src: shinyshiny.tv

My friend’s fiancée announced that she had secured her own new apartment. Even more final to him, she had actually gone ahead and changed their relationship status on her page from “engaged” to single. Though he couldn’t verbalize it, I knew what he was feeling: crushed—and relieved.

“I guess I have to get on board with this,” he said as if in shock. Less than a week before he had expressed a wish that she would just go ahead and end their tumultuous relationship so he wouldn’t have to break her heart and crush the dreams for her future.

“How are you really?” I asked with concern, sensing the hint of depression in his tone.

“I went to work and to the gym. Now, I’m cleaning out Facebook,” he said.

Damn Facebook. I imagined him going through every photo of her. Sifting through images of him and her. Looking back at the photos from their trip to Florida where he proposed, of the photos of the big 40^th birthday party she threw for him afterward, and of all the trips they’d taken together in the last nine months or so. The thought of him doing all that on his first night truly alone and without her, as much as a big part of him had seemed to crave this scenario, truly broke my heart.

“Why don’t you wait a few days?” I asked him. “Give yourself a little time to think about if this is really what you truly want first, huh?”

He didn’t respond. Though I could see the train wreck that their engagement was and that their impending nuptials would probably be, and I hadn’t been afraid to give my opinion when asked, I wasn’t a heartless bitch. Trust me, I’ve been in more than a couple of destructive relationships for much longer than I should because I too have hoped that with time, love and more effort, things could eventually work themselves out. I’ve stayed longer than I should because I didn’t want to hurt anyone either. Leaving had never, ever been easy. Even when I walked out that door, a big part of me had been heartbroken too.

src: blog.magikcommerce.com

This morning, I checked his Facebook page, out of curiosity. He had removed “engaged” from his status. Every single photo of her, every family photo that included her from the holidays or happy get-togethers had been removed, as if those moments had never existed.

But then I noticed there were still traces of her left on his wall. Cute messages she left for him over the last few months. However, I believe he deleted other messages from friends that referenced engagement congratulations and pleasure seeing them together. But then I saw it—the sweetest video set to a love song showing photos of the two of them and their journey together that I commented back when she posted it that they should use as their wedding reception video.

There are some things you can’t erase from the past. Some things perhaps you shouldn’t even try. They happened. They were sweet and positive memories. And it’s okay to remember and cherish those, even as you mourn what was lost, then move forward into the unknown future.

Tonight we’re starting something a little new called TALK TO ME, where I set up a scenario from dating, taken from my own experiences or someone else’s that I find intriguing, and YOU tell me what you think in the comments. Let’s have a conversation about it.

Scenario:

A highly educated and very attractive male in a Big City discovers a smart, cute, well-rounded woman in a small town, is intrigued and begins pursuing her. Emails, Google stalking and Facebook friend-ing ensues. After a week, he asks the woman for a date, but she is unable to get together for almost another week due to logistics. Emails between the two have become more friendly and familiar, but they are still in the getting to know you phase. No phone calls have yet been exchanged, possibly due to the man’s odd work hours and potentially because English is not his first language and words are a major part of this woman’s livelihood.

The following email is sent apropos to nothing:

You know what I don’t like about online dating? You can start missing somebody before you even meet…

How can one trust this?

p.s. I am taking a small break at work and decided to share my deep philosophical thoughts.

YOUR TURN:

So, go from your gut: Is this sweet? Is it creepy given the limited time and depth of the pair’s previous interactions? Is it both?

Or is it just some slick line from another slick willy? There has been no previous smooth talking,  nor previous hints of a player nature, though naturally time reveals one’s true nature.

Or did this man unintentionally leave out a key word to complete a different American phrase with different connotations (which isn’t unusual), i.e. was his real intention to say that he missed hearing from someone whose contact was a bit limited right now?

So I wanna hear from you: What do you think?

Disclaimer: No decisions will be made based on anything shared in Talk To Me. This is just a thought-provoking forum that will hopefully be as entertaining as it might also be enlightening to us all.

src: CollegeCandy.com

Being on friendly terms with the ex girlfriend, now one of the best friends, of the guy you are dating can be both a blessing and a curse. You wind up getting more insight about this person you think you know fairly well. It can be helpful when you are worrying you’re overreacting about an issue in your relationship but a quick chat enables you to realize it’s an issue that he’s had before with others—it’s not just you. And with a really sweet and open ex, you can hear the nice things the guy is saying about you when offered unbidden.

Then, sometimes you get more than you bargained for. You may ask what you hope are innocent questions but the answers leave you reeling. You learn what he’s said about an ex from his past is not true. You discover that he’s left out critical details about a former relationship. Thus ultimately, you find out what he really thinks about relationships, how he really views women and inevitably, what he really thinks about you.

Hearing about their past relationship, you know you have to take any detail with a grain of salt. Of course there are two sides to every story. Yet you start to question the veracity of your sources when while describing their period together romantically, one cites a bland haiku and the other speaks of a wandering epic.

To him, they took the boat out for a couple months but said there wasn’t enough fuel to keep things afloat. After some recon and prodding from me, he admitted that afterward, sometimes they’d take the boat out every now and then for nostalgia’s sake but mostly they kept their feet on the calm shores of friendship.

