y health reader type. What I love about her is the look at the mental, physical and spiritual aspect of her assessments. Her work is about moving "issues" from the mental to the physical plane, and then to the spiritual one again.

Last night I get an email from a perfectly nice guy who's responding to a question I sent him. His response does not move the question forward, which I should have just seen as, OK, either the guy's a dullard, completely convinced I'll think he's so fabulous that I'll write back even without any encouragement, OR, he's just not that into me. Naturally I take what's behind Door #!! I write back.

I tell myself I want to find out if the guy is not aware he didn't leave a way for me to respond so I can eliminate him if he's that thick, but in reality, he seems hot and I'd like to get that confirmed so that maybe sister can get laid some time before the long march ends.

In fact he HAS given me a way to respond. The url "answer" he sent me went to a page of "meet sexy singles," which was either totally RUDE, ie, you need more help, or a typo. I'm thinking it's the latter. I'm also thinking, perhaps the guy realize he's not left a way for me to get in touch, maybe I can come up with a clever way to call his attention to that fact by calling attention to the url, ask if he's sent it so I HAVE to write back. But my zingers all sarcastic. This shoulda been a clue--I can't get out of the gate with humor because it's coming across as a putdown, this is never going anywhere, BUT NO. I figure, I'll just write something straight, hey, looks like this is the wrong url?

He writes back with the "right" one. Oy.

Then he writes back again, including one of the "meet sexy singles" urls, saying, "sheesh, I musta looked like a perv."

I see the second message first, and my solar plexus kicks in. I think he's actually sending me a whole new "meet sexy singles" page, as in, did you not get it the first time?

If that's not bad enough--I write back and say, uh, sorry if I offended you. I was trying to be funny. Best of luck.

Sorry if I offended you?

Who is this person typing?

Seriously, the person typing most of the time could not give a fuck if she offends someone (hence perhaps why I'm having the problem of the long, sexless march).Sadly, I dig my foot deeper.

I re-read his message, which I'm still reading as an angry thing, even though I've now actually seen the first message. I write back a long thing, more explaining, at this point I know this is so over, those kids are just gonna have to be born to someone else, but what the hell, I want to say my peace. Again, the funny thing is, I'm still not getting it right. I don't know this at the time, hit send, buh-bye. No matter; I'm mostly horrified at myself, yes, even then, that I'd apologized and wanted to E X P L A I N.

This morning I re-re-read. What is clear is that, once again, the dude has totally NOT picked up the bait, and that he was just apologizing himself, without actually apologizing, and certainly without moving the conversation anywhere. On a completely basic level

Just now she comes up in the "shuffle songs" feature, talking about how we have to learn to get past responding from our primal center of fear, the solar plexus. She said-and this is a real paraphrase- take notice of when you feel something in your solar plexus and then respond that way, because it's probably the wrong response. There could be nothing more primal than dating, it's all about assessing suitability. What's disheartening to me is that I've managed, somehow, to use the internet as a tool to speed up the rush to the downward spiral. Without even clues in the real world, my primal senses are kicking in...this is a new, solar plexus-height low.