From: greg@pomona.claremont.edu (Tigger)
Subject: To pursue or not to pursue...
Organization: Pomona College
Date: 17 Apr 92 00:41:20 PDT

Well, I've already made up my mind on this situation, but I think I'll
throw it to the net and see if there is any consensus, and if it agrees
with my decision...

About six months ago, my on-and-off girlfriend of two and a half years
started cheating on me with a guy who claimed to be my friend.  I was
stupid enough to keep chasing her for three months.  Since then I
haven't trusted women for anything more than the time of day.  I've
been lonely as hell, but I've been to damn afraid of getting another
knife in the back to do anything about it.

That's finally starting to change.  I'm starting to feel like I might
actually be able to take a chance again.  I've made some new female
friends, and they've been honest enough with me to made a decent
impression.

For several months now, a couple of friends of mine have been trying
to set me up with a friend of theirs.  Apparently her ex treated her
like shit, too.  And supposedly that's not all we have in common.

I spoke with this woman on the phone a couple of times when she called
and I happened to be at my friends' house, but they were basically
short and rather inconsequential conversations.  For example, one of
them was on New Year's Eve when we were both a touch too intoxicated
to be making much sense.

And then she called me the other night.  Apparently she called our
mutual friends because she was depressed because she had just turned
down a proposition from her ex.  They suggested she call me, and for
some reason she did.  That was about 9:30pm.

We were on the phone until 5am!  We have a hell of a lot in common.
In fact, from what our friends have told me, and from what I learned
during that conversation, she is almost exactly what I'm looking for.
There are, however, a couple of problems.  First, she lives four
hundred miles from here.  Second, it became obvious to me (though 
not to her) during our conversation that she is still hung up on
her ex, even though he is using her.  He even essentially raped her
once, though she doesn't apply that term to the incident, and she
is still defending him, and her friendship with him, and even her
occasional sleeping with him.

Anyway, like I said, we have a lot in common.  We obviously hit it
off quite well on the phone, and we both agreed that we'd like to
meet each other.  If our mutual friends are to be believed, we've
even both expressed serious interest in each other, sight unseen.

But I'm stuck in a bad spot.  My last girlfriend left me for another
guy, at least in part because he lived ten miles from her and I lived
four hundred.  And she didn't have a history of anything other than
friendship with him.  So I'm very afraid that if I were to pursue this
new interest, and if I were successful in this pursuit, I'd end up in
the same boat I did before simply because he's there and I'm not,
except on weekends once or twice a month.  Our mutual friends think
that she'd drop the other guy like a hot potato if she had someone
else to take his place, but I'm not so sure about that.  And like I
said, is someone she could only see a couple of times a month really 
taking his place?

So I'm left sorta between a rock and a hard place.  If things continue
as well as they have started, I think there's some real potential
here.  But there also seem to be some pretty serious obstacles.  Our
mutual friends obviously think we ought to go for it, because they've
been doing everything in their power to throw us together for several
months now.  Another friend I mentioned the situation to advised me
to forget about it, and expressed the opinion that this woman will
need several years, several men, and perhaps therapy to get over her
last boyfriend.

So what do you think?  Like I said, I've already made up my mind about
what I'm going to do.  So I'm not looking for advise.  But I am curious
to know what you all think of this.  I now relinquish the floor to my
distinguished colleague from...

--
|  Greg Orman                               greg@pomona.claremont.edu  |
|                      Live to Ride, Ride to Live                      |
|        A Man's Best Friends:  a Harley, a Baretta, and a Gund        |