random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

The sun did in fact come up today, right?

I have a friend out west for whom I often ably fill the role of therapist over the phone. She calls and relates her latest minor drama, I help her dissect it, give her things to think about, and hopefully help her make better decisions than she has in the past.

So I got a call Saturday morning from her with a problem. Her boyfriend, who she�s madly in love with, gave her the old �I don�t know what�s going on here, I need some space� thing.

This came completely out of left field and smacked her across the face. She�s baffled by what happened, and doesn�t want to be strung along by this guy like she�s been so many other times before.

Oh, did I mention that they�ve only been dating for 30 days? And he�s off a divorce?

And she calls ready to scrap the whole damn thing and crawl back into her little depressed cocoon because she �just can�t let herself get hurt again.� She mentioned that if he�s going to move the relationship backwards, then she�s �just going to not give a shit about things, and turn into a person that he�s not going to like very much.�

All this over the guy�s head taking about thirty days to catch up with his heart (probably, that�s my diagnosis).

I explained a lot of things to her, and hypothesized a lot more. I told her that this relationship she was in wasn�t following a very adult pattern, it was more like what happens in tenth grade with the whirlwind romance and spending every waking moment together. I explained that sooner or later someone that was burned severely before recognizes that he�s playing with fire again and has to think about what he�s doing to make sure he�s not going to get burned again.

Sometimes, I said, it�s not about fighting for the relationship. It�s about riding the tides, not letting go of what has kept you afloat to this point, and seeing where the current is going to take you.

Most importantly, I advised her not to minimize what those last thirty days have meant for her by closing off her heart to the possibilities of the future, just because he wants to think about what�s going on. If you�re not opening yourself up to being hurt, you�re not opening yourself up to happiness.

I�m a smarter man now than I was six or seven years past. I have enough of that analytical mindset to figure out what�s happening, and I know how to open myself up to the possibility of being happy if the right circumstances appear.

This, of course, brings me to what I really wanted to talk about here, which is K.

Let me just state for the record that I really do dig this girl. We did Shakespeare in the Park together this summer, and I could tell that she and I, at bare minimum, shared a sense of humor and maybe had a little bit of chemistry brewing as well. Difficulties getting together back in the summer aside, I did know that at some point it was pretty likely that she and I would end up going out at least once. She�s really a terrific person, I enjoy her company a great deal, and she finds me funny. Not to mention that I am attracted to her as well.

She held her own in a conversation with my dad on a controversial topic when it was apparent he was just poking her with a short stick to see if she�d fold. She didn�t. And she had fun with it. She laughed at one of my bad Dennis Miller style jokes (making a remark about a small child �looking like a young Anne Ramsey,� which I never thought she�d get, but I found funny). She impresses me with the way she treats children. We have a lot of similar tastes (except that she doesn�t eat seafood, which is a detriment to be sure), and are really enjoying spending time with each other.

We�ve had (officially, I guess) five dates now over two and a half weeks. And things are moving along very slowly. Very slowly.

Which makes our conversation on Sunday during the football game that much more refreshing.

Five dates in and I�m giddy and pleased that she and I are as willing to be honest with each other as we were. We both acknowledged that there was an attraction, and that we�ve been really happy spending as much time together as we had. She told me that she came out of her last relationship, which had badly crashed and burned, looking to swear off men and not date anyone for awhile, but finds herself really enjoying being with me, and doesn�t want to move too fast and screw things up.

Which, to me, was just perfect. I told her not to worry about �where we are� or �where this is going.� I told her that I really did like her, wanted to see her as much as possible, but didn�t want to put any pressure on either her or myself to define the relationship and/or feel like it always had to be moving forward.

�Wherever it is that we�re going,� I said, �we�ll get there. Don�t worry about that right now. Let�s just be happy with what is, and let the rest come along naturally.�

It was a perfect conversation, and quite frankly a perfect weekend with her.

I�m not in a position where I�d be comfortable jumping into anything serious quickly. But this girl has the potential to really be someone I could be dating for a long, long time. Why would I want to screw that up?

For now, I�m going to continue to see her as often as I can, and just not worry about figuring out where �things are going.� For being only 23, I really think she�s got her head screwed on pretty tight, but definitely has her heart open for the possibilities.

As do I.

[>>]posted at 6:12 PM by BG - click to email
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