The last two days, a lot of stuff has happened. A boy asked me out. I didn't really know him. I went "out" with him. I wasn't terribly convinced that he would ever be "the one" for me, and that I could ever be in a deep relationship with him. I learned that he was eight years older than me. Red flag. I also learned that he liked me, though he had only met me two days before that. Another red flag.

And he didn't laugh at any of my jokes. Big red flag waving in the wind.

Add these factors to a lot of negative gut feelings. That was me yesterday.

Today I talked to his former girlfriend.

Ten minutes ago I emailed him the "we need to talk" line and asked him to meet me tomorrow.

I'm so glad I'm getting this over with before it's started. He's a great guy, but he is not the one for me. And there are some areas which, in my opinion, he is not great. Considering that these areas were evident on our first real conversation, how many more might surface after many?

I have the best support group of friends. They listen, support, encourage, advise, and tell me repeatedly that I am doing the right thing. I'll talk to him tomorrow.

What have I learned from this experience?

Very practically, I will never seek a "deeper" relationship with a guy that I don't even have a relationship with in the first place. I need to be friends with a guy before I "date" him - in fact, I need to actually know a guy before I date him! Gosh! Shouldn't that be really obvious?

I'm just glad that this had nothing to do with me. I wasn't flirting when I met him. I said all of three words to him - "Hi I'm Amber" and then forgot about him. When he emailed me I had to look him up in order to know who he was. Really, the most obvious and basic question you should ask before dating a guy is "have I known him for longer than a week?"

Ah. Haha, I almost had "guy problems". It's great now though. I feel so much better knowing what I'm going to do. It'll be hard to do it. Awkward. But good.

There are obviously a lot more details to this, but I don't think they need to be displayed publicly to the world. Woohoo!!