To her, they took a bumpy, hazy flight across continents. While there were plenty times of fun and joy that kept her hoping for more, he would got lost in the clouds of the past and was often a short-sighted wingman. She was looking for a more permanent co-pilot, and he was not up for that position.

Most recently, I found out that she grounded their multiple flights a couple of times, and that he was the one more recently who had been asking her to go for repeated joy rides….even though his constant refrain was that he didn’t have a real strong desire for flying. Her story became more and more believable as I realized that was something he often said to me, though we flew constantly, sometimes multiple trips in a day.

by Igal Maasen

Hearing their completely different versions of their journey together, I realized why I felt like he and I were speaking different languages. We went from feeling like we were in a full-blown relationship to him pulling away. I found out after some prodding that, despite behavior to the contrary, he did not consider me his girlfriend. He told me he wanted to continue seeing each other just as we had been, spending weekends together, hanging out with his friends and family, but without labels or expectations.

After the most enlightening conversation with his ex yet, when we discussed his odd reaction to her having finally moved onto sleeping with someone new, I decided to confront him again. I informed him that I felt he was taking advantage of our “situation,” that I wasn’t feeling much reward from it, and that I was moving on. The next day, I informed him I would be considering my dating options again, but unlike his ex-wife, I knew how to keep my legs together. “That was your real concern before [the last time we had the “relationship discussion]—sexual exclusivity, wasn’t it?” I asked.

He finally came out with, “Yeah, I guess.”

It embarrasses me to admit how much I have been seething with all this anger and frustration that I have been played by this guy, who in all honesty, really wasn’t worth any of the fuss. It hurts that I had actually been concerned for his wellbeing, which above everything else—the humor, decent company, things in common—had kept me in the game, while all he was thinking about was ensuring he could keep having sex with me…and have someone with whom to watch his favorite shows.

I admittedly flipped out on him. “Why weren’t you honest with me? Why did you tell me you specifically didn’t want to be friends with benefits? I told you that was the last thing I wanted in my life right now, and that if that’s what you were looking for, no thank you,” I said. “You told me, you’d rather we just be friends and have no sex. You said, however, what you most wanted was for us to keep seeing each other as we had been doing, without the labels.”

He first claimed my ignorance, then his ignorance. I almost laughed at his third reaction of confusion—he was telling his ex-gf we were no longer seeing each other after he just told me we hadn’t just been seeing each other. We were all IMing simultaneously, to his ignorance. I asked him, what is the truth: were we seeing each other, or weren’t we? Do you put on a show for everyone? Your ex? Your grandma? Your friends? Your mother?

Finally he says, “I’m sorry…Will you still be my friend so we can continue to watch Battlestar Galactica together?” W.T.F.?

Ironically, it was at precisely this time that I was charged with writing up an article on forgiveness in relationships. Yep. While I was envisioning punching his smug big head into the television screen while it was playing Battle-fracking-star Galactica, I was supposed to be waxing poetic about the healing graces of forgiveness.

"It's Not You, It's Me" by Niagra

My good friend @thecrazymagnet of And You Thought You Had It Bad reminded me that any anger I harbor towards another hurts me more than it hurt anyone else. I’ve always known that anger is a mental and physical toxin that just eats away at our insides, paralyzing us from moving forward in our own lives. Yet here was this person, this man I thought I knew at least to some extent, who was just acting like any other guy who takes advantage of a situation physically, financially, emotionally and frankly, taking up my time, as much as he can because I am being too much of a giver—okay, a pushover—and not protesting loudly enough or frequently enough.

I just couldn’t get over the fact that I, such a wise and intelligent, mature and seasoned woman, had let this happen. That’s when I realized that the person I was most upset with was myself. The person I needed to forgive the most in this equation was yours truly.

Far too often in relationships-gone-bad, we blame ourselves for not being smart enough to see a steady stream of lies, for ignoring the fishy text message cover-ups, for not asking the right questions or for accepting the answers full of holes. We blame ourselves for being a bad judge of character, for thinking someone genuinely cares for us when he has only really been acting in his own self-interest and personal gratification. We mentally bang our own heads because we dared to believe the best in others—and were wrong.

Unfortunately, this only further poisons our thoughts and our actions. We start behaving unkindly toward ourselves, adding to the wrongs others have already done to us. Blaming yourself only pushes you further backward. Blaming myself only made me hurt more than I already was. It made no sense when I needed my own love and self-care the most.

Hopefully I, you, we learn from these hurtful experiences and take the time, space and wisdom to get to know the next person more clearly before jumping in heart-first. And we listen to our guts when they tell us a few weeks in that things no longer feel right, that something smells fishy in the water—and it’s not us. There’s no shame in throwing a rotten one back in that ocean—that rip current will take care of ‘em. Nor is there any shame in getting out of the water completely for a while, simply taking time to rejuvenate, rediscover and relearn to love yourself.

Describing his feelings about Romney, Colbert says, “It’s not fireworks.” However, he’s there, Colbert says. “Maybe I should just grow up and accept it.”

“I’m 40, she really loves me,” FFWB tells me about the woman he has decided to marry. “Time is running out. Maybe it can work.”

