Dear Dr. Date,
I thought I pretty much understood dating until the Fourth of July weekend. I met this girl at a bar on campus after a concert on Saturday night. I went there with a roommate to have a few beers, and we started playing pool with these three girls and everything seemed to be going alright. Girl one was flirting with me and hitting on me and I wasn’t really excited. It was cool, but there was no real strong attraction. Her friend, Girl two, and I started talking and flirting. By the end of the night, I thought we had really hit it off. This girl had everything I was looking for in someone I would like to date — good personality, attractive, goal-orientated and intelligent.
Girl one was a little angry I think, but I was never really interested in the first place. So Girl two and I started talking and we flirted quite a bit. At the end of the night we kissed a few times and I gave her my phone number. We kissed several more times in the parking lot, and I asked her to call me either on Sunday or Monday because we would both be in Duluth. She still hasn’t called and I am confused. Everything seemed to be going very well! We tentatively made a date so I could make her dinner, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anymore.
Anyway, I was wondering if you could help explain to me at all what happened or didn’t happen.
— Disorientated in Duluth

There’s a couple problems apparent in your letter. First, your relationship started in a bar. Many people go to bars to meet other people, but the dark, party atmosphere tends to make people behave differently than normal. It can be fun to go to a bar and do and say things you would never do or say in your normal out-of-bar life. This can be seen at a setting like First Avenue or Ground Zero where both men and women may dress provocatively because it’s fun, but their personality doesn’t necessarily match outside the bar. While I gather she wasn’t wearing a black latex dominatrix outfit, she still may have been behaving differently than she would have if you had met her in, say, class. Anything is possible in the dark anonymity of a bar. She may have had a boyfriend who she wasn’t getting along with and was playing around. She may have only been after the sweet rush of kissing a stranger who she won’t have to see again. In case you hadn’t noticed, liquor tends to make people do stupid things.
The second problem is the first woman who was flirting with you. The complexities of their relationship are unknown to you. The first woman might have made a terrible fuss once she learned of what happened between you and the second woman. Choosing her friendship over some schmuck she met in a bar was probably easy for the second woman.