The Tale of the Resurfacing Dudes
Ah, the resurfacing man. He’s nuts, he’s gone, and then huh? He’s back? Konfused Kim wants to know what this is. Let’s tell her. Kim writes:
Hello August Manslationator!
I am writing for your sage opinion about two past — look, I won’t even call them boyfriends; their relationship-possibility lifespan rivaled that of the fruit fly — relations…
Let’s call them, oh, Train Wreck and Psycho, you know, for the sake of description, brevity, and mollification.
So, both of them, I had known for a long time, and both of them resurfaced, like so much buoyant pond scum, after I got divorced. Anyway, to make a long (and painful) story (filled with short-lived hope, doubt, confusion, betrayal, verbal abuse, humiliation, despair, a long recovery period, and possible permanent trust-issues) short, I am here, many months and lessons later, on relatively solid psychiatric ground. (I assure you, THAT was a complete, non-run-on sentence. Go ahead, diagram it…)
Anywho… So, each episode, to continue along the clinical tone, is now months old and I’ve successfully climbed out of the hole of “love” in which I had fallen.
And then recently, and very suddenly, within the space of two weeks, lo and behold — like literally — BEHOLD — I mean Baby Jesus, it was almost biblical in its miraculous appearance-as-if-from-nowhere — they both contact me via email.
Train Wreck sent me some kind of quote that “reminded him of me.” I trashed the email and emptied-trash immediately. Yay me.
Psycho emailed me an acquaintance’s phone number. I’m not particularly close with acquaintance and aside from the fact that I would NOT like to hang out with acquaintance because of the one-degree-of-separation proximity to Psycho, I haven’t seen acquaintance in, YEARS so, several more years of non-contact is fine by me.
Oh, also Psycho tried to add me to his contact list on a social-networking website.
There was a slight delay in trashing the email and the invitation on the website because I was laughing so hard that I was crying and I had to get out a new box of Kleenex.
So, after that long walk around the park, here’s my question, oh Oracle of the Y Chromosome…
What gives?
Am I, like Panda (a friend of mine; don’t ask) says: I’m date insurance. If so, that makes me feel pretty crappy.
Or, are they looking to restart something with me, in which case, again, reaching for Kleenex.
And if they are looking to restart something — to which, obviously I say “no, comma, HELL” — what is it, just out of sheer OMG!-look-at-that-THING-growing-out-of-old-food-in-my-refrigerator wonder?
I mean, are they THAT stupid?
Hm. Maybe I know the answer to that… I think I’ve seen that movie before…
Humbly submitted,
-Konfused Kim
Dear Konfused,
First of all, my compliments to the hilarity in your request. Life gave you lemons, and even though you didn’t make lemonade, you made fun of the lemonpile. Well done! (But I’m still not diagramming that sentence that you told me to diagram. You’re not the boss of me.)
Secondly, congratulations on setting the exact right tone with your salutation. “August Manslationator.” I shall wear my toga and laurel wreath as I compose my response. (I’ll do you the favor of not translating into Latin, however. Though the time was that I could. Jealous?)
Here’s what I think about Train Wreck and Psycho. This is not such an uncommon thing for a guy to do — the whole resurfacing (like, as you say, so much pond scum) for a seemingly real reason. “Oh, I saw a marmot and it reminded me of that time you mentioned marmalade!” Whatever it is.
This isn’t usually very well thought out, nor is it based on a “serious” interest level. It’s more of an, “I’m feeling lonely and…hang on…Konfused Kim used to make me feel NOT lonely. Wonder if she’ll pay attention to me again for a minute?”
It’s not usually that they want to pay YOU attention, but they miss when you used to pay THEM attention.
Delete. Trash. Do as ye have done, milady. They’re obviously not offering anything worthwhile. It’s just lonely dudes trying to see if you still think they’re cool guys. Their fondest wish would be for you to write them back and say, “Oh, I think of you all the time. There’s no one like you out there. Even though my life goes on, I still think you’re one of the coolest guys I ever knew.” Or, “I always compare men to you — you’re the gold standard now.” Or even, “Yes, yes, it’s ok. You’re fine. You still exist, dude. You don’t need to see our identification. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.” Ok, probably not that last part.
It’s not exactly “date insurance” I don’t think (all due respect to the panda that you hang with). They aren’t necessarily interested in dating you, per se. They just want to try to remind themselves that they are interesting to someone.
Good work, Konfused Kim. No need to ponder ol’ Trainwreck and Psycho for long (unless you want to create a sitcom called “Trainwreck & Psycho” in which case you have my blessing.) They were just feeling uncool, and were hoping to get a little sniff of whatever it was that they used to get from you.