Over the four years of their tumultuous relationship, they have broken up several times, for as long as a year at one point. During their six month “engagement,” she has threatened to leave more times than I can count, purchased plane tickets, given the ring back and thrown temper tantrums over ridiculous things. FFWB has told me he finds her immature, dramatic, unpredictable and volatile enough that the idea of having children with her frightens him. They don’t share similar interests, don’t connect on an intellectual level and at least half the time,  seemingly don’t connect on an emotional level either.

I asked him if he loved her. He said, “There’s a difference between being in love with someone and loving someone,” as if I haven’t been in more committed relationships than he has. “From the married couples I’ve talked to and my own sense, the in love period wanes after two to three years…”

“I didn’t ask if you were in love with her,” I said. “I asked if you loved her.”

FFWB paused. “I care for her very much. I would miss her terribly if she left,” he said. If he doesn’t marry her, she will have to leave the country, and he doesn’t know when or if he would ever see her again. “I suppose under all my conditionals and caveats, I could say to myself that I love her.”

Wow, fireworks. Poor girl. “Have you ever been in love with her?” I finally asked.

“There was a period of infatuation for a few months in the beginning,” he said.

When I asked if she is his best friend, he quickly said, “No, that would be T.”

Like so many of us who try to fight, and sometimes ignore, our intuition in love, Colbert struggles to figure out how he really feels about the stiff Romney. “I can’t tell if I am missing something, or if I’m just afraid to let myself be happy,” he says. ”I’m so confused.”

He is also swayed by the opinions of others in his life. “Everyone says he’s the best I can do, but he’s good, not great.”

FFWB’s mom and sister think his fiancée is beautiful, sweet, gets along with the family and puts up with all his quirks. They say he can be difficult to put with—cranky, insensitive, not emotionally expressive, inflexible and maddeningly practical. His fiancée loves him, faults and all. They claim that she has been trying to change—FFWB admits since their last showdown a few months prior, his fiancée has only had two major meltdowns where she would normally have at least five.

His father and mother’s boyfriend think he’s crazy for considering following through on his plan. FFWB knows there are others he connects with significantly more intellectually, including his best friend and myself. He knows he is able to communicate with others with more ease and less drama. While his fiancée obviously loves him and acts with the best of intentions, many of her actions show she doesn’t know him as well as he would hope she does.

This past week, she had threatened once again to leave, reserving a moving van. To paraphrase, he gave the following “romantic” plea:

“I think the right thing to do is let this go.  But that is so very hard, and I have doubts both ways.  I feel like this is too hard to go through, and like the easiest thing to do is keep you and not go through this. To just close my eyes and jump in still – knowing it’s a huge gamble.  And I think you love me, too.  And we have something, though we have not managed to connect or communicate or make good on it to this point.”

He explained how they struggled through dating, and then engagement. He hoped that in marriage, they would learn from the mistakes and challenges of what can before. He also said he understood that she explained away some of her outbursts as fear and uncertainty from living an unsettled life and being so dependent on other people.

"Nobody rises to low expectations."-Calvin Lloyd

Despite his “significant reservations and doubts,” he said he would take the “low probability gamble” and hope for the best that this third chapter of their relationship is better. “I’d be happy to see us exceed our four years together,” he told her. He would marry her as soon as she wished.

Finally once he was past the logistics, he added the heart: “I do love you. I do want to provide you all these things you’ve been waiting for so long.” He had high hopes for their engagement, and he had been excited for the clean slate it might provide for their relationship. He hoped they would improve their communication, respect for each other and build a stronger foundation for marriage, but they failed to achieve that.

He told her:

“I could end up divorced and 43, unsurprised.  Or, it could work – we both have been unable to leave each other permanently. Nor can I say today definitively, ‘This is over, you can go [tomorrow].’ But, you still can go if this is not what you’d envisioned in terms of “romance,” but it’s the best I can give you at this point…And if you do go, I will not make you sound like the villain but just that we’re two people who really hung in there despite our differences; we respectfully parted ways.”

She was still at the home when he returned from work that next night.

I told FFWB that if he is deadset on marrying this woman, he should stop acting like he’s going to the gallows. I told him to stop acting like, ‘well since no one else will have me, and she’s been here all along, she’ll do.’ Instead, I encouraged him to start moving with the attitude: “This is the woman I choose to be with for the rest of my life. I care about her very much, she loves me, and we are committed to being a family together.”

His sister gave even better advice, telling him to stop mentioning the doubts, have confidence behind the decision he made and move forward. While his relationship will take some work (and compromise, I added, from both of them), FFWB and his fiancée have something special. “I am excited, but really its less exciting for us if you if you can’t see what you have. I’m happy to help you keep those thoughts in the forefront.”

Am I confident about FFWB’s chances? It doesn’t really matter. FFWB seems doubtful, but there is enough hope in his heart that he’s ready to pull the trigger. And maybe he does have a point: they have been unable to let each other go in the four years they’ve known each other. We talked about how that may be habit, something familiar and safe. Yet isn’t that a part of love too? To hear him caught up in the romanticism of his proposal at Disney World made him sound like a completely different man: a man in love, despite his conflicted protests now.

src: vivaboo.com

I wish him my very best. I told him I would support him in whatever decision he made. However, I can’t help but hope for myself, that when the time comes for me to settle down with a life mate, it is a decision made of both the heart and the mind…that I’m settling into a joyful life with my chosen partner, and not just settling.

