The Perfect Date I Had To Walk Away From

I’m getting personal.

Hi there,

A few years ago, I went on a date. He was a friend of a friend’s brother. Not a stranger from the internet, which already felt like a point in his favor. And when I met him, I was very pleasantly surprised. He was incredibly good-looking, super smart, successful, and I even loved the way he was dressed. He was warm, attentive, and even funny. He asked good questions and actually listened to the answers. Over dinner, he was nothing but a gentleman.

On paper, it was a perfect date.

And yet when I got home, something was off, and I could not tell you what it was or where it was coming from. Nothing had gone wrong. Just this feeling sitting somewhere in my body that would not resolve itself, no matter how many times I replayed the evening looking for an explanation.

I called my friends. I did what women do, which is convene an informal tribunal to analyze the evidence.

“Maybe he’s too nice,” one of them said.

“I love nice,” I said. “And he’s not boring. He has a real personality.”

'“Maybe he’s too hot?”

“Too hot?” I laughed.

“Chemistry is mysterious,” another friend offered. “Maybe it’s something unconscious. Maybe you don’t like his smell.”

I laughed again. “He smelled really good, actually.”

We went around like this for a while and arrived nowhere conclusive. So I decided to keep seeing him and pay attention.

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Is it my anxiety or intuition?

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He called the next day just to say hi. Like an adult. Which I appreciated. He asked me out again. We went to dinner, then a show, and then we walked through the streets of New York for what felt like hours, talking about music and film and psychology and everything in between. It was a good night.

Yet I still felt that off feeling.

Photo by Timo Masri on Unsplash

By the third date, I decided the only remaining variable I had not tested was physical. So I kissed him. And, it was a good one.

I went home, sat on my couch, and called my best friend.

“I can’t see him again,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I genuinely do not know. But something is off, and I’m done.”

She thought I was making a mistake. I thought I might be making a mistake. He was smart, kind, attractive, and interested. He had a good relationship with his parents and knew how to date like a grown-up without playing games. The case against ending it was substantial, and the case for ending it was essentially just a feeling I could not explain.

I called him the next day and told him, and luckily, he was gracious about it. But then I spent the better part of the following week interrogating myself. Did I make a mistake? Am I simply not ready for something real? What is actually wrong with me?

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Why I Broke Up with a Good Person

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But every time I asked those questions, I came back to the same answer. I am going to trust myself. I do not need to understand it to honor it. I am going to trust myself.

About a year later, I found out he had physically assaulted his girlfriend.

My body knew something my brain had not caught up to yet. That feeling I just couldn’t identify, that low hum that made no rational sense given everything I knew about this person. And if I had talked myself out of it, which I nearly did, which a lot of us do because we have been taught to distrust our instincts and defer to logic and give people the benefit of the doubt even when something in us is saying no, I would have walked directly into harm.

I’m not telling you this story to frighten you. I’m telling it to remind you of something.

Your body is not dramatic. It’s not irrational. It is not too sensitive, too cautious, or too quick to judge. It is paying attention to things your conscious mind has not yet caught up to. And it is worth listening to. Even when you can’t explain it. Even when everything on paper says you should feel differently.

Trust yourself anyway.

Love,
Jillian