The Self-Startler
Picture this: the guy you’re dating has just asked you away for the weekend. He smiles at you expectantly. His excitement is both contagious and astonishing. Since when did guys suggest The First Weekend Away after just 11 days and three hours? Then again, he’s been pretty full-on since you met. Not in an ‘away with you, you slimy stalker’ kind of way, but in a ‘this guy’s not beating around the bush’ kind of way. In fact, he’s all but standing in the middle of the bush with a neon sign saying, ‘I'm so ready for a relationship!’ But what you may not realise is that this guy could be a self-startler.
The self-startler is a fascinating male specimen. He bowls into your life spewing affection, calls, SMSes, dates, kisses and dinners in a way that leaves you spinning and believing there really are people out there who don’t play games. (As opposed to those who say they don’t, but screen your calls and wait two days to return an SMS.) And then, in a quiet moment, he reflects on his behaviour and is startled about how fast the relationship is going. (Hence his title: self-startler). He then disappears.
Self-startlers show 100% interest, immediately. They pounce as soon as you log on to Skype. They call you twice a day. They suggest going to see a movie, then set up a concrete time and day, which they then follow through with, pay for and end with a gentlemanly kiss. In short, they propel a relationship at a pace usually reserved for men in white slacks throwing red balls at men holding bats in equally fetching white slacks.
It all happens so fast and is of such intensity, you get caught up in the ride and start doing non-you things, like seeing him every day or wearing tracksuit pants on the third date. But one random day, it all stops… a seismic relationship shift occurs.
It goes from him gushing ‘l can’t wait for you to meet Mom!’ on Sunday evening to a deafening silence on Monday. No beep-beeps, no bring-brings, no bold name in your inbox; it’s as though he‘s fallen off the proverbial end of the earth. And because he’s been making so much damn noise the past few weeks, you genuinely fear he has actually fallen off something. (Your roof as he was leaving flowers outside your window, possibly.)
When Wednesday rolls around and you haven’t heard a peep, you send a breezy-yet- meticulously-edited SMS, only to get this bomb in reply: ‘Sorry, been busy. I’ve been thinking we should put the brakes on a bit. Take care and let’s have coffee sometime.’ What the hell?!
This is what happened: he freaked himself out. He peaked too early and, well, he scared himself off. You, for the record, had nothing to do with it; you were just a pawn in the whirlwind of his intoxicating courtship.
But how can there exist such a devastating hot-to-cold transition? It’s called a moment of clarity. Somewhere in his head, his bachelor-boy alter ego manages to get five minutes of airtime and grabs his accelerator boy part of his personality (who’s humming love songs and planning The Next Perfect Date), and says, ‘Fool! What are you doing? At this rate you’ll be living together within a week! Have you forgotten what it’s like to be carefree and single?’ At which point Accelerator Boy realises, yep, he’s in too deep and needs to bail. Pronto.
It could be that he was just role-playing, trying the whole relationship scenario on before buying (and finding) it didn’t quite fit. Or he might genuinely have believed he was in love and quite liked it, but then it all became too overwhelming. (His fault entirely, of course).
Sadly, there’s no way to predict whether you’re being swooned by a self-startler. And some guys do actually operate in an intensely romantic Gone with the Wind type of way, so you can’t just dismiss any guy who shows fairy-tale-style interest in you. Sure, keep your head firmly attached when you stroll into Relationship Town, but keep an open mind, too. Enjoy the walk. After all, even if he does suddenly freak out and rack off, if you’ve been dating a self-startler, you probably enjoyed the kind of turbo-romantic courting most of us only dream about. And that would never be something you’d regret, would it?