Fallin too fast

This Crap Email from a Dude (and more importantly, the behavior described in the introduction) is terribly and completely creepy. The whole story made me shudder, so I felt compelled to share it/rant on it. This is the kind of guy that liked me in high school, and the kind of guy that a couple of my girlfriends attract en masse still. Commenter kansasgirl sums up exactly why this isn't ok (and why it's not just a girl's inability to take a compliment, as other commenters have suggested):

I mean, I'm pretty great, but I know it takes a while to see just how great I am. If you think I'm that great after a few hours with me, you're either projecting your ideal woman onto me or you're just desperate, neither of which is very attractive.

The Michael Scott comparisons are dead on. Jim had to talk him back from the ledge in the finale -- to keep him from professing his love for the new HR manager right away. That needy desperation is what Makes Michael's character so sad and eccentric. It's that kind of crazy all-in behavior that doesn't say a damn thing about the woman -- it just says that the man is grasping for a connection and will imagine its already there with anyone who gives him some positive attention. A lot of 80s movies -- Say Anything, St Elmo's Fire -- were based on characters that fell madly, obsessively in love with people they barely knew, which always made those stories deeply disturbing to me.

I'm sure this goes both ways, with women clinging on for dear life with little to no encouragement. I just haven't seen it happen first hand as much as I've seen it happen this way. (Which is ironic considering how women are so often stereotyped as clingy relationship-hunters.) Bring on the texts and emails and gifts, but not all at once and not when you barely know somebody. Ick.