You call me too much. You call me all the damn time and we don’t talk about anything. Nothing. Nothing important or even relatively interesting happened in your life or mine between now and the last time we talked which, in all likelihood, was prolly like 5 hours ago. I’ve tried to just not pick the phone up hoping that you’d get the hint and just try calling back later…like tomorrow. But no, you call right back. No answer. Third times a charm. No, it’s not. It’s not a charm. Four times the phone rings and I pick up to see if it’s some matter of life or death…but it’s not. It’s just you on the other line, alive and well with no new or even interesting old subject matter to discuss. I find myself sometimes almost disappointed that your car hasn’t careened off the side of the road and burst into flames or that you aren’t somehow stuck in a airtight container and are running out of oxygen. No, you’re in pristine health and you have absolutely nothing to say. I make attempts to drive the conversation towards something of mutual interest, but that’s pointless. All I get from my questions of “How’s _______ doing over there?” or “What’s one thing you could change about Cali?”are dull and boring one-word answers of “Fine”and “I dunno” .

I’d rather staple my nuts to a burning building than continue this phone conversation any longer than it has to. And right as I begin talking about something I’m actually interested or excited about, you interrupt me mid-sentence w/ “Hey, I gotta go. Talk to you later.” Click.

This is what I want to tell you but can’t. I can’t because as soon as I tell you that “You call too much”, I know that instead of hearing what I said and just calling slightly less frequent or even just calling when you have something to say, instead you will interpret this as “I hate you. You are undesirable and I want you to never call me again.” Maybe not that exactly, but that’s how it comes off. The truth of the matter is that I actually enjoy hearing your voice and like spending time with you, but what I don’t enjoy is pointless communication because….that is by definition not communication. I’m not even a phone person, so if I’m going to be on the phone, there needs to be some kind of point of the conversation. If it’s gonna be one of those “We talked all night about nothing” kind of conversations, then there needs to be several points or at least some topics of mutual interest. Most people have about 2 major milestones in their day and one of those is work/school. Twenty-four hours is a very short period of time and with a few exceptions out of the year, very little happens in one day. So I don’t need to talk to you everyday, especially if you aren’t my girlfriend or “special friend”.

I’ve thought of about a million ways to tell you this, but each one as useless as the next. I almost wish you were a crazy-ass so I could just never speak to you again, but that’s not the case. For whatever reason, I’d rather put up with this nonsense than have you stop calling me, which you will (because you’re programmed to react like that). Apparently I have an unhealthy addiction to you, and if that means enduring an infinite barrage of meaningless and mind-numbing conversations, then I guess that’s the price I have to pay to feed my obsession. Damn.

The truth of the matter is that I personally want to continue to get to know these said individuals but for several reasons, I continue to put off calling them until, of course, too much time passes and I’m like “forget it”. I spoke to one of my male friends and he too had the same bad habit of not calling girls back. I conducted a mini-survey and apparently this is a problem that about 1 out of every 3 guys is guilty of at some point  (some more habitual than others). In my research, many of the guys could not pinpoint the exact reason why they don’t call back someone who they’re actually interested in, but here are the most common rationalizations:

• “I keep remembering to call too late” - This, I admit, is my main problem. My schedule with time usually peaks activity in the wee hours of the night, a time in which most sane individuals are asleep. By the time I “remember” to give pretty lady a phone call, she’s probably already in bed or getting ready to go. “I’ll call her tomorrow” is what I usually say. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Fail.
• “I don’t wanna like lead her on or something” – Cuz I’m not tryina be nobody’s boyfriend. This is a funny excuse. A lot of times guys think that the world revolves around them and that just because a girl seems interested in you, that means she wants to marry you. On the opposite side of my research, many of the girls I talked to said that sometimes when she gives her number to a guy, sometimes it just means that they think that guy is interesting, funny, or just cool. It doesn’t always mean that she wants to pursue a physical or emotional relationship. When we sometimes jump the gun, I think in a way we kinda trivialize the mental of the female gender, and that’s not exactly playing nice.
• “If I don’t try, I won’t get rejected” – The excuse guys are usually reluctant to admit. Among the men interviewed, a significant amount of them stated that they somehow felt that being able to charm the girl at the initial meeting was lucky or that they set such a high standard for themselves. When it’s time to call her back, he gets scared that he may not be able to live up to what she expects (or what he thinks she expects) either because he’s too much of a punkass, or because she intimidates him, or both.
• “I’m not a phone person, but I’ll text her to oblivion” – This is me too (kinda). I don’t like selling myself over the phone. And this is not just with dating, this is with everything. I can charm the hell outta an interviewer in person, but my phone presence during phone interviews is extra whack. I’m apparently not alone. Many guys don’t like talking on the phone. As men, when we call each other, it’s very procedural and with a clear and finite purpose. Ex) “Hey! What time are we gonna meet up?” “I dunno? Eight?”, “Ok, I’ll call when I’m downstairs”, “Make sure you come the back way”, “Aight”, “Yeh” End of Call. Calling someone we don’t really know to talk about nothing doesn’t seem to make sense when that person hasn’t given us much reason yet to talk to them. But texting! Procedural and straight to the point with a clear and finite purpose. Guys’ phone conversations with each other align perfectly with a typical text message convo. The downside is, when a guy usually only asks a girl straight forward questions about “where are you?” “do you wanna hang out/come over?”, this can be easily misinterpreted. More than half the females interviewed said that when a guy is only texting about meeting and not asking how there day is or questions like that, that can be seen as him just wanting to get laid when this very well may not be the case.

Let me make this 100% clear. All these excuses are bullshit and there probably is no good reason as to why a good third of us guys do this, only 1/2 ass rationalizations for irrational actions. What’s even worse is when we are talking to females and everything’s going good and then suddenly just….stop. But tha’s probably a whole new topic and question for another time. What is it about the male psyche that makes us act this way?

Males are supposedly the more logic-oriented sex, whereas women are more intuition-oriented in there decision making processes. After all the interviews, I’m still perplexed as to why we do this. Why do we sometimes not call her if we are actually interested? Is there an actual reason that we’ve missed?

Gotta figure this one out, until then…guess I’m still the worst person on the planet.

Speak….