How Soon is Too Soon?

There's a certain mourning period that must be respected when someone's relationship has broken off. The length of time it takes for someone to get over their failed romance is variable depending on a myriad of factors: the length of the relationship, how the relationship was ended, who broke up with whom, and so forth. The feelings of the people that discarded their relationship have to be taken into account by their social circle, as some topics, though seemingly harmless in nature, might trigger an unexpected emotional reaction, and they may have a heightened sensitivity to how their feelings are dealt with by their friends. So I have to ask: how soon is too soon to ask out a girl that just broke up with her boyfriend?

It had been a few months since I had last had any contact with Betsy, and, even though I still thought about her from time to time, I was thinking about her less and less. Every now and then she would pop up in my facebook feed, and I would make a comment on something she'd said, but she was slowly working her way out of my life.

And then came the day that she broke up with her boyfriend. And it wasn't one of those silent breakups where she's far too sad to talk about it, it was one of those fiery breakups wherein she's spouting off about how he wronged her and how he needed to suffer. Now, I'm not proud of myself for this, but, when I heard that she had broken up with her boyfriend, my first thought was "I'd better work my way back in before it's too late!"

I started asking myself how soon was too soon to pounce on an opportunity. Betsy and her boyfriend had been high school sweethearts, they had maintained a loving long-distance relationship when they were separated by school, and had been back together for two years before she found him cheating on her. That's what blows my mind: he was completely faithful to her while they were three cities apart, but fooled around on her when they reunited...he just had things really, really backwards. But on the bright side, it seemed like it would be easier to quell her anger than it would be to manage her devastating sadness.

So I waited two days before I posted something on her wall, completely unrelated to her breakup, and just put myself back on her radar. Almost immediately the witty repartee that I had grown accustomed to while we worked together was reignited, and, just like that, I was back in her mind.

I figured that, the more decent thing to do, would be to be a good friend to her first before trying to hit on her, so I gave her some time to work on her feelings over her breakup, really not wanting to be a rebound. I decided to give it about two months and test the waters to see how she was feeling about it, but five weeks later I see a notice saying that she would be in town for the weekend and would have no access to a computer, I kind of got...well, I panicked.

Not wanting to miss an(other) opportunity with Betsy, I shot off an e-mail asking if she would have any spare time during her stay in town, and then quickly realized that she had no access to a computer, so she wouldn't get my message until she'd returned to her own town.

This is where I made things creepy. Well, no, this is where I amped up how creepy I had already made things.

I went to facebook, found her cellphone number, and I texted her asking if she wanted to see me while she was in town -- really, I'm pretty sure that's how I worded it, like I would be doing her a favour by allowing her to visit me. About an hour later I received a response which was, verbatim, "who is this?"

Of course, since I hadn't had her number, it would make sense that she didn't have mine, so I responded and told her who I was, apologising for stealing her number from the internet. Thankfully, instead of blocking my number and phoning the police, she replies with "OMG! LUNDY! YES!" and, with that, we were making plans to see one another on the weekend.

It's too bad I hadn't made plans to make an ass of myself, because that's what I was about to do. Publicly.