My brief foray into cougarhood

A few weeks ago I met a French guy on OKCupid.  I will call him Mr Cub.  He was new to town - a new assistant prof here, and was like a breath of fresh air after this recent batch of OkC guys.  He is also 11 years younger than me.  For reasons not entirely obvious to me, he was very persistent. I ignored my usual rules of not responding to guys without pictures, who are too persistent in emailing me, and who haven't written much in their profiles.  I also ignored my own rule about guys who are too much younger than me - he was on the borderline.  Anyway, he was quick to pull the conversation into sexual territory, but it was kind of entertaining and not creepy.  We met up for coffee, hit it off really well, and then continued to text/IM a lot.  But then reality intervened.  Ever move to a new town and start a new job where you have to build a research program from scratch and set up a lab?  Well, I have, sort of, and it's exhausting and can eat up every last bit of your time, and then some.  So we didn't get together then first weekend afterwards, but I didn't give it too much thought.  The intensity with which he tried to seduce me online was the exception to my norm, rather than the slow pace of getting back together after the first meeting.  I heard more compliments, flirtation, and endearments in a week than I did in a typical year with T.  It was entertaining and was a good counterbalance to the stress of Luna's death.  We continued with our texting/IM'ing/sexting. I will spare you the naughty details but it was fun.  Since I knew he was busy and had an inkling he might mainly want to just be online chat buddies, I offered him that option early on.  But no, he didn't take it and wanted to meet in person again.  He was going to come over for dinner last Sunday, but at the last minute he texted me that stuff had gone really badly in lab and he was way behind schedule and was going to have to bail.  I didn't text back right away.  Eventually I did.  He was apologetic - it was one of those situations where once you start things you have to keep going until you are done.  I know how that goes and have days like that myself, although I usually try to plan so that it doesn't impact my plans.  I was kind of cold at first - not harsh, just didn't write much.  After a bit more texting, we were back to normal, or so I thought.  But this week the relentless pursuit has ceased, although he is still checking out my online profile frequently.  I've texted him a few times and he has seemed normal but very tired.  Nonetheless I suspect that my foray into cougarhood was a brief one and this is the start of the fadeaway.  I am disappointed but it did do wonders for my self-esteem and provided a lot of entertainment when I needed it.