Three Dates, One Disappearance, and Far Too Many Theories

Few things inspire amateur detective work quite like someone disappearing after several perfectly lovely dates.

There was dinner, laughter, a warm message afterward saying what a wonderful time he had, perhaps even enthusiastic discussion of doing it again — and then, somewhere between Thursday evening and Saturday morning, communication quietly ceased.

Well, ladies, naturally when someone disappears like that, the mind rarely leaves it alone; the whole thing becomes a puzzle, and suddenly there is a project to solve.

The messages are reopened, friends are consulted, and before long three otherwise sensible women are discussing whether his final “Good night” sounded somehow different from all the previous good nights.

What happened?

The irritating answer is that you may never know. There was not enough relationship to understand what went wrong, but there was just enough possibility to make the question interesting. Three good dates have produced an unfinished story, and unfinished stories have a remarkable ability to occupy far more space in the mind than their actual length would suggest.

Perhaps Our Missing Gentleman Was a Peacock

Early dating naturally brings out a slightly polished version of most people. We tell our better stories, make an effort with dinner, and generally avoid opening the evening with a complete inventory of our less enchanting qualities.

But occasionally someone arrives in full peacock mode, with feathers polished, résumé gently improved and an entire fascinating existence arranged beneath extremely flattering lighting.

The difficulty with feathers is that eventually somebody has to go home and be an ordinary bird.

Perhaps the impressive career became less impressive upon closer inspection. Perhaps the relationship status turned out to be considerably more complicated than advertised, or the glamorous lifestyle was mostly scenery. Maintaining a heavily edited version of yourself can become difficult once another person starts getting close enough to notice the edits.

That is one possibility.

Unfortunately, the puzzle is generous. It comes with several possible answers and absolutely no answer key.

Wanting Different Things

Perhaps there was nothing misleading about him at all. Somewhere around date three, he may simply have realized that the two of you wanted different things.

One person hears “relationship” and thinks, Lovely. The other hears exactly the same word and suddenly feels that events are moving alarmingly fast, despite having spent the previous fortnight behaving as though matching bathrobes were imminent.

Nobody necessarily lied or behaved terribly. Sometimes two people enjoy each other enormously and still discover that they are heading in different directions.

Could It Be The Chemistry?

Then there is chemistry — that wonderfully inconvenient little detail.

A date can be genuinely lovely without becoming a romance. Two people can laugh for three hours, order dessert, linger over another drink and walk away having experienced precisely the same evening very differently.

One goes home thinking, Oh, this could become something.

The other goes home thinking, What a lovely evening.

A very small linguistic nuance but different consequences.

Romantic Testing Menu

Perhaps those three dates were simply a romantic tasting menu. He sampled the conversation, enjoyed the atmosphere, found several things perfectly delicious and still decided not to make another reservation.

Annoying, certainly. Especially since nobody bothered to notify the kitchen.

This possibility can be difficult to accept because a good date feels like solid proof of things 'working out'. All that laughing must have meant something. The long conversation felt easy. There was attraction. There was another glass of wine. Surely people do not have genuinely wonderful evenings with someone and then decide not to continue?

They do.

Enjoying someone's company and wanting a relationship with them are simply not identical experiences, however inconveniently similar they may look across a candlelit table.

Perhaps attraction changed. Perhaps another person was already somewhere in the picture. Perhaps life became complicated. Perhaps he simply decided that whatever he felt was not enough to continue.

There are plenty of explanations, and silence has the unfortunate habit of making all of them equally available.

One thing is clear, however: someone who wanted another course would generally still be at the table. Instead, you are analyzing an empty chair as though it might eventually issue a statement.

You will probably never discover exactly what happened after those three lovely dates. The unfinished part may even be what makes the whole thing so tempting to solve; the mind likes an explanation, particularly when reality has been inconsiderate enough not to provide one.

But after considering the peacock, the tasting menu, the mismatched intentions and every other plausible possibility, one thing remains rather uncomplicated.

Whatever future you had begun imagining required two people.

Unfortunately, one of them had already wandered off before the picture was finished.