I can’t say that it was an easy year. My body slowly stopped allowing me to beat it into submission, to work it day and night with little to no rest. Soon my dream job became a nightmare job for my immune system, and I was left facing four months of chemotherapy.

I was forced to go on medical leave from my job, and when I wasn’t back on my feet fast enough, I had to leave it outright. To be honest, I think that hurt more than saying goodbye to V-Man, though those losses are somehow linked. Still, saying goodbye to that old dream, that exciting chapter of my life has led to an awesome new career path and wonderful opportunities I would never have expected.

Most importantly, it re-taught me something I thought I already had down cold—how to listen to my body. Now I truly do understand it’s not worth Hurtling Against the Brick Wall—again. My mantra for 2011? Find your balance.

From the dating perspective, I enjoyed dating a variety of men, broadening my horizons a bit more than ever before. There was the Ballroom Dancer, the Christian Rocker, the Cop, the Karaoke Crooner, to name but a few Up Next On the Stage… I didn’t regret every single one, though there were a couple of opportunities for a bruised ego–most famously, the experience captured in The Appeal of the Exotic Woman. Yet I didn’t allow myself to get too involved in the hunt. Timing was certainly off in 2011.

With all the time I had for myself this last year, there was plenty of time for self-reflection. I dealt with the love I’d left behind in 2010 and finally learned how to say goodbye, with A Letter to a Love Lost & A Lesson Learned and several other entries. I gave the bird to societal expectations of where I should be as a woman of a certain age, Tossing Out the Ticking Time Clock, and embracing my own unique path.

I also focused on my self, recognizing my own faults and weaknesses, and embracing my new strengths, while acknowledging the me-ness that I sometimes allow to get buried behind bitterness/reticence/resignation or tucked under the plastered on happy face for show. With a little help from surprise, surprise Shania Twain, I was reminded about Finding Your Voice Again.

And then finally, sweet romance did sneak up on me when and where I least expected it. We fell hard and fast. Since it is my love life, it couldn’t stay smooth sailing for too long. So I wound up the year with the realization that I wasn’t actually in a relationship. It looked like one, smelled like one and tasted like one, but apparently it wasn’t one. And after that was established, it acted even more like one…conveniently for the holiday vacation anyway.

So I’m not sure where that leaves me in 2012, except that I’m not looking to bring drama from 2011 into this year. I am a survivor of last year. I more than survived, I thrived and feel more alive than I have in a really long time, and I plan to only go up from here. Nothing and no one is allowed to take me down.

src: theashleysrealityroundup.com

I’m not exactly sure how I get myself into these situations—okay, that’s partially a lie—but once again I found myself playing the mediator between a mother and son this past week. Now, this is not something I recommend the uninitiated just attempt with only her big heart and big mouth to back her. The bond between a mother and son is often an especially tricky one, with multiple layers of fierce devotion, unquestioned loyalty mixed with confusing resentment and guilt in all flavors. In my experiences, this is even more so when the son is an only child, a child of single mother or whose parents divorced at a young age.

The attempted mother-son mediation often puts a strain on a relationship, even when a loving wife, girlfriend or even platonic best friend has the best of intentions. I have heard plenty of horror stories about well-meaning women barreling in on a mother-in-law or boyfriend’s mother, on behalf of her man only to find it blowing up in her face. And if this woman who is not yet your mother in law finds herself hating and resenting you now, don’t assume it’s going to get better once she realizes you’re a permanent member of the family.

When I was a naïve 17-year-old, I was dating a wonderful guy with the biggest heart – who also happened to be a true mama’s boy. The odd thing was, his particular mother somehow raised an intelligent, compassionate, open-minded man who saw the content of a person’s mind, heart and soul before he noticed the color of their skin. This tall, pale Polish-Italian guy fell head over heels for a honey-skinned girl with the melting pot of ethnic backgrounds. His Italian mother was, let’s just say, not pleased (ironically both her parents wound up treating me more like a member of the family than she ever did).

After multiple digging and degrading comments to her son, though I was nothing but loving to her son and nice and respectful to her, I decided to take matters into my own hands. While I was across the country at college, mama bear was trying to whisper poison into her son’s ears, and it only made him resent her more not pull away from me. So I decided to write her a long, heartfelt letter.

I told her how much I cared about her son and how I had no intention of hurting him. I knew she was taking out on me an old grudge she had against a former friend of my boyfriend’s older sister, who turned out to be a hurtful bitch and just so happened to have brown skin too. I told her the kind of person I was, describing my character, my background and basically attempting to defend myself, without explicitly saying how I was not that girl who hurt her daughter.

Most of all, however, I touched upon how it hurt her son to constantly have to he these nasty things about me. I told her I knew how much he loved his mother and how her words impacted him. In more diplomatic terms, I explained how continuing to disparage me would only put a wedge between her and her son. It took approximately five handwritten pages. Then…silence.

