Between The Lines

I'm usually pretty good at reading people. I generally know their intentions without them saying it, I can typically tell if they're being insincere or selfish right away, and I have a knack for reading someone's body language. I notice people...really notice them. It's part of my job actually, and it's why I'm good at poker (that and my willingness to endlessly flirt at poker table!). Yet for some reason with the past few guys in my life, I suck at it. Not just suck a little bit, I'm down right awful at it.

I don't know what's wrong with me. (Did I suddenly start responding to some new kind of pheromones that makes my brain go dead? And how did all these guys get the same ones? Ugh!) Whatever the case, I seem to be investing my time/heart in the wrong people - which I'm sure you'll hear about in other posts. I've always been able to somewhat keep my head in matters of the heart. It takes me a while to let people in (aka China would be in awe of my walls). So by the time a guy gets close, I've already learned his communication style, I know the twitch he does when he's holding something back, and that when he says "um" three times in a row with a two second pause between the 2nd and 3rd "um's" he's about to confess something I probably don't want to hear. Beyond this, I've never had a problem understanding guy-speak... until recently.

With the most recent guys (which include an old high school friend, a single father with no time, and a murse in med school, etc.), a guy says something and I apparently hear something completely different. Even with body language I couldn't be more off! In the past I could tell the difference between a we'll-be-a-couple-by-next-week touch and a I-just-want-to-bone-you brush against my leg from a million miles away. Now I seem to be misreading them on a daily basis. wtf? Have I somehow switched the kind of guys I date without knowing it? Did I end up in some alternate universe where guys who want to cuddle and tell you their feelings now = "let's be friends with beni's"? How is it that when I read between the lines now, one of us seems to be reading a children's fairytale and the other is reading Playboy?