ReLearning the Wheel While Driving

We meet up and she follows me to the date spot.
I've chosen a place where I know a ton of people, it's upscale but with specials and there will be a lot of energy for the given night of the week. I'm reminded of Oscar Wilde and Lord Wotton pointing out the intimacy of a gathering with many people.

We post up, and we talk. We eat some food but it doesn't have the boring 20 questions feel of a job interview/date. It also adds to my social proof in that establishment and around town. I hate PUA terms, but "social proof" is one for whom it proves the most apt description/terminology.

She's sensitive and she's more open than the typical American girl which is refreshing.
She eschews technology but not in a hipster way and she reads often.
I didn't know they made people like this very often anymore.

I go to the bathroom and the girl I have plans with the following day has texted me. The old me used to relish this but no longer. It's tiresome and it feels incongruent. It feels discordant.
I know that homegirl is certainly talking to other dudes but the whole process, the whole pursuing multiple angles just leaves me tired these days. It's so much to remember.
How did I ever do this before?

We segue to a bar/club and we post up and talk to some strangers. We people watch.
We end up on the couch and she's curled up next to me. It feels good to have the simple weight of a woman pressed up against me, feeling her breathing slow as the tension fades and it's just two people in the warmth of contact. Her muscles relax, to some extent she feels safe...and she rests up against me.
I know how to lead it where it will be and where she wants it to be and she feels comfortable and I've established rapport and familiarity.
I see the numbers in the matrix flying all around me.
Seeing this sober is like watching the inside of a large clock.
She gives me all the signs to kiss her but I wait. I wait. I wait. Not due to nervousness but because it's all part of the crescendo.
I kiss her.

I drop her off and she kisses me again. She tries to layer on the allure in her voice as she says bye/offers to make plans going forward. I could be more aggressive, but I do know to leave them wanting. Always leave them slightly uncertain, craving resolution.

My objective rational male mind tells me I did good. I achieved compliance, made conversation deeper than the surface bullshit. I escalated and insta-dated a venue change. I didn't press much but it somehow just didn't feel necessary. Other PUA's will decry this but fuck them, this isn't their blog.
I don't like to rush around the way I once did. I let it be what it was and it was pleasant. I don't press the envelope in every interaction any more. It's fucking exhausting. My old life was exhausting.
I don't have to live that way anymore.

Somehow, I am nonplussed.....or is that what this feeling is?
I honestly....am uncertain.
Perhaps I'm just feelings things to which I have been comfortably numb for most of if not all of my adult life.
--
I go to bed and don't think of anything else.
I reflect that my need to check my phone and see if I've heard from the other girl has dropped considerably. These are all things I already know but seeing them sober, cold sober, plain as day or night....they carry more weight and depth of meaning in my understanding of the interpersonal dynamics of attraction. This is a lengthy, grand social experiment of which I am the test subject and in which I wish to strip bare the base mechanics of how and why we do or do not connect. Sifting through the maze of bullshit and miscommunication. It's another lens through which to view the ever shifting sands of the human condition.