The result? Eventually, she reached out and made amends to her son. Frankly, some of what she said was crap about thinking about how people might treat future grandchildren (right!), but the gesture was appreciated. She never apologized to me, but she stopped giving me the evil eye when she thought I wasn’t looking. She started trying to be a little more pleasant when I was around.

Were we ever friends? No, but that wasn’t the aim—backing off her son was, and on that, we succeeded.

My next attempts at mother-son mediation did not have me as the center of the contention. It was mother versus son,  too similar personalities rubbing up against each other. I often had to play referee and yell for a time-out.

The Bulldog had what you can only describe as a mercurial personality. One moment, he was sweet, affectionate and more of an observer. The next, he was punching a hole in the wall with his fist, telling off strangers at a bar to where they wanted to punch him, or he was shouting blistering rants at clients on the other end of the phone.

src: pbskids.org/itsmylife/

His mother, unfortunately, could also fly off the handle once she was triggered. And nothing could set Bulldog or his mother off more than each other. I remember being paralyzed with horror in the middle of a restaurant in Las Vegas when Bulldog and his mom began swearing and shouting horrible things at each other.

Something like “You’re ridiculous. I’m f***ing leaving,” was said, followed by, “Fine, get the hell out of here!” And before I knew it, I was left at a table with his parents while my boyfriend sprinted angrily out of the restaurant.

I glanced at his father who gave me an apologetic look. I glanced at his mother, whose face was red with fury but whose eyes were filled with tears. I shook my head, reaching out my hand, saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and then I ran to catch up with my ride. To say I was absolutely furious with him was putting it mildly. He knew his mom. He knew not to goad her. He knew to just let it go.

But I wasn’t so upset for just this one time. It was also for the time we were staying at their house, and there was an argument where he was too stubborn to back down that we left, not having a place to stay. So I had to get on the phone and find us a ridiculously overpriced hotel room for a night until I could convince him in the morning to stop being enough of an asshole to apologize.

And finally there was the time his parents were staying at our house, and I watched his mother’s face collapse right in front of me. Bulldog had just left me alone with her while she was crying, saying to me, “I don’t know why he says such things. I raised him better than that!”

I finally looked her in the eye and decided we needed to have a heart to heart. She needed to know that she wasn’t the only target of his wrath. I explained to her how his best friend literally had written Bulldog out of his life for the last time several months earlier because he couldn’t take his volcanic temper and insults anymore – apologies weren’t enough. I explained to her just how much pressure he was under with running his own franchise, how he’d taken on far more than he realized he was doing, how he didn’t know how to ask for help, how he wasn’t getting enough sleep, and how there’d be months where business was so slow we were struggling to pay the bills.

You could fairly ask me, where did I get off? Obviously, his family had been dysfunctional in their communicating just fine without me for many years, thank you very much. But I was somehow part of this family now, for better or for worse. They were putting me right in the thick of things.

And she was his mother, and she deserved to know what wasn’t personal and what buttons were especially tender for her son right now. He sure wasn’t going to tell her by himself. The Bulldog and his dad had a closer relationship, but there were still some layers of pride he hadn’t fully let down. Letting Bulldog’s mom see what was really going on opened up her eyes in a way that allowed her to really see Bulldog better, not just his snarling reactions. By no means is their relationship perfect even now, but I do know that we all started communicating with a bit more sensitivity from that point on.

For full disclosure, my very first communiqué with the Gentle Giant’s mother sprang from some insecurity issues on my part, envious of how close she was to his female best friend/ex-girlfriend. Honestly though, before our first date GG and his mom had discussed me fairly in-depth, he’d showed her my Facebook page, and I knew his mom and I had several things in common, and he had invited me to reach out to her even then regarding my career but I felt weird about it at the time.

Anyway, I did eventually send her an email after a couple weeks. Then, we did meet face-to-face during a move, which was a little weird. I worried she didn’t like me at all. Then I was completely shocked when she invited us both to dinner, and that seemed to go swimmingly. So well that I got a really sweet email from her, so I sent one back, and so it went.

This past week, GG and the mom had a discussion where he attempted to share frustration about an issue that unfortunately his mom took personally. He knew as soon as he hung up the phone that she was upset, and he told me how badly he felt about it. So imagine my surprise when a couple hours later I also get an email from his mom venting about the conversation, sharing her hurt feelings.

Now, I had talked with GG about this before stepping in, but I told him I thought it was just a matter of how things were communicated. He was trying to express A (frustration at this matter) and she heard B (he doesn’t appreciate me). The tough thing was I completely understood GG’s frustration, and I also understood his mom’s side of things – how easy it is to take words personally and internalize them – yet I wasn’t sure I knew a better way to phrase it so that GG’s mom wouldn’t take offense at what I said either.

So I thought about it. I wrote. I ran it by one of my friends who is really good at saying what she means from the best place in her heart. Then I crossed my fingers and hit send.

An email from GG’s mom was in my in-box.

Thanks so much for taking the time to really address my hurt feelings. What you wrote does make a lot of sense, and was very eloquently said.

She went on to tell me how much her son means to her and how much she loves him. It made me audibly “aww.” That’s what’s it all supposed to be about.

Phew. Then she really made me feel good by saying she saw why I chose the career I did: “You have a real talent for putting things in perspective.” We exchanged virtual hugs and encouragement.

