The Pastor Wrote Back!

So, after having my pity party over the Pastor, a week and a half later he responds to my email. He apologized and said that he has been “having to make transitional decisions that have really taken up a lot of [his] time.” He continues to ask me a few questions as if he didn’t wait three weeks to email me back.

I asked a few of you over twitter and email what I should do: email him back or not. Normally responding to his email would be breaking the cardinal rules of online dating:

1) Online daters have a response period of four days or less before they come across as not interested.

Thoughts: He took 3 weeks and as creepy as this sounds, I saw that he had been on several times before I wrote my original blog post… which is why I felt as if it had been rejection. Also, a guy should be able to make time to write you a quick response because he needs to show that he has enough (not too much, just enough) time for you.

2) Normally you are supposed to give the online communication a deadline of three weeks before he chooses to either ask you out on a date or ask you to communicate through another method. If he doesn’t then he may have something to hide.

Thoughts: We started emailing at the end of April. It’s now June…

Also, I kind-of already dealt with the “he’s rejected me” part and moved on. Part of the moving on process included writing a blog post about him.

So, what exactly is my concern in responding to his email? Is my pride getting in the way of something happening? Is it worth giving him another chance? Or is it just totally weird all around (pastor on a dating website)?

I’m going to totally sound like a girl here, but since I know he’s been on the website in the past three weeks (during his no-response period), it makes me feel like I’m his second pick. Almost as if he was talking to someone else and then decided that it wasn’t going to work out with her so he decided to write me back… but chances are that’s just my wounded pride speaking.

Nevertheless, thanks to y’alls responses and encouragement, I wrote him back. I made the email short and sweet, but I also included a portion where I was a little more transparent with him than normal.

Here’s what I said:

“While it was great to hear from you, I’ll have to admit that I almost didn’t respond.” I continued with my reasoning and then explained to him why I assumed he wasn’t interested.

Most guys do not like having someone tell them that they went about something in a wrong way, but hopefully he sees this as positive communication rather than rejection. We will see.

I still haven’t decided what I would like to come out of this… whether at this point I actually want to meet him for dinner or not.

I guess today is not the day I have to figure that out!