Absolutely, to someone else

Her problem, said my friend Erin, is her lack of attachment. She is not really there for anyone, you know?

I knew and of course, didn't want to know. She was pretty in the traditional sense: perfect hair, bright smile, nice clothes and a walk that got noticed, coming and going. She was fun to be around and many of us wanted to be included in that fun. Men, especially men that I knew, did not want to dwell on her alleged emotional limitations.

Let's see-a beautiful woman who wants to spend time with me, enjoys a good time and does NOT want a commitment-and the bad part is?

But, eventually, yes, it became apparent even to the most shallow of us. She was not interested in even the most cursory of relationships. Simple conversation-the act of listening and appearing to be interested-these were beyond her. She truly, and I don't mean this in a bad way- it's just an observation-didn't care. She could care less what we were talking about, whom we were concerned about (if it was not her) and what our plans were, past the immediate evening at hand.

To describe her as self- centered would have been inaccurate, because I think she was not centered so much on herself, as much as she was centered on other people's impression of her. She was all about others, but only to the extent that the others wanted to talk about her--she wanted to hear about herself, and wanted to hear what others said about her. It was the only subject that did not create that whole bored, eyes glazed over look on her face. I think she honestly did not understand my attempts to create interactions that veered away from this topic.

If I was wanting to be around her , if I was choosing to enter that circle, why was I bothering with information she was disinterested in and knew nothing about? She was never really angry, at least at first, just perplexed. I had the distinct impression she could not figure out what terms I was using:

family issues
personal information about ourselves
visits with relatives
emotional barriers

Let's go ahead and use her parting words:

This could have been, ya know, fun. Why do you wanna talk about depressing stuff all the time, I just don't get it, OK? I mean, if you want to know all that about someone, well, I'm not really going to spill my guts for you or anyone else, OK? How could that help? I just wanted fun, I'm sorry that wasn't enough for you. Don't be mad and stuff... see you around, OK?