Oh, manslatees? Anybody have any resurfacers, sliming their way back up to you (he asked as if he didn’t know that the answer was yes, yes, and yes)?
Posted: December 4th, 2007 under Reader Requests.
Comments
Comment from Sassy
Time December 4, 2007 at 9:26 am
I’ve got a chronicle resurfacer. Let’s just call him The Mortgage Guy. About every 4-6 weeks, I get a phone call to get a beer, go to the movies, take a drive. While he’s an OK guy (we dated way back when), I decided long ago that I have REAL friends who want to spend time with me, just not fill an empty evening.
I feel like if it’s a two-way street, that’s fine, but driving down a one-way street is usually not all that rewarding.
Write them off, pass them by, delete them.
Comment from Loiralei
Time December 4, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Jeff, I like that you put the “Creature’s” pic on this blog – so appropriate! The whole windshield of my dating life is littered with these resurfacing insects. The last one had left me so emotionally twisted and bloodless like a tick attack that when he resurfaced and contacted me again and they always do…I let him have it in a way that he would NEVER want to contact THIS one again! Don’t believe all that crap about never writing and sending closure letters ( or e-mails) or telling them everything you wanted to say. It puts these creatures in their rightful place! Its wonderful, healthy and cleansing to have your say! I’ve never regretted it! If you’re going to send it rather than say it, keep it a day or so until you get to put everything down and edit it so you leave nothing out. I chose not to answer the phone and talk to him but listened to his message and replied this way instead so I could keep my head on correctly and say everything I wanted to say to him. Speak from the heart and mind, don’t threaten or be a dangerous psycho just be truthful and intelligent! I’m very proud of my closure letters and if the guy saves them and another woman someday finds them and I hope that happens – it’ll warn her of what she’s dealing with if she hasn’t already discovered it. Closure words, e-mails or letters are insect repellents to these guys. It’ll leave them shuttering in their boots if they even THINK of contacting you again. Who knows if they remember the good things? Who cares! I want them to remember me as somebody they can’t mentally masturbate on. One of your readers mentioned before “being a horse in their stable that they don’t want to cut loose”. Be a wild mustang! Kick out of that stable and be free! Or they will continue to try to hang onto you with mental/emotional ropes and ties and keep trying to pull you back for NOTHING! Cause nothing is all they’ve got..!
Comment from LoveLife
Time December 4, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Amen, Loiralei!
Ditto for exes who use the tired “We can still be friends” line after they dump you. No, we can’t be friends, and no, I won’t provide an emotional safety net for you so you can feel better about the choice you made.
Comment from Susan
Time December 4, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Jeff, you are right on, friend, that these kind of men (or women — it’s an equal opportunity phenomenon) just want to feel good about themselves and your satisfaction is secondary.
And Loiralei, double amen to the closure letters; I’m partial to those, too — especially after doing the “he likes me, he doesn’t like me, he calls, he doesn’t call, oh, wait! He’s a jerk and I really DON’T want to be with him” dance. The written word can be very powerful, even if it’s only to satisfy our own minds and hearts.
Comment from writesome
Time December 4, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Thank you…I feel a resurfacer coming on…with the holidays right around the corner, we’re bound to run into those people we try to side step. Loiralei, “Mentally masturbate”, I love it! Jeff, another timely manslation. I’m now ready. I did write the closure letter (for myself) made the closure call, heard “it’s not you…can we still be friends?” I don’t collect friends that are only there when they need me.
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 5, 2007 at 7:30 am
Good comments today!
Terry: TWO of these douches? Did you come up with entertaining names for them like Konfused Kim did?
Sassy: The Mortgage Guy. Wow. Another not-so-enticing nickname. And yes, a real friend (or even NOBODY) is better than someone who just wants a little attention.
Loiralei: Insects! Tick attacks! Mustangs! Excellent comment by way of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom! (That said, uh…good luck on busting up a guy’s ability to mentally masturbate on ya. We’re…not very easily deterred. Sorry. We’re all sorry about that.)
LoveLife: As Jerry Seinfeld said in that situation, “Friends? Who wants a FREIND?”
Susan: Thank you for reminding me that women do this as well. You know what…I actually have HAD a resurfacer! I didn’t even know it until literally right now! That sneak!
writesome: Oh man…the holiday resurfacer. Oh yes. New Years comes up, people reevaluate, they realize they are lonely, and up they float. Ugh. De-LETE!