Don’t worry—I’m not getting cocky. I just luckily chose the right situation to step into this time. I swear I am not making a habit out of doing this – except when I’m getting paid to do so.

Src: simpsons.wikia.com

It’s kind of like going into a crowd of people during an emergency and calmly trying to herd them out of a smoking building by yelling, “Fire!” Obviously people are not going to stop, look for the closest exit and walk in single file, being polite and thoughtful of their neighbors as they make their way out. No, people will go into a chaotic panic, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, cutting off people—possibly injuring them—because they are reacting with their fear instead of acting rationally and practically to get as many people out of harm’s way in the safest way possible.

It would seem that in a relationship red alert, the wisest thing would be first to slow things down, to speak slowly and calmly. Ask questions so that you’re clear what is really being asked. “Are you asking this because you think that I want to be with someone else right now, or are you asking this because you are concerned that I haven’t been completely honest with you?”

Someone with his own severe trust issues, one would think, would be especially sensitive and empathetic to respecting why another person would ask questions if they were concerned about confusing, seemingly contradictory statements or situations. Most often, in healthy relationships, these misunderstandings are frequently due to that quirky little he said/she said, where one person’s “hooking up” means “casually dating on and off” to another person, one’s “just friends” means “friends with benefits” to another, “hanging out with some friends” means “going out to a platonic dinner with my ex, but I’m afraid you’ll freak out so I’ll just buffer it by saying others are coming along”… I think you get the picture.

Of course, rational thinking often goes out the door when one person throws out a zinger meant to sting in the heat of emotion. “What’s your incentive to keep lying? What do you have to be ashamed of?”

It’s hard not to react when you feel personally attacked. And it’s hard to hear what is really a need for reassurance when someone demands to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…particularly on an issue that’s been covered more than a couple times before. But it’s even harder to take back the emotional scars of searing words you really didn’t intend to ever say out loud.

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Over the years, I’ve painfully been learning the lesson that being right isn’t always the point. It’s often not as important to an argument discussion as simply letting each of your voices be heard. Of course there are huge things you absolutely can’t and shouldn’t just brush under the rug. Yet when it comes to the past and a difference in choice of words, is it really worth feeding the flicker of a flame you will only have to both fight to try to put out?

As Buddha said, “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” Fellas, crazy is not that one word.

Src: prippyhandbook.blogspot.com

Those three, little words. They used to rise up from my little, full lips as easily as bread rises from yeast—naturally, organically—the way it is meant to, in its own sweet time. “I don’t know how to say this,” I told my first love—after growing increasingly fond of all the wonderful, quirky, sweet things he was and ways he treated me and others—“but I think I’m falling in love you.”

“It’s funny, I’ve been thinking the very same thing,” he said. “I wanted to tell you, but didn’t know how to say it first.”

My third love surprised me by being the first to bear his soul. I remember he was sitting on the counter of the kitchen in the house we shared with several others that first summer. He told me he could just see us living together for months and years to come, growing together into an old age, sitting side by side on rocking chairs and holding hands.

Sometimes sending the words out into the water sink like a dead weight at the bottom of the ocean. Spoken far too soon, in the heat of the moment, they are met with silence, confusion and quickly brushed away by our own embarrassment. “I just mean, from what I know of you so far, I love what I have been getting to know,” comes the failed rebound.

As you age, the stakes get larger. The falls get deeper and potentially more heart-shattering. Requited love turns south. Passionate love that seems knit from the stars bombs like a meteor crash. It becomes harder to hope. Harder to believe. Harder to put those words, your self, out there.

I never told him I loved him. Never boldly out loud in the two years we were together. I’d get the courage as he was falling asleep, or as we were saying our goodnight calls. With the former, he’d pretend not to hear, or mumble something unintelligible back. With the latter, he’d say I was talking nonsense again and needed to go to sleep.

Ironically, he was the one who finally gave me a Valentine’s Day card that said, “I love you for all the ways…you’re willing to put up with me.” Yeah.

Finally, he got in this ridiculous habit after multiple arguments and break ups of saying, “You hate me.” I’d say, “No, of course, I don’t hate you.”

Then, finally, one day in the car, on the way back from running errands, I instead said, “No, I love you.” He seemed pleasantly surprised, though at first played it off as usual. “No, you hate me.”

“You know I love you,” I emphatically stated.

It only took us four years, including years apart. Too little too late, perhaps. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t say it because I was afraid I wouldn’t hear it back. Or I didn’t because I wasn’t sure how positive I was about those feelings the majority of the time. Or if I didn’t say them simply because I was afraid—I knew I really didn’t have him, even when he was right there.

I grew wary of the ease with which Mr. Etiquette used the L word. I fell for him so quickly and completely, only to get singed with my naïveté—nay, ignorance . One month he was heartbroken over love lost with FDG. The next month, he was deeply in love with me, talking about a future that potentially spanned a lifetime.

Gun-shy, I began to bristle whenever he told me he loved me in and out of that long, dark tunnel of tumultuous ups and downs. So instead, Mr. E began to say, “I accept you completely.” One day soon, he had said with confidence, you are going to want to say it back to me. Of course, he was right.

