A dating summary of the past few years

-- Him: "Every day there are like 10 women I want to have [relations] with." 

Me: "So I guess this is winding down?" 

Him: "No, I told my ex-wife this kind of thing all the time and I was crazy about her!" 

-- "I only need to live in my parent's basement for a few years until I get my grad degree." (He was 40.)

-- "Want a sip of my smoothie? I added vodka!" (He was driving.) 

-- "I don't like to hold hands or be affectionate. Actually I don't like relationships, at all."

-- "You don't mind that I still live with my ex, right?"

-- "Can I call you back? Now isn't a good time, I just had to call the police to protect me from my teenaged son."

-- "My 7 year old can't sleep alone, he sleeps with me. That's cool when we get married, right?"

-- "You're the first woman I've touched in a year since my wife died."

-- "Sometimes I like to have relations with men."

-- (On a first date) "Want to sleep over? I got the guest room ready just for you!"

-- "Sorry for being a dick. Want to go to a bondage club?"

-- Him: "I don't think we have enough in common. I mean, you like animals and nature." 

Me: "You're right, but I'm curious. I don't actually mention that in my profile, where did you see that?" 

Him: "We talked about it!!" 

Me (looking through our text convo): "Oh, you mean when I commented that YOUR DOG was cute??"

-- Then there was the guy who grabbed my back fat on a date and injured it. Fat is sensitive!

Is it any wonder that everyone hates dating??

Haha!! 6 month anniversary

When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired - New York Times

Great article in the NY Times.

Guidelines:

1. Respect other people's privacy. No exceptions.

2. Don't be a dick. (Good life rule in general.)

3. Fine if you must write about your experience but never forget that everything is filtered through what it feels like to be YOU. Don't assume anything for the other person. That's why it's better to write about how you feel rather than interpret/analyze/etc. a situation.

4. Probably shouldn't do this at ALL but if you must, for fuck's sake, be classy about it at least!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/style/18divorce.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


(Sent from my phone)

Try, try again

He pushed me up against the wall and kissed me deeply. "I'm going to marry you, girl."

It still feels new and it's still early but we'll soon be upon 6 months and we are already talking about the future. We just can't envision one not together.

This is turning out to be the most incredible love story and I'm ill-equipped to write about it. I've spent so much of the time in the past (now 5 years) since my marriage ended either shutting down, pining away, or otherwise floundering, that this is totally new territory for me. I *wanted* this kind of love but it seemed nearly unattainable.

I remember searching boys faces on dates, wondering "could it be you?"

I would see some nice qualities and think, "I could probably love someone like that" until I tried and then something inside me shut down. And then I did fall in love, but it was one-sided and ultimately lonely, although he treated me wonderfully and taught me much.

I fought myself every minute of the past five years, hating where I was, how I felt, and my inability to deal with it all gracefully. (By "deal with it gracefully" I mean: feel fine.) But now I see I couldn't have whisked myself into the future. The gradual inching forward... I was always in the best possible place for me at the time. (Well at least that's my positive Pollyanna spin. If I must take a view on my past, it feels nice to have that one.)

I told my counselor last night that I was somewhat aghast at how much of my own suffering was caused by my own perspective. My own focus on my failings or frailties, things I would never make front and center for other loved ones but never thought twice about punishing myself for.

Perspective.

Huh.

As if it's just that simple to change our thoughts, but oh, how powerful.

Funny how I can have such an optimistic nature at the same time as one that so darkly ruminates on my own humanity. People are known for being masters at dichotomous thinking, so I may as well welcome another flaw to the table. But I found a quote I fell in love with recently:

"Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again." Ellen Bass

Yes. I will try, try again.

Anyway, we are both crazy in love and it keeps getting deeper and more intense.

When it's right, you know it. That old cliche is really true.

(Sent from my phone)

Stuff my BF says

"Wow, your eyes really pop with that that towel on your head!"

(How can you not love a guy who thinks that?!?)

Me: Um, why do you have a picture of the guy from Beetle Juice on your phone?

Him (looking embarrassed): Uh...

Me: Well I ask because I have the same picture on MY phone.

Me: Well I have it on my phone because I just happen to know someone who looks like that.

Him: Bahaha that's exactly why it's on my phone too!!

Him: Mmmm, you is fine!

Me (washing my face): What? But my hair looks like it caught on fire!

Him: Your hair could be on fire and I'd be like,"that's the finest hair-on-fire bitch I ever saw"!!

I promise I'm not trying the old "death" ruse to bring us closer

We were lying in bed in our separate houses texting when he sent a selfie. "Here," he said. "Now you can feel like I'm right there with you."

The protocol, when your beloved offers some part of themselves, is to reciprocate.

I gazed at his sweet face and warm eyes, and then over at the mirror across from where I sat and saw a blurry, wild-haired mess hunched over a box of tissues.

There are precisely zero angles at which you can photograph yourself, seconds after sniffling into a snot rag, and look hot. I made 20 attempts anyway and even tried to pimp one up in a photo editing app, but while red eye filters are common, there are none for "red nose."

There really are not.

So I gave up and sent him one au natural. Somehow he made me feel loved anyway. "You're so beautiful to me," he replied and I nearly purred. (Thank god love is blind!)

It's been a rough past few days. Somehow I threw out my neck and, after 15 (intermittent) minutes of sleep out of an 8-hour night, I ended up in urgent care. (Again!) My sweetie drove while I stiffly practiced going into rigor mortis in the passenger seat. I wouldn't want to die unprepared, after all.

Four hours later I exited the pharmacy clutching muscle relaxants (which I loathe because I actually enjoy having a personality) and painkillers. Normally I'd resist even taking a Flintstone vitamin but I would have happily thrown myself onto a syringe of morphine if it meant I could move again. I gulped them down and waited.

What better to do while waiting than cook myself in a nice hot shower? I stepped into the steamy stall and let the water beat down on my neck, enveloping me in scalding bliss.

Never run out of hot water again!

Then I stepped out and... you know that sensation you get when life is leaving your body? That started to happen while I was drying my hair.

I waited for it to go away but it parked itself and set up camp. So I stumbled into the kitchen and, with the remaining vestiges of consciousness that were left, remembered a scene in the movie Steel Magnolias where Julia Roberts was going into hypoglycemic shock. She was shaking, I was shaking. She was sweating, I was sweating. She was fading, I was fading. But then she drank OJ and got better so... I drank OJ. It worked!

Hypoglycemic shock is a medical emergency.

I tossed the painkillers. They almost killed me, fuck no I'm not taking them! My route to becoming a loser laid up with a "bad neck" now thwarted, I had to rebuild the vision for my future: I had no choice but to return to being a productive member of society.

I contemplated what happened, since that was the closest I'd ever come to passing out. Maybe percocet (Oxycontin) affects blood sugar? Maybe it was an allergic reaction? Or maybe just a coincidence? I still don't know exactly what happened. But there I was, feeling vulnerable and needy, especially now that I'd leaned on him TWICE for weird health stuff (can't I just get a cold and need him to pick up some soup, like normal people?!?) and I'd been sniffling into a box of tissues, worried that Amazing Boyfriend would shake his head and leave this hot mess behind, when instead he reached out so tenderly. And I fell more in love.