Comment from Theatregal
Time December 5, 2007 at 11:18 pm
As those of you who have spent some time here, you’ll remember my guy who I’m pretty sure will forever need his stable. A friend of mine calls me “his back pocket girl”. I asked her what she meant by that. She said, he cares about me in his fashion. We gew up together. I’m the only who knows he’s not exclusive, BUT should there come a time……say they all dump him ( not a good example, he always has plenty on the side to jump into the stable). More like, once he gets dumped by someone who it would really kill him to lose because…maybe he matured???or an age or an epiphany, he can take me out of his back pocket and never be alone. This was right after the last time I saw him, which was almost a year ago. He does still pop in on e-mail or by phone periodically. She says it’s to stay connected. I stopped calling him back. He freaked out. I felt compelled to point out to him that I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year and he hadn’t called or answered me in months. One time I don’t return his phone call and he freaks. He said I was right and he obviously needed to figure this out. Maybe go back to therapy. Haven’t heard from him since. I will, though, eventually. He always has one foot in and one foot out. He can’t stand for anyone to leave the stable. I once told him, that if he didn’t continually add to the stable, thereby making it impossible to have enough time to spread around, he probably could keep this thing going. He told me, he just cannot ever say no to any woman and if he told anyone of the new girlfriemds he dated other women, they would dump him. Poor baby : (
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 6, 2007 at 7:58 am
TG: Poor baby, indeed. Seriously, I do NOT envy that guy. That is one lonely, insecure guy. Of course it would be a lot easier to pity him if he wasn’t, you know, screwing over dozens of women in the process…
Comment from Theatregal
Time December 7, 2007 at 5:59 am
And, on some level , every man who knows him envies him. He’ll be 51 at the end of the month. We grew up together, as I’ve said before. We’ve known each other since I was 8 and he was 9. I really thought by now something would kick in and he’d decide this wasn’t that much fun. I don’t know….maybe it is.. ..for him and his kind, anyway. Now with all of the wonderful little pills, maybe they’ll be like this until they finally make their final transition. Perhaps in the middle of the latest conquest. At the moment, I am curious to see how long he can keep this going. The more I read and the more I talk to other people, I realize there are a lot of guys like him. I just never thought I’d be one of the boneheads to fall for someone like him. Ah, live and learn.
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 7, 2007 at 7:25 am
TG: I think most men only envy him on the “I haven’t thought this through clearly and am only picturing the highly varied sex life” part. The rest of it sounds like a nightmare of insecurity.
And don’t feel like TOO much of a bonehead there. Guys like that are, by necessity, total masters at it. If he wasn’t, you know, REAL good, well, he’d never get anybody (let alone the piles of women he’s got lying around.)
Comment from hunter
Time December 8, 2007 at 4:11 am
to loralei and susan,
I remember getting a closure letter…..I met the woman that wrote the letter, sometime afterwards(she was married by now)…….She said,”you never called back.” I said, “you told me to go away.” She said, “I didn’t mean forever!”……………..so much for closure letters….
Comment from hunter
Time December 8, 2007 at 4:17 am
to konfused kim,
once we claim our spot, we like to check on the herd………..hoping that, you slip up and we can get in again…
Comment from Susan
Time December 8, 2007 at 12:10 pm
ah, Hunter…that is the thing with the closure letter… if you write one, you really need to make sure you’re prepared for, um, closure (I don’t recommend trying to operate heavy machinery after writing it either) 
Comment from hunter
Time December 9, 2007 at 2:38 pm
to susan,
hah!..how funny!…how funny!….hhmmmhh
Comment from hunter
Time December 9, 2007 at 2:43 pm
to susan,
…I keep hearing, relationships are not about logic…….
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 10, 2007 at 6:47 am
hunter: Yeah, that wasn’t so much a closure letter. That was a “come chase me” letter. Totally different!
Susan: I don’t recommend operating heavy machinery in the first place. It’s so heavy…
Comment from Loiralei
Time December 10, 2007 at 12:31 pm
When you write a closure letter its to say goodbye, to cut off the bleeding, to get out of limbo. If the person you write the closure letter to won’t accept the closure, it is for three reasons: (1). They are a stalker. (2). They want to keep you in their stable, as a side dish, as part of the herd, as a back pocket girl, rotating booty call etc…all for their own selfish ego or future sexual needs. (3). They realize they really, really love, need and want you in their life and they are going to lose you now if they don’t respond accordingly. For the hunter, I suspect she just wanted you to want her (ego). Maybe she really wanted you too but obviously not enough to tell you the truth of how she really feels about it. Sometimes though, you can tell the whole truth and pour your heart out to them and it does no good. If that’s the case, at least you left nothing unsaid. Never go out without a fight if the relationship is worth the battle to hang onto it. That’s the good thing about closures, they close it up either way with nothing left unsaid if it needs to be let go for whatever reason. If they come back later in some way or contact you later (resurfacing) you have to wonder if its because of reason #2. If they let you slip away coldly when everything was so fresh and you were still together they are definitely taking a chance of losing you forever. And you’ll always know in your heart and mind that if they did it once, they are capable of doing it again. There will always be that lack of trust and a wound or scar there.