It’s been more than a year since I last said those words romantically. I say them to my family daily. My girl friends and I have started telling each other we love each other, especially after some rough months (and years) with health struggles and life challenges, in general. It feels good to share how much we care about one another so openly, and I think brings us that much closer.

I’ve missed feeling that way about a special someone in my life with a gnawing longing I barely realized until the possibility of it starting nipping at my heels once more.

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I love saying those words in my head. They just want to dance off my tongue again. I want to sing them and wrap them around the object of my affection.

Is it that I’m loving life so much right now? Is it that I love the way you make me laugh so hard? Is it the way you make me feel so free and able to truly be myself, the badass to the baby?

I love how brilliant you are. I love how I can’t keep my hands off you. I love how you turn into a puddle of goo around your pets. I love the manly way you handle your car. I love the ways you want to help me take care of my health. I love the way you so wholeheartedly love the people you love. I love how much of a friend you’ve become to me, how great a companion and lover.

Words threaten to spill out more and more these days. But I will hold them in until I better know what these…feelings mean. They’re better left unsaid at this point. All you need to know right now is this big grin on my face, just for you, is absolutely, completely genuine.

Src: thadotspot.blogspot.com

During the first half of my freshman year of high school, I had a crush on the cutest junior in school. Now he wasn’t the most popular guy. He wasn’t the coolest. He wasn’t what you’d call a stud. Yet everyone who knew him liked him—no one had a bad word to say about BlueEyes. He was kind, sweet, funny, and he had a killer smile, which would flash at me the entire duration of 6^th period study hall.

He, one of the most popular guys in school, and I would hang out almost every day during study hall, frequently playing chess—yes, even we jocks know the game. There would be constant conversation, teasing and plenty of flirting. Mr Popularity was constantly teasing BlueEyes and I about the chemistry between us, but I didn’t think much of it. I was a lowly freshman, and we were just killing time during study hall.

Then one day my good friend Michelle told me that BlueEyes talked about me all the time at church, saying how much he liked me. I did a double take. First, I never knew they were friends. And two, BlueEyes was talking to other people about me? I had gotten the impression he was shy around women, which Michelle confirmed. So I decided to build up the courage to ask him out myself.

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Shortly afterward, there was a big basketball game that we all went to. I was sitting there with a group of my friends when a rumor went around the group that a tall girl in my class who I wasn’t particular fond of had asked a junior out. Guess who it was? BlueEyes. They didn’t even really know each other! Not like he and I did, but he was naturally flattered. She was tall, athletic, attractive and obviously had more moxie than I.

The sad thing about this story is not that BlueEyes and I never had our moment in the sun. Even in my senior year, when he was in college and dating a junior, he was at my prom, and he came up to me and chatted with me just like in the old days, wanting to know how I was and where I was going to college and all. That friendship still lingered.

The sad thing is that this is the course most of my romantic “relationships” took during high school. Attraction. Heavy flirtation. Friends carrying messages of deeper romantic interest yet nothing more surfacing. Pseudo dates. Study dates. Babysitting dates. Movie dates. Proms. I don’t know if it was because I seemed like I didn’t care, that I didn’t play the game enough. My eyes were instead on the prize of getting into one of the best universities, being the queen of extracurricular activities, excelling in sports and putting my heart into music, singing and musical theater.

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I don’t know if it was because I was “the exotic” in a sea of lily-white suburbia, oddly mixed with redneck country. Most parents loved me, but I realize people could talk, and I am sure they did. It happened to my brothers, though they never opened up about it to me.

One of my “best friends” in high school told me a guy I really liked, who obviously cared for me, too possibly wasn’t asking me out because his parents were prejudiced. This came as a surprise to me, especially when his mom invited me to go into his bedroom during a study session. But you never know. What bothered me more was my so-called friend planting the seed in my head.

I hadn’t thought about high school too much in a way until last night when I got a completely random Facebook chat message from a guy I’ve known since maybe 4^th or 5^th grade, but hadn’t actually conversed with in more than 16 years. He told me he’s been trying to think of something clever to say to me for a long time.

Redhead said:

So umm i managed to notice some important [SingleInMy30s’s] facts via facebook

Well, one you look great

and umm, shit I can’t think of the other

And um I remember you as smart too.

He admitted to be being drunk and challenged me to guess the song he had just played three times in a row. I joked Lady Antebellum, knowing even after all these years, that would be completely out of his listening circles, haha.

src: amiright.com

He added it was by a white duo from the late ‘70s and ‘80s.

“Hall and Oates?” I guessed.

“Yes! Nice! Private eyes,” he said.

“Are they watching me, watching me?” I teased.

He randomly went onto the next question about the only real pub/restaurant in town and asked when I frequented it. The last time he’d been there was a few years prior.

“I dont remember seeing you,” he said. “I probably would have made a point of making an ass of myself if I had seen you.’

We went onto talk about real stuff. Where we were living now, what we did for a living. Talked about what happened to us since good old high school, of course. I told him to send me a poem he had written.

When I showed signs of logging out to go to bed, he said this conversation might have been perceived as hitting on me.  “You know I always admired u back in the day.”

He wanted me to ask why, answering that I made everything look easy—grades, sports, being hot.

