Dating Married Men : Part Deux

As promised, the second installation of why it's a really bad idea to date married men:

I didn't realize it was a date until he saw a female friend who looked first at me in confusion then at him questioningly then back at me in disgust and then turned to him and said, "How is (wife's name)?"

It wasn't that I didn't know he was married. I've met her. And their two kids. It was that he asked me out to drinks to discuss "work." Or so I thought.

"I'd like to run some ideas by you about my book business," he wrote in an email. "And it'd be nice to catch up over some whiskey."

Now if you've followed this blog even a little bit, you're aware I love whiskey and hate bad pick up lines. I'm also a bit of a geek so a book discussion over whiskey invite is heaven. It's also a brilliant cover.

We met at a swanky bar downtown and ordered top-shelf scotch-bourbon with a tasty appetizer. The conversation meandered through the usual catching up then veered towards discussion of building crushes. Evidently the men in his office had crushes on the various young women in the building (I used to work there). I feigned ignorance and ordered another.

He kept asking me about my personal life - what I was up to these days, what did I like to do on the weekends, etc. - and was reticent when asked about his wife and children, whom I asked about frequently. Truth be told though, I was alright with having a few drinks on a married man's tab until his female acquaintance walked up and gave me the stank eye like I was the one in the wrong.

Tangent: women, instead of blaming each other when a man's being a dog, blame him. This seems obvious to me, but for whatever reason, the majority of women will go after the other woman like she's the one cheating. I have a few stories about this as well, mostly about being physically threatened and harassed by crazy girlfriends who think their boyfriends are cheating on them with me, but I'll save that for another post.

At one point I asked if he had to go given that it was getting late and a school night and he said that he had told his family he would be working late. Sketch.

As the third round of drinks were finished, I thanked him for a pleasant discussion, pointed out we hadn't even once mentioned books and wished him well. No mention of the possibility of meeting again, nothing about the awkward tension introduced by female friend, just a nice and formal "thank you."

"I'm sorry we didn't even talk about books! We'll have to go out again soon," he said.

"Thanks again. Tell (wife's name) I said hello," I replied.