HE’S ONLY A MAN…

How sad it is.
He made much of me in my capacity of being a great help to the community. I felt really valued as a member.
The phone calls were many, and e-mails frequent, all very jolly and jovial…and a little bit flattering. I quite enjoyed them, not taking them seriously, but smiling the while. I suppose they made me feel young and desirable.
I was not interested in him as a lover. He was not my type, although he was most intelligent, and quick of mind, qualities I admire. Besides, he had a good wife whom I rather liked. Never did I consider him as a prospect…and I have been known to recognise prospects when I see them! I just enjoyed the banter as one human being to another. It was fun.
He often suggested that he visit me, some thirty kilometers away, on official business, to discuss coming events. He came once and I put on a good lunch. We talked about the project, and in so doing he mentioned that he and his wife no longer partook in activities marital. And he missed this. Tsk! Tsk! But he added that she had told him that should he find a willing participant, she would not object as long as he was discreet. Alarm bells ringing…but I was confident that I had never encouraged him in this way at all, and surely he could not be thinking I might be interested?
But as it transpired, he was. Of course I made it nicely clear that I was not the one, lonely as I was; being the other woman was not on. My only interest in a future partner would be for the real deal, a full and committed relationship. We left it at that, and I thought our former alliance would resume. But it didn’t.
Despite our connection in community involvement, in which my presence is hugely beneficial, the e-mails have disappeared along with the phone calls. Was I only valued as a possible conquest? What about my intellectual qualities? Should he not have continued the messages to some extent, if only to preserve my opinion of him as a humorous friend? I have not berated him in any way, or been judgemental. Only now, with this silence, am I being critical, in my heart, of him as a person. I feel let-down. My self-esteem has been shaken.
My aunt would have said, ‘He’s only a man…’
But it does make me feel sad.