“I most definitely was not hot in high school,” I replied. Kinda cute perhaps, I thought to myself.

“ha but u know u were,” he wrote.

“But thank you,” I said with full sincerity about his comment that I had made everything look so easy. “I played the part. I went through the steps.”

He said:

exactly

i mean its all so much nonsense, but still u excelled

and u turned out to be good people

He reminisced about things we remembered about high school and middle school. Me in my blue track shorts. My brother calling the Lakers winning a game, but the Bulls winning the NBA series. Entertaining everyone during recess with my tumbling gymnastics. Remember his mother’s face when we were kids. My sixth grade boyfriend and I dancing at middle school dances, while Redhead was dancing with someone else.

He added:

I dunno, i think u were the standard for hotness.

well done

u would always dance the last one, very nice

“You’re awesome,” I said. “My inner teen self esteem just boosted 100 pts tonight.”

He replied:

ha im not trying to be nice

im just saying

that is what happened

“Very, very few people took the time or chance to tell me things like this back then,” I said. And it was so true. My best girl friends, of course, did. Guy friends, even the ones who liked me, rarely did.

“Well we were all like 15,” Redhead explained away, forgetting all the others around us getting it on like rabbits.

I eventually ended the night because I was already half asleep when we first began talking, but I realized how powerful our conversation had been for me. Not because a guy from my youth admitted crushing on me, but because someone had actually seen me, appreciated me, admired me and the way I lived my life “seemingly effortlessly” from a distance.

All that work to get to where I wanted to be, done joyfully, paid off in more ways than one. And years later, it was still remember and acknowledged. Sometimes those out of the blue conversations with people from the past can be just the boost to the spirit you need to propel you into another exciting future.

What can I say about my parents? I am probably closer to them than the average 30-something—not only because I currently live with them. I have a very open and honest relationship with my mom and dad, sometimes too much so. Yet I appreciate that more than not really knowing them at all.

Src: joyerickson.wordpress.com

We have a complicated history, partially because my parents have a complicated history. I grew up thinking we had a perfect family. That’s what everyone said. My two older brothers and I had cool parents who were still married to each other. My dad played bass in my brother’s rock band. My mom looked many years younger than she actually was, and she somehow managed to be everywhere for three kids who played three or more sports each. My parents never argued. They gave us so many things, both tangible and intangible, and our family trips were legendary.

Yet behind all that were some secrets that I discovered by accident when I came home from school one day at the age of 12 or 13. A few years later and over the course of time, a story came out about my parents that I was shocked by. I felt betrayed, as if I didn’t really know them as well as I thought I did. Their marriage hadn’t been as perfect as I thought it had been. My parents were human and flawed!

After therapy and many, many talks with my father, I have reconciled my visions of my perfect family with a great childhood with wonderful parents who struggled more than I ever knew. I recognized the strength and courage they have, the amazing capacity for forgiveness, grace, true love that withstands the storms and battering of time and comes out even stronger and more beautiful as they grow into their older years.

My parents have aged gracefully, looking and behaving years younger. They still hold hands, truly enjoy each others company and love to travel together, whether it’s a short ride to Vermont to see the foliage or a trip across the country, to take in all the tastes and sights on Park City, UT. They will be renewing their vows this December on their anniversary.

They are very proud grandparents now. Watching my father grow into the grandfather role is a beautiful thing. In my early childhood, I don’t have as many memories with him as I’d wish beyond teaching me music, but he made up for it with art projects, storytelling, road trips, brainstorming for school projects and just by being a cool all-around dad as I got older. So seeing him so active in the lives of my very young niece and nephew and having so much fun with them is awesome.

My mother is such a beautiful person, inside and out. She was always there in my childhood, reading me stories at night, teaching me all the things that would make me succeed in school, cheering me on at my sports games and meets and always being an ear for me to talk to and a shoulder for me to lean on. She is still so much that way today.

Both my mother and my father have been amazingly supportive and patient as I have been on this incredibly long and frustrating, sometimes quite scary, struggle with my health. They have been there with their time, their presence, their love and their cheers.

My dad has challenged me not to give up and to fight harder to get where I want to be. He has driven me around kingdom come for the last almost two years.  He has sat in doctor’s offices, steered the wheelchair, driven me to dates, town hall meetings and interviews, while also taken me to run my errands. I have thanked him many times with words and hugs, but I stunned him when I got him an iPad for Father’s Day.

When he said, it was too much, I replied, “For the times when you have to wait for me in the car or waiting room for so long. I can thank you so many times with words, but I just want you to know how much I truly appreciate how much of your time and energy you give for me.”

My mother shifted her life to work out of the home full-time so that she could be there for me whenever I needed her care. I know it was very stressful in the early days when my health was so chaotic, and it meant so much to me just having her sitting next to me while she typed away on her computer—I wasn’t alone.

Today was her last day of work. She dropped off her badge and computer, and happily retired. It gives me great joy to see the woman who has worked so hard for our family to finally get some rest. She will sleep. She will travel. She will have time to rediscover her passions and discover new ones for the first time. She deserves an incredible retirement. Both of my parents do together.

I love them both more than I can possibly express in words. They are an inspiration, two of my best friends and the best parents a girl could have.