Advice Column: Book Club Approaches, Sperm Donors, Fertility Timelines, and More
The first ever CHH advice column!
Welcome to the first-ever edition of my advice column! These are questions submitted by paid subscribers only. One requirement to submit a question is that it has to be anonymous, without names or usernames to sway the likelihood of being chosen, and I can only select some of the large volumes of questions submitted to avoid an extremely long column. For those I wasn’t able to answer—I may answer them next time!
I (28M) asked for a girl's(27ish F) number at bookclub, she said she was seeing someone, so I didn't pursue it further; wished her a goodnight as said "see you next week." I thought things were fine, but "next week" was yesterday, and she sat way further away from me than usual. And the vibe was... well it "talk to CHH(34F)" bad. Is this friendship a total writeoff? Did I accidentally poison a new friend-group with drama?
So first of all: glad that you took the plunge and asked someone out in public! Most of the time, you’ll get a no- after all, that’s what happens on dating apps even more often. But the important thing is to do it often enough that it doesn’t scare you, so you’re going in the right direction. The most romantically successful men (or women for that matter) tend to be people who can move on from rejection pretty quickly and not dwell on it. After all, every minute spent ruminating is a minute stolen from potentially meeting someone different.
As for her reaction, it could boil down to three things, but TLDR: I think you will probably not wind up having a friendship with her, but you’re not screwed with the entire book club. Here are the potential reasons she’s distancing herself:
You asked her out too soon for her preferences, and she felt weird about it. She might have the ick. Not a big deal, just give her space and move on. You won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
She wants to be respectful to her boyfriend. Consider if you were the boyfriend, and your girlfriend got approached by a guy at a book club. You’d probably want her to create some distance! If I found out a woman asked me husband out at work, I’d be pretty annoyed if he then started being buddy-buddy with her. I would expect him to limit contact. So she might just be respecting her partner by avoiding you, awkward as that may be.
Your best bet is to act like it doesn’t bother you (even if it does) and continue to be pleasant and friendly to the rest of the group, while giving this particular woman the space she clearly wants. As long as you do this, the other members of the book club shouldn’t be passing any major negative judgments on you. Good luck!
I'm a 38-year-old woman who is getting divorced. No one currently wants to have kids with me, and although I'll probably end up with another partner in a few years I'm running out of time. Should I pursue single parenthood? Freeze my eggs? Give up? I hate the idea of raising a child without a father, but I can't think of a good solution other than time travel.
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