This is a story about a guy who actually cares.

I don’t know about you, but I love a good redemption arc. 

I’ve been thinking lately that I should start a new callout series that’s basically the opposite of the Bottom of the Barrel guys that I write about in some of my posts. I reserve membership to that special club for guys who truly fuck up big time, but I’ve also had times when I’ve been pleasantly surprised by guys being decent, or showing unusual levels of kindness and maturity. So in this post, I’m starting a new club called the Not All Men club.

Tahaha just kidding, it absolutely will not be called that. (If you don’t know, there’s a whole thing about men being defensive when women talk about men doing bad things, and the tagline for that POV is that “not all men” are bad, dangerous, toxic, etc., and as such it isn’t reasonable for women to be suspicious of or assume the worst of all men. Of course it’s true that not all men suck, but that whole line of thinking is missing the point, which is that women don’t know which men are dangerous until it’s too late, and so the safest thing for us to do is to stay on guard. There is a deeply rooted cultural norm of men disrespecting and mistreating women, and that is why we fight against toxic masculinity and gender inequality. And wow that was a long side rant! But important.)

So anyway. This new club will be called the Cream of the Crop, not only because of the slightly innuendo-inviting words, but also because it seems like a good label for guys who are the opposite of the Bottom of the Barrel guys.

Now without further ado, I would like to welcome our first new member of the Cream of the Crop club… drumroll please?

It’s someone I already wrote about (very recently in fact) and his name is Casey. Yes, I know— plot twist!

The last that you’ve heard was that we had a sexual encounter that was disappointing, which led to my decision to not continue dating him, and that he hadn’t checked in on me since that encounter. He did end up messaging me, not the day after I saw him but the day after that, and was being flirty. I tried to respond as neutrally as possible, but the next day let him know that I didn’t want to continue seeing him. 

In the past, I’ve found that going into specifics has not been helpful when ending things with guys. Usually, they just get defensive or even aggressive, and no good comes of it. I’d much rather try to end an exploration on a positive note, so I try to give an honest reason while still keeping it vague enough and avoiding placing blame. 

I’m not here to educate guys on how to treat people they’re dating, and if they really want to know what I’m feeling in more detail, then they know how to find out. Because I tell everyone I date that I blog about my poly experiences, and they are welcome to read whatever I write about them. They can be mad about it, but they all have fair warning that if they fuck up, I will post about it. 

What some people don’t know about me, though, is that as sassy as I can be, I’m also very forgiving. I don’t write these posts to try to make anyone feel bad; and while I don’t try to keep anyone from reading what I wrote about them, I also don’t necessarily want them to read it when it’s negative. I write to express myself and to process. It helps me feel seen. Oftentimes after I post, I’m able to release whatever negative feelings I was having. 

All of this to say that I wasn’t expecting Casey to read the posts about him, and since I knew he didn’t know the url, I really didn’t think he would. I keep names anonymous for a reason, so nobody knows who these people are (except for my partners and close friends). I’m not defaming anyone, and again— I’m not trying to rub anyone’s mistakes in their face. 

But Casey gave me a different perspective that I hadn’t considered before, which is that maybe some of these guys aren’t malicious so much as clueless. It’s not an excuse, but it does offer context. And if/when a guy like that reads a post he knows is about him, in which I share my feelings of frustration or hurt or anger, he might be really sad about it because in reality, he actually did care and feels bad about causing me to feel badly. He might even feel embarrassed because he hadn’t realized what really went wrong or how I was feeling. I’m very non-confrontational in real life, and really good at masking. It wouldn’t be surprising if a guy simply didn’t realize what was happening, given those factors. Finding out by reading it online could really suck. 

The way I see it is that if that does happen, as much as it’s not my intention, how the guy responds after that is going to reflect who he truly is. He’s caught off-guard, and his immediate reaction could easily be to get angry or offended. 

Casey didn’t do that. When he texted me last night asking if I would mind sharing my blog with him, he also said he understood if I wasn’t comfortable with that. I shared it of course, with a warning that he probably wouldn’t like what he read. And then I waited for the bomb to explode. 

But… it didn’t. He immediately expressed remorse and apologized for how he made me feel. I could tell that he was really horrified to learn how I’d been feeling about my experience with him. Of course that made me feel bad! I hadn’t intended to fuck with his head in my quest to process and share what had happened. 

He asked if we could talk on the phone the next day (today), and I was happy to do that. Our conversation was really positive, more than I expected at all. He apologized, and gave me contextual information without excusing himself. He took responsibility, and we ended up chatting for a while, joking around and flirting. We even made plans to meet up again soon. 

Nothing has really changed— he still doesn’t feel that he has the capacity to be in a real relationship right now. But he does want to be friends, and talking to him today reminded me how much I like him as a person, and I know now that I want that too. As he likes to say, we’re on the same wavelength: and I completely agree. I suspect we’ll end up as more of a FWB situation because the chemistry is still there. I don’t know why it felt so off that second night I saw him, but I do know that I’m open to seeing where it goes from here. 

I’ve decided that our relationship will be best described now as a situationship. He was able to poke fun at himself and the whole learning experience we both just went through together by calling us a “flag-ship,” because of how I described him first as a walking green flag and then later as a color-changing flag. As silly as that was, I know that being able to laugh about a negative experience you had with someone is also a sign of emotional maturity. He surprised the shit out of me, tbh, and I’m really glad he did. 

Oh, and for the record, I herby formally retract my previous diagnosis of Casey as having a Weak-Ass Bitch Period Crashout, based on further details provided and thorough discussion. This ruling is still pending further study, but I’m prepared and hopeful to be proven wrong about my initial assessment.