Just calling to say I've had your name tattooed across my arse

Where is the boundary between being keen on someone and stalking them?  My friend Matt has been asking himself this question all week, after a guy he’d started dating cut him off for coming on too strong.  To Matt, it had all seemed perfect.  After clocking each other online, Matt and his new friend had spent the weekend in bed together, not just shagging but talking, eating and watching fluff on TV.  Naturally at home in each other’s company and surprised to get on so well with a casual pick-up, neither of them were willing to break the spell and head home.  Night turned into day and back into night with neither of them bored or sated.  Lucky bastard, I thought when Matt told me.

Monday, however, was when the problems started.  When Matt texted his new man all day, called him at lunchtime and after work and posted a couple of links on his Facebook page, he went perceptibly cooler.  Not being the type to give up, Matt tried to work out what was wrong without being prepared to accept that the answer might be him.  Finally after too many blocked calls and unanswered texts Matt finally got this:

“hey M, the weekend was great but you are WAY too pushy.  Let’s keep it a nice memory – no more calling, no more texting, no more Facebook pls xx”

Shit – looks like he blew it.  I can see why Matt’s bloke got scared off – when someone decides to fixate on you, it has a strangely disconnecting effect.  Rather than being flattered, you feel strongly that the roots of the infatuation have very little to do with you.  What’s really happening is that someone has projected a mental image of what they want onto you and is now fantasising about a person who doesn’t really exist.  Not to blow my trumpet, but as a dating columnist who used to have his photo all over town I have plenty of experience of this, and it’s not quite as gratifying as it might sound.

Is this man slightly intimidating or is it just the moody lighting?

All the same, let me say a few words in favour of the Matts of this world.  Too many British men are wary of showing their feelings, of breaking their pose of affable detachment by showing that they actually want someone.  Tiptoeing warily into relationships, they remind me of the sort of wusses who ease themselves into a cold swimming pool inch by inch, resenting every step.  It’s exactly this self-limiting reticence that leads me to find a large body of British men such a turn off.  If you want to call someone, why not just call them?  If you’re thinking happily about somebody, why not let them know?  I would agree that more than one text and phone call a day is pushing into the realms of obsessive compulsion, but I don’t see that attraction is something to be kept in a cage, let out on selected occasions – on a leash and muzzled – so as not to give too much away.  So next time a date calls you out of the blue, try to be flattered not fearful.  It works for me.

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