Hi Everybody -- I need some help in reaching closure with a situation that has left me very confused. I have never had an experience like this, and I hope that your comments will help me learn something from this.

Last year, I met a guy through my hiking club. He has been divorced for about 5 years after a 40-year marriage. I have been divorced for 16 years after a 28-year marriage. I later invited him to join my cycling group. Since we are both retired, he started asking me to hike and cycle one-on-one, and we did this several times a week for over a year, and had so much fun. We frequently spent all day together. Sometimes he would come back to my house for a sandwich on the deck, and sometimes he invited me to lunch and would pay for it (although I always offered to pay). I figured we were just friends having fun doing these activities, and if it turned into something else, we would have a solid friendship to build on. We both would ask each other to do these things, and it was a comfortable, casual thing.

Then a few months ago, he brought me home from a bike ride and kissed me in the driveway (I was totally shocked because there was NOTHING leading up to this, except a hug now and then). He didn't say a word to me, left me standing there, got in his car and drove off. I heard nothing from him for 6 weeks. I WAS NOT GOING TO CONTACT HIM AFTER THIS - I FELT THE BALL WAS IN HIS COURT. In the meantime I sprained my ankle and was not hiking with the group. He sent me a Christmas card (which I did not respond to), and then he starts emailing me wanting to know why I had not been hiking. I told him about the ankle. I asked him why he had done what he did, and that not hearing from him for 6 weeks was hurtful since we had been having so much fun together. He said he was just getting too close to me. THEN HE SAID "IT WAS NOT LIKE WE WERE DATING". He then went on in detail to tell me the museums he would like to go to, the places he would like to cycle, and traveling to hike in various areas, and I was the one he wanted to do these things with, but if we did these things then he would be "DATING' me, and I would expect to have a relationship. I told him that we should just keep things the way they were, but I slowely stopped asking him to do these things. I felt like he was really BSing me when I found out he was on three dating websites, where he had lied about his age. The sad thing is that we really had a lot of fun together, and I never put any pressure on him to "date" me.

I also learned from two women I occasionally hike with that before he and I started doing things together, he had "dated" them. Both of their stories were almost identical. A couple hikes, a ballgame or movie, no intimacy, and then bam - the "clean sheets and toothbrush" routine. They both told him to get lost and neither will date him again.

I feel lucky that we did not get involved with each other, but I still continue to feel sad because we had so much fun together and could just pick up and go because we are both retired. It appears he is not the person I thought he was. We no longer do one-on-one things, but he is still in the hiking and cycling group and I see him frequently and we are both friendly with each other. He continues to be on the dating sites (I have a hidden profile), but it appears he has not found another woman to do the things I did with him. He frequently drops "hints" about doing this ride or that and that we should get together and train for a ride, but I don't respond to this.

I am trying to learn something from this, but I'm not sure what it is. I do know that I have "taken care of myself" in this situation. Maybe what I am learning is that I am emotionally healthy, not what I have always been.