If Dating Him Requires a Project Manager, Something Has Gone Wrong

Some men can turn something as simple as asking a woman to dinner into a six-week production. He likes you, he definitely wants to see you, and he has mentioned dinner several times. However, there has simply been no dinner. Apparently, dinner has entered the planning phase.

At first this barely registers because he sounds enthusiastic. “We should definitely do something this weekend.” Lovely. Saturday arrives, followed rather surprisingly by Sunday, and somewhere between the two you realize that “definitely” was being used decoratively.

This is where a perfectly normal woman can accidentally become Project Manager.

She checks availability.

She suggests Thursday.

He cannot do Thursday.

She suggests Saturday.

Saturday is “probably good,” although apparently confirmation must be obtained from several unseen forces.

She follows up.

He becomes vague.

She rearranges something.

He finally says, “Let’s play it by ear.”

And there you are, six weeks into knowing a man, managing a romantic initiative that has yet to produce so much as a reservation.

Congratulations, You Have Been Promoted

The strange thing about men who do not make things happen is that they can generate enormous amounts of activity around absolutely nothing.

There are texts.

There are conversations.

There may be compliments, affection, flirtation, apologies, explanations, future references and occasional highly emotional declarations about how much he enjoys talking to you.

What there is not, curiously, is progress.

A man can spend three months telling you how much he misses you while demonstrating an almost supernatural ability to prevent seeing you.

This is when women begin confusing activity with progress.

There is plenty of activity. Your phone is busy. Your emotions are moving. Your expectations are moving up, down and occasionally through a small hedge.

The relationship itself is parked.

Compare this with a man who actually wants to build something with you.

Things happen. They simply happen.

He says, “Would you like dinner Friday?” and then, in an astonishing display of modern engineering, dinner occurs on Friday.

He says he will call, and your phone rings without you having to conduct a small vigil beside it.

If he cannot make a plan, he makes another one. If something awkward happens, it gets discussed rather than placed in a decorative box and pushed under the sofa for six months.

The ease is almost suspicious when you are accustomed to men who require excavation equipment.

The Relationship That Is Always “Coming Soon”

The real comedy begins when a stalled dating situation lasts long enough to acquire history.

Now leaving becomes emotionally complicated because look at everything you have already been through together.

Which is true.

You have been through seven cancellations, two disappearances, one magnificent comeback, countless “crazy weeks,” several promises that things will calm down soon and an important conversation in which he agreed that communication mattered enormously before immediately becoming difficult to communicate with.

That is history.

It is just not necessarily a relationship.

But once enough effort has been invested, the mind becomes reluctant to abandon the project. Surely the grand opening must be near.

So another extension is granted.

Perhaps he is scared.

Perhaps work is difficult.

Perhaps his previous relationship damaged him.

Perhaps he needs time.

Perhaps his calendar has developed a private life and is no longer consulting him.

The explanations can become extremely sophisticated while the outcome remains almost embarrassingly simple:

Nothing is happening.

This is one of the most revealing differences between a relationship that exists and one that mostly exists in anticipation. In the first, the two people are living it. In the second, one person is often busy explaining why they are not living it yet.

And “yet” is a marvelous little word.

Yet can keep a woman occupied for years.

He has not committed yet.

He has not introduced you to anyone yet.

You have not made concrete future plans yet.

Things have not returned to how wonderful they were in the beginning yet.

Meanwhile, “yet” has moved into the spare bedroom and is receiving mail.

Some Men Make Things Easier. Others Make You Work Harder.

Calling one man a “winner” and another a “loser” is perhaps too neat, because human beings are rarely that tidy. A man may be successful, charming, intelligent and perfectly respectable while still being an absolute catastrophe to date.

The more interesting distinction is what happens around him.

Does the relationship become more real as time passes, or does maintaining it require increasing amounts of interpretation, patience, negotiation and emotional carpentry?

Because a peculiar reversal happens in stalled relationships: the less he contributes, the more she starts contributing to compensate.

He stops planning, so she plans.

He communicates less, so she communicates more carefully.

He becomes uncertain, so she becomes more understanding.

He pulls back, and suddenly she is doing the emotional equivalent of running beside a departing train carrying three suitcases.

This can create the illusion that the relationship is still functioning.

Of course it is functioning. She is functioning it.

And eventually she becomes exhausted, confused and rather offended that despite all this extraordinary project management, the ribbon-cutting ceremony still has not been scheduled.

That is usually the part worth noticing, because when two people genuinely want the same thing, the relationship does not need one of them constantly pushing it uphill. There can be problems, delays, difficult periods and imperfect behavior—real relationships are not frictionless little swans gliding across a lake—but they do move.

Plans become dates. Dates become shared experiences. Affection becomes consistency. Conversations eventually become decisions.

Something gets built.

And if after months of calls, promises, explanations, second chances and revised timelines you are still standing beside a sign saying COMING SOON, perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that the project has been delayed.

It may be that there was never actually a project.

Just a very convincing sign.