Comment from hunter
Time December 10, 2007 at 9:26 pm
to jeff mac,
What? I know a man can say in one sentence, what it takes a woman to say in several paragraphs…..please decipher what Loiralei said, in the above paragraph(18)…..
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 11, 2007 at 6:49 am
Loiralei: Yeah, I’m of the opinion that if someone is capable of letting you go, it’s best that they DO it, you know?
hunter: Oh come on. You’re a guy — surely you know how to at least pretend to listen to what a woman says by now!
Comment from Loiralei
Time December 11, 2007 at 12:06 pm
How is it that a guy can unhook a woman’s bra in one second flat without her even feeling it, yet they can’t understand the words comming out of her mouth half the time. Women not only can understand what another woman is saying exactly, but they already have a reply ready before she is finished speaking it. Is it because men can only use one side of their brain at a time?
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 11, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Loiralei: Hey, that’s nothing. I know some women who have their reply ready even before the other person STARTS speaking. 
Comment from hunter
Time December 11, 2007 at 7:33 pm
to jeff mac,
that was an extra long paragraph written by loiralei,,,,,,,, best I can figure out,,,,,,,,,,,,,, is that it is an interesting mixture of thoughts and feelings…..
Comment from hunter
Time December 11, 2007 at 7:39 pm
to loiralei,
I recently read an article, about a huge set of veins(corpus colousum) that connects one side of the female brain to the other, much bigger than what men have…..researchers believe that this may enable females to process information quicker…..
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 12, 2007 at 7:38 am
hunter: I always suspected that my brain was flawed. Finally I have some science to back it up!
Comment from hunter
Time December 13, 2007 at 12:48 am
to loiralei,
…unhook a womans bra in one second flat, without her feeling it….I am salivating……somehow I sense, men that are this graceful, do not spend their time on jeffs blog…..
Comment from hunter
Time December 13, 2007 at 12:50 am
to jeff mac,
science has taken lots and lots of pressure off of me……
Comment from Theatregal
Time December 14, 2007 at 5:40 am
Hey Lorialei,
“Stable” and “Back Pocket Girl”, I said first. Just kidding. Personally, I don’t believe that anything even close to “Closure” can be acheived. Just my opinion. Men are like boomerangs. It might take a minute or 10 years…..somehow…someway, they always seem to bounce back.
Comment from Jeff Mac
Time December 14, 2007 at 7:14 am
hunter: That’s what it’s there for, my friend.
Theatregal: You guys are going to have to start trademarking your phrases for mistreated women!
Pingback from Do Men Get Heartbroken? « Manslations
Time December 19, 2007 at 7:07 am
[...] who cheats, but keeps calling, telling you he loves you, etc. I’ve written about this type of resurfacing guy before. This guy likes attention. Specifically, he likes to know that women are thinking about him. [...]
Comment from Kim
Time February 7, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Hi Jeff! I just wanted to follow up with some other interesting developments:
First, once again, the pond scum rose and Train Wreck contacted me AGAIN! He emailed that he’d been thinking about me a lot over the past few months when I had been ignoring and actually forgetting about him. He said that he missed me and was there a way we could talk again?
(It’s LAME and chickensh*t how he never calls or whatnot, only emails where it’s a lower-risk for him to experience direct unpleasantness.)
Anyway, I emailed back the following:
“No.”
And that was it! Yay me!
Also, I have a new boyfriend now. He’s amazing. It’s worth all of the crappy suffering in 2006 and 2007. Amazing… He’s amazing… Totally a gentleman and scholar and everything — and more — I wanted in a partner.
Yay.
-Kim
Comment from Terry
Time December 4, 2007 at 8:32 am
“They just want to try to remind themselves that they are interesting to someone.”
Oh my gosh, Jeff, yes! I endured two separate resurfacers for far too long during my dating career. If only I’d had a friend like you to tell me the truth about these narcissists back then, I’d have been saved a world of pain.
Definitely move on, Kim. You’ll be better off on your own.