crankyWomen aren't really like buses, it's merely a handy and thinly disguised metaphor for saying two different things:
1.) Women are as common and utilitarian as public transportation
2.) Women aren't particularly special, and are rather handily replaced by an identical or similar model by just changing the number.
Neither one of which is a viewpoint that I subscribe to.
Every woman that I've been involved with in some fashion or other has been pretty far from common or utilitarian, none of them were "replacable" by any other in that they were all unique and complex, and none of them smelled like diesel fuel or had handholds on the inside for when the ride got rough (at least none I could find).
Every relationship I've ever had with a woman has been singular and wonderful and terrible each in their own way. I have learned over time that there are some things that are just better for me to avoid, some behaviors that are like waving a big CAUTION flag.
I get that a lot, the whole "you look good on paper, but I just don't feel the chemistry" thing. Enough now that when you tell me this, I may get snarky with you. Or I may not, depending on how tired I am.
If there's something specific about why you're just not feeling it, then tell me. I'm much more amenable to something of substance than just a nebulous "No, I don't know why, I just don't find you attractive, and I really should. I mean, I'm not all that picky-- hell, I dated a homeless guy for three years and he smelled like liquor and piss pretty much all the time, and he was actually clinically dead for the last two months-- but I just get no feeling of attraction from you at all; in fact, I find you a little repellent. Not a lot, just a little".
And really, you don't have to come up and tell me this if I've never even met you before. There is very little more discouraging than to have a complete stranger come up to you and say "wow, I've never met anyone who I find less attractive than you, and normally I wouldn't say anything but holy crap, I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to tell you that if you were the last man on earth and I was the last woman and the very fate of humanity were our burden to undertake by reproducing, I would rather see if interspecies reproduction could possibly work.".
As for the whole reproduction thing: I don't want to be a parent. I made that decision long ago, and there has been nothing that has magically burst forth in my breast like some fatherly flower blooming to give me some sprinkle of epiphanies that fatherhood is the most wonderful thing ever. You wanting to be a parent is just fine; maybe we can compromise, and for every baby that's born, we'll flip a coin: heads you get to keep and raise it as one of your own; tails, I get to keep it for one of my "experiments". That seems entirely fair. Wait, why are you running away?
Much like Popeye, I yam what I yam. I'm unlikely to change to fit some idea of perfection in your mind, and you're unlikey to succeed at making me fit some mold that you have. And I in turn am not going to try to fit you into the porpoise suit that I have in the back of my closet.
What brings on this subtle vehemence? I don't really know. It's a mixture of slights real and perceived, messages and body cues and self-recrimination; a mixture of stimulation and conciliation and redress of old wrongs, rediscovery of validation, knowledge that having been right that doesn't make things any better.
Women are like buses. Some of them crash really really hard, and people near them get hurt.
It's quite possible that I can be too intense when meeting someone new. I don't try to be, but sometimes, particularly when it's in a larger social setting, I can be very ON, kind of in performance mode. If I catch it, I can usually dial it back, but it becomes a kind of default mode when meeting new folks in a particular kind of geek-fueled soiree. It's kind of why I prefer a quieter one-on-one setting for actually getting to know someone after an initial introduction; I'm much more at peace one-on-one. It's getting to that second place that's usually a lot more difficult.