My Dilemma

I have somewhat of a choice as I prepare to leave for my year in Africa...

There is my ex and there is the surprise rekindled friendship with someone else.

Just as I was about to make a (humiliating) last ditch effort to visit the ex in Toronto, who has pretty much swatted me away as if I was an infected mosquito, someone from the past resurfaces into my life.  My life is such a Hollywood movie and someone up there is seriously playing with the script.

Let's call him the "old friend".

The old friend is someone who I went to Howard University with.  He too (just like the ex) is Barbadian.  He lives in the NYC metropolitan area and works on Wall Street.  About three years ago we ran into each other in Barbados, and briefly dated back here in the U.S. and somehow things dissolved; not in a negative way either, but neither of us can really remember what happened.  He's sent me a few facebook messages over the past year or two as well as a few days ago, and so I finally decided to respond the other day.  This led to dinner last night at Negril Village, my favorite West Indian restaurant in the city.  And at dinner he was saying all the right things.

All at the age of 28, this man is actually ready to settle down, not afraid to say it, apologizes for whatever caused us to stop talking before, and even tells me that the fact that he stopped talking to me was a big mistake and that he wants to spend as much time with me as possible before I leave to begin making up for the lost time.  He wants me and wants to visit me in Africa as well.  His words, I would be coming to visit you, not Africa.  I mean, this could get very serious, very quickly.

And I told him a lot of how I felt too.  About how I didn't want someone to be with me because I was perceived to be a good catch.  About how I am only interested in someone who will be around in the good times and the bad.   Someone who is not fleeting and who has the strength to stick around.  Someone who accepts that I am a work in progress and that I don't have everything figured out.  Yes, I've become very frank who I decide to seriously date.  I am not the person I was three years ago - or even 6 months ago.  But I hate to measure the "old friend" with the same stick that the ex is measured on.  It's just not fair.

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Well, me and the old friend connected, but in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but think of the ex in Toronto who is happy living his single life blah blah blah but keeps telling me that "patience" is the key to understanding him.  I must admit that a part of me still misses him.  There is something about him and I that I CAN'T seem to wash away.  And I hate that.  I have no control of that special something - despite, excuse my french - the shitty way he treated me when I really needed him.  (He would have another version of that story.)  I wish that something would help me get over - and maybe that is the newer guy... but, as R. Kelly sings, "When a woman loves, she loves for real".

But then there is the old friend who is saying so many things that agree with me.  And it's so easy.  He's a good blend too.  He's intellectual, but really down to earth and sweet.  So far, he's not into second guessing my personal decisions or undermining my confidence with little cold remarks.  He has a masters in electrical engineering from Columbia and is completing his MBA from NYU.  And at his apartment he has African art on his wall.  I love that.  He has an easy going gentlemanly way about him.   No superficial-ness, which I sensed from my ex.  He's clear about corporate America and about life.  He has a strikingly similar outlook on life to my own.  And he seems to have grown maturity wise since I last saw him.  The only thing that bothers me is that he's sexually a little smothering (a slight turnoff).  He's like a big teddy bear with a LOT of love to give.  But I figure that could always be altered.  Hey, I'd rather a smothering dude than an insensitive one.  And honestly at first my ex was kind of over the top smothering too.  Just too much too quick.  I guess I have to be a little more sharp with men about how soon they try to make a move on me.

My dilemma is:  How could I possibly turn a genuinely good man away for a keep you in your backet pocket ex?  I annoyingly realize I'm not totally over the ex.  It's still a raw wound and I had to remind the old friend that he needed to move slow with me because of that.  Emotionally on my end, things could be unfair to the old friend who really wants something serious with me.  But he is a fantastic guy.  And this is 2010.  With all this talk about black women and our prospects, sometimes I do feel like at 27, I have to think somewhat seriously about my possibilities.  But then the Universe has this fantastic way of fixing everything for me, and I always seem to forget that right before the magic starts happening.

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Sidenote - When me and the old friend went to dinner all of these others sisters were like eying me up.  I was shocked!  I could literally feel their desperation.  Their eyes almost screamed that they wanted to be in my spot, gazing into the eyes of a man at dinner and having deep conversation.  Is this really what it has come to for Black women in 2010??  I actually felt sad for them. 

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Now I see why some men have the idea that "nice guys finish last" and that women tend to go for the bad guy.  I'm sitting here with everything that I've wanted in a man right before my eyes.  He's acting like men acted back in the day.  Ready to court the woman of his dreams and make a move - sooner rather than later.  He's very direct about his interests in me.  And I have the nerve to have fleeting thoughts about my ex. 

Despite the frolicking that I've done these past few months since breaking up with my ex, it has seriously come down to these two.  They are the only ones I could see myself seriously with.  And yet of course someone else could always pop up.  But do I start something new or patiently wait for the ex with unknown returns?  I'm leaning toward dating the new guy. 

And then there's some oddness with dates.

• May 15th - my ex's birthday and the day that my grandmother passed away this year.

• September 24th - the old friend's birthday as well as my father's birthday.

Eerie coincidences or signs from above?