I’m going to back to one of my old favorites, the unattainable in the dating world. For the most part, you often know he has no intention of commitment when you begin. After all, you’ve seen it happen with other girls. He takes them out for breakfast, he takes them to Kroger with him to go shopping, he won’t even protest when they hang around all day. But when it comes down to it, they’re each just another notch in the stick.

And you know that. But when he smirks at you, your hostility eases. You smile. He tells you his secrets, insights into his family, his worries about his friends. He trusts you. He is so genuine, you forget that you knew he was a rake. You think that maybe the other girls were just too clingy, too immature, too crazy.

But what happens when he casts you aside like the other girls? You wonder if all those intimacies were in your head, or worse, if they were the same intimacies he shared with all the other girls. Are you just another notch in the stick?

I’ve been one of those girls. I know your anger, your longing, your frustration. But recently I’ve talked to the unattainable. He did smile at you and think you were beautiful. He did confide in you. He wanted to know you as a person, not just a body. You should not have tried so hard to get him to date you and commit to you, because while his heart is still broken from his last committed relationship, this is his way of dating safely.

You may feel like he used you. He did, but it was his alternative to taking you out to dinner and a movie several times before deciding that it wasn’t going anywhere. He isn’t heartless, he just hasn’t found the right girl. And you have yet to find the right guy. So take a lesson from him and start putting more notches on your own stick (though hopefully they’ll be of the dinner/movie variety instead of his weak excuse for a date).