Thanks Chili.
I have another poorly formed thought to bounce off of anyone out there if you don't mind. You're all so kind with your time.
I had another post recently about red flags in new partners after divorce. You all gave some good feedback. It did end before things got even worse on her end and I'm relieved. I've been on a few dates since with two people, called it off after the second date with the first woman, and seeing where it goes with the second. My mind goes back to the same places:
Date 1: Is there some basic chemistry to warrant spending some time together?
Date 2: I think I could really like this person.
Date 3: We have a great time but then something becomes evident that just feels vaguely like a red flag to me on some level.
In this case it's that she lives alone with a < 2 year old dog and I sense some serious stress and misgivings about how tied down she feels, almost like she can ruminate on it and it thereby becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. On one of our dates when the dog was admittedly being a pain, I had the sense it threw her evening entirely. As someone with children, being tied down is a universal feeling, and what matters to me is how one handles that feeling. (She also likes country music but that's another issue entirely. )
That sounds fairly minor, right? Especially because I impulse-bought a puppy in 2019 and ended up rehoming her 6 months later, partially because of this exact issue. Pets can really muck up your social life.
But the problem is I'm acutely worried about ignoring my own instincts, either out of some kind of fear, or my habit of managing the other person's emotions and subjugating my own, or just blind love/lust/stupidity, and ending up in another dead-end relationship that dragged on past its shelf life.
Maybe the best way to put it is that I would rather not be ending a relationship in 1 year or 5 years or 10 and think "yeah, I did see that coming, and should have acted sooner." I *really* felt that way about my marriage - misgivings I had around the time of our marriage but suppressed in the excitement of getting married came to bite me a decade later.
So, sometimes I waver and think, "many fish in the sea, I'll move on." Obviously though there needs to be some flexibility and compromise, people's lives are fluid and we all have problems, and I don't have the complete picture on anything this early on. Set the redflagometer too high and I could just as well end up bitter, uncompromising and lonely.
My plan for now is this: since I've identified something I'm concerned about as far as the long-term goes, but I still enjoy spending time with her, I'll just watch these items and see how they unfold over time. Does that make sense? When does that become "leading someone on"? I want to take my time exploring a relationship but sometimes it feels like people can see that as wasting their time if it doesn't work out later (eg. I've had a woman tell me on a date that "at this age you should really know whether you're looking to have another kid, otherwise you're wasting people's time." ). I'm looking to take my time and figure things out on my own terms without hurting people unnecessarily in the process. Any thoughts on how to approach all of that?