Beginning new love requires significant investment and over the last three and a half months while skirting my writing duties, The Scientist and I have been doing just that. Unlike The Professor, when we decided to make it official, he didn't change his mind two weeks later. By the fourth of July, bam! There I was boyfriended again, this time for realz y'all.
Though I was still nursing wounds, I wasn't so depressed that I couldn't see this fantastic guy in front of me. He wasn't making me guess how he felt or wait for something unknown to push him off some hypothetical fence. It was pretty clear by the end of our first date this was something different. I don't usually kiss on the first date, but we really clicked before I got out of the car and I just had to. I knew he wasn't going to pull the rug out from under me. I just knew. And he kept saying he'd never met anyone like me before.
After about our third or fourth date, we stopped counting. After less than two weeks, we were obviously a couple and a monogamous one at that. He ended anything going on with other people without me having to ask because he knew he didn't want to see anyone else. There was no insecurity about guessing what he wanted because he told me it was me. And only me.
I was falling pretty quickly and I understood what The Professor had meant when he said he wasn't getting fireworks. I've been in love enough to know what he'd been expecting, but our time together sometimes seemed so cautious that I just expected a consistency in emotions would hit us both eventually because we were pretty great together. But falling for The Scientist so soon seemed to be a clear indicator that The Professor had been right to let me go. Maybe he and I had been good together, but he wasn't sure about me and no one wants to be settled for. Certainly not me. The Scientist, on the other hand, made it clear I was everything he wanted and that made all the difference.
The man stops me mid-conversation to say, ‟God, you're so pretty. I'm so lucky." It makes me feel very sparkly and shiny like a new diamond he can't wait to show off. He gushes. This apparently is a big deal. He's never gushed about anyone before. To his co-workers no less. He racked up a $200 cellphone bill because he's never had a texting plan until me. The representative asked, ‟Let me guess.. new girlfriend?" and absorbed the cost into his new plan, thank goodness (though now we need to get the man a smart phone. I mean, his still flips. FLIPS for Pete's sake!). He thinks I'm beautiful, even without make up. He's schmoopier than I ever dreamed the right guy would be.. and sometimes I'm like.. dude.. snap out of it, but really, it's pretty fantastic. He can be incredibly sexy at the drop of a hat.. or pants. The man has fantastic legs. He's super smart, loves music, is wonderfully thoughtful and really funny, has brought me flowers for no reason at all and already more than all my other boyfriends combined. Nope.. doesn't suck. Not at all.
Surprisingly though, we haven't had the perfect honeymoon stage. We tiff frequently, which is unusual for me. There have been tears at least twice but The Scientist came with a past that'd hurt him severely and understandably, had some trust issues. And the emotional crisscrossing of going from the last relationship to this one didn't help the situation. The Professor was emailing from his European trip, which confused me because he sounded lonely and The Scientist was picking fights more and more frequently even if we had a perfect night out.
Trying to take care of myself first, I told the ex not to contact me anymore since he was the one who'd let me go and it wasn't fair to confuse me to the point it was putting my relationship at risk. Shockingly, he apologized sincerely and agreed with me. Though we've touched base a couple of times since his return, I'm not sure we'll pursue a friendship like we thought we might. It just doesn't seem like we're gravitating that way, which may be for the best.
And then for my boyfriend, he needed to feel more secure and I certainly wasn't going to break up with him over the process of working out our respective issues as a couple. From the beginning this felt like something we were in together, damn the consequences. So when an argument begins, even if it's awful, it's just an argument. It's not an axis our whole relationship balances on. That said, we were arguing way too much and as a child of dysfunction, I made it clear it needed to change. So after some really honest discussions, he committed to addressing his baggage with a professional by the next week. I was stunned. He wanted us to work, wanted to be free of what he hadn't dealt with in his past, wanted to do it for me and for himself. Admitting you have demons is a big deal. Taking them head on is even harder but I'm ever so proud of him. The change in him is noticeable and he seems to feel lighter.
And here we are. We both have some work to do, it's not all him, but we're in it regardless. We've been to two weddings already. One with my friends where only after three weeks of dating, strangers thought we'd been a couple forever. And the other more recently was friends of his in Chicago where the bride told me I looked better than she did because though I was older, I looked younger. Who does that at their own wedding?! We've now both met our respective families and his thinks I'm tiny too! Bonus! My mom barely talks to him, but that's my mom. She barely talks to me if it's not small-talk. My brother and sister-in-law really like him and we were even taken out by my bio mom and her husband when they came up last. Her husband actually said we reminded him of them when they were our age and first married. I tolerated his apartment move where he broke his hand due to punching a refrigerator out of frustration, went back to help his friends finish the move, bought them beer and pizza and a burger for the boy on the way back to the ER knowing he hadn't eaten in five hours. How awesome of a girlfriend am I? SO awesome. That's how. But he tolerated my absence to Burning Man for 10 days AND typed me a love note for every day I was gone despite his hand being in a cast. The latest love note he waited to give me until he could write it by hand after his cast came off and his words were so moving it brought me to tears.
Then there was our trip to Chicago. He was so excited to take me and I was even more excited to have a real vacation with him than to run off to the playa with my friends. He grew up there and was an almost overzealous tour guide though he was really cute how enthusiastic he was about everything from art to architecture to the food and history. It was really important to him I like the city I think because he views it as an extension of himself in a way. But traveling and spending all your time together in close quarters can also bring out the worst in a couple and sometimes, we'd tiff over nothing and he'd wonder why I loved him at all. But despite pushing us to our limits and bringing out our not-so-finer moments with each other, I love that we're honest in those moments. We don't sugarcoat what's wrong and it doesn't mean we love each other any less. We have a real life, we're a real couple, we disagree, we don't love all the same things, we have moods, and it's ok. We're also a team, on each other's sides and you have to have both. It can't be rainbows and unicorns and sunny days all the time. Besides, who can have a bad time in Chicago? We ate, drank, played and shopped. He spoiled me and it was lovely.
So this could be it. Forever? Who knows? That's a long time. But this one feels life-changing. We've talked about the future, kids and dogs (uh, no dogs for him, but he loves my cat), that he wants to live with me and is insane enough to think he wants to MARRY me and though it all feels kind of surreal and crazy, it also seems incredibly normal at the same time because of course, I want all those things with him too and it just feels like it makes sense.
I'm so excited to continue getting to know this man and be apart of his life. I'm so glad he's agreed to be apart of mine.
You just wait people. It's only going to get better.
2 comments:
I'm soooooo happy for you!!!!!
Yay!
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