Right before the holiday I found myself torn over the details surrounding some too-be-scheduled drinks….with a guy (in case you’re new to this blog).

The date was of the blind variety, though in my opinion there’s no longer such thing as a blind date on account of the Internet and expert stalkers like my friend John.

For the purposes of this discussion – I knew-ish him but he didn’t know me. I had asked him to grab a drink sometime, so it wasn’t even his idea. Sure he could have assumed I was fantastic, but again, he didn’t know me. I had made a bold move, so it was good of him to even respond favorably in the first place.

Our drinks were difficult to schedule – delayed response, mixed messages – what have you.We had a tentative date and time — he blew it off by three days. Nothing major, but it wasn’t the makings of a fantastic first impression. As my one guy friend said, “he’s not 100% in the wrong, but he’s not exactly trying to impress you.”

But again – he didn’t know me. He’d agreed to grab a drink but he wasn’t the pursuer and so he was treating it casually and without major effort. At most he’d seen my Facebook profile pic and some basic info. At the least he had self control and no friends like John so he knew nothing.

Some people I ran the details by said he did nothing wrong. He had yet to technically stand me up, and he owed me nothing but common courtesy. These people implied that my expectations were too high given the circumstances. In a way they were right.

Others said, forget this guy, he’s lame. Sure he doesn’t have to be out to impress you, but who wants a guy who isn’t just out to impress everyone? He agreed to the drinks, he should follow through with common courtesy. They were right too.

On the pro-him camp lines like, “you need to give him the benefit of the doubt” and “if he meets you and is still flakey like this then you have a problem.” On the ney side – “once a flake, always a flake” and, “go out with him but I’d be shocked if he turned out great given this track record.”

Did I want him to flawlessly execute the pre-drinks planning period? Of course. I realize he didn’t yet know that I was worth his most excellent behavior, but I wanted him to anticipate I was worth it and therefore treat me like someone he wanted to know and, more importantly, someone he intended to like.

But I also acknowledged that certain outside circumstances could be preventing that from happening for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with me.

Were my expectations too great or was this guy just lame? Against some people’s advice, I decided the only way to find out way to make the drinks work — even if they were over Monday night football and among his friends…

I’ll be honest, he seemed like he could be great. He said things like – this was great, sorry it was so hard to schedule – we’ll have to get a proper dinner after the holidays.