FADE TO BLACK

We've all had this happen I'm sure.  You meet someone, you chat, you text and you email constantly; like high school teens giddy at the prospect.  Then you finally go out.  You have a nice time and can't wait to tell your friends all about it... Uh-oh...  Hello, is this thing on?! Can you hear me now? Where'd those crickets come from? 

Wow, didn't see that one coming.  You went from 10 text, 5 email, and 2 phone calls a day to ZERO.   No explanation, no voicemail, no nothing.  Just bye-bye birdie.  So you wait a few days and try again.  The innocuous text "How's it going?" then you wait... and wait... and yep, wait some more.  

I know the guys looking at this are saying "Hey, don't just hammer on us. I've had a woman do the same thing." And they'd be right. And I must confess I've done it myself in the past. Like Harry Potter vanishing under his invisibility cloak, just not responding gives the ILLUSION of total human evaporation.  But we all know that's not the case.

Dating etiquette sure has changed over the years.  Gone are the days of a guy sweating nervously at your front door, wondering how big your daddy is and the approximate location of the household shotgun.  Now you greet on the phone and/or internet before you meet at the local restaurant or bar.  As the night goes along you think to yourself "This just might work".  At the end of the night he assures you he'll call/text tomorrow. You have no reason to disbelieve that; after all he said he would.  Right?

But like the end of a movie where the screen fades to black so does the communication trail. Why do we do that?  You wouldn't dare do that to someone from your same rural area.  Believe me, word spreads like poison ivy out here.  If you did that to someone local you'd still be taking your cousin to the dance two years from now.  

So then why would you do that to ANYONE? All of the channels of communication we have now, and we still keep finding ways to talk less.  I've had guys and girls tell me it's easier to fade to black because they don't want to 'hurt the other person's feelings'.  Umm, like not calling/texting or returning the same doesn't hurt? 

Remember, stumbling around in the dark can get you hurt much worse than turning on a light.  So rather than just fade to black, extend a little ray of light.  You may be surprised at what you see.