Last night. December 16, 2007

It’s almost 3am. We’re in the booth in the back of a pub that reminds me of London; they even have Magner’s on tap.

An ice storm rages outside. Already I have received a few texts from M: he misses me, he wants me to be careful, he is going to bed but asks that I wake him when I get home.

I feel bad, but only for a moment. I have been going to bed without him almost every evening for two weeks; he will survive just one night.

We are a few shots and quite a few drinks in. The men in the bar - having witnessed our rebuff of a few brave souls who attempted to crash the party - know to leave us alone. We are in that zone when you’re drunk, but not too. Just enough to be honest and yet still articulate.

“I think I love him.” She’s tall and blonde and stunning and sleeping with her boss. Her married boss. Her married boss with five kids, 23 years older.

It’s hard for me not to side immediately with the wife. To cringe at the thought of him pulling out the “I have to work late, honey” card, spending a raucous evening with my friend and then crawling into bed with the Mrs. After a shower, because women can always smell other women. Perhaps he even kisses her forehead, tells her that he loves her, lets her initiate sex. I bet he asks about the kids, and makes plans for the weekend, and acts as if everything is normal because he’s learned to compartmentalize so, in his mind, it is normal.

And she’s none the wiser. She has no idea that he has demonized her to my friend so that my friend feels less guilty about sleeping with a married man. Isn’t that how it always goes?

“She’s awful. He wants to divorce her. He hasn’t been happy for a while,” says the tall blonde.

I want to say: “of course he tells you she’s awful! All men tell the mistress that the wife is awful! Would you continue to sleep with him if he said that she was the most amazing woman he has ever met? Making you think she’s awful is the spoonful of sugar that helps the guilt go down!”

I don’t say anything at all. I take another sip of cider instead.

The other one, the pretty brunette, plays with the straw in her Skinny Bitch (vodka and diet) and bemoans her recent quasi-break up.

“I thought he moved back from Paris for me,” she admits. It’s clear now that he didn’t. He was an ex. She had gone to visit. Feelings were reignited. They discussed getting back together. He made the announcement he was coming back.

And, a mere week after setting foot on American soil, he told her she wasn’t the one.

“I know he loves me,” she says and we all know it’s true. We all know that their different religions and backgrounds have always loomed in the background, threatening to disrupt. Until, one week in, they did.

I feel slightly superior, in my drunkeness. Because M and I are of different religions and backgrounds and we’ve had tough talks about it - heated talks, even - and yet we realized that being together is worth it. It was never really a question.

I suddenly experience the need to throw my own angst into the ring. I don’t want to be the Smug Engaged, judging the Singletons from my happy, fairytale corner of the world.

“I’ve been having dreams about my ex-boyfriend. Almost every night for the past few weeks.”

It’s not sleeping with a boss or nursing a broken heart but, hey, it’s something. In fact, it’s something that has been on my mind for a while. I’m sick of waking up and feeling confused and guilty.

“I hear that’s normal,” says the blonde. “A friend of mine who got married had a dream about an ex the night before her wedding.“

A guy who looks like he’s about nineteen years old sidles up next to the brunette, says that he noticed her drink was getting low and could he buy her another?

And just like that, the spell is broken. We realize we’re drunk and there’s an ice storm and sitting around a table in the back booth of a bar that reminds me of London is no longer appealing. It’s certainly not getting us anywhere, except drunker.

“No thanks,” the blonde answers for the brunette. “We’re actually heading out.”

And so we do, arm in arm, baby steps across the sidewalk to hail a cab, our heels threatening to give out any second on the ice.

In the backseat of the cab, watching the east side fly by, I think to myself if my largest problem is the fact that I’m having dreams about my ex, I’m in pretty damn good shape.

Once home, I crawl into bed with M, inhale his scent for a moment before gently kissing him on the cheek and telling him the obvious - that I’m home.

He rolls over and throws an arm around my waist, nuzzling my neck. “I love you,” he murmurs.

And yeah, it is confirmed. Pretty damn good shape.

I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well. October 25, 2007

I have a confession: M and I aren’t perfect.
 
Perfect for each other, yes.
 
Perfect? Absolutely not. 
 
I’ve stopped writing about the difficult times. Mainly because they’re few and far between but also because…Well, I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Because I’m afraid of being judged? Because I’m afraid to share more now that I’m less anonymous? Because now that we’re getting married, I’m afraid that every tiny argument can be seen as a chink in the armor of us? 
 
It was Sunday, the day before my birthday. I woke up with a mood as grey as the sky. Something about twenty-six really got under my skin. I had one day left as a twenty-five year old and I was apparently going to spend it snapping at M and sulking and in general being a not-so-pleasant person to be around. 
 
M, bless him, tried his best. He tried to make me laugh. Failing that, he tried to get me to talk. Failing that, he got a bit frustrated. He’s human. And I had been pushing his buttons all day, dragging him down into my black hole of a bad mood. Misery does love company, yes, but even more than that, misery loves a good fight.
 
I won’t go into the details – that’s between the two of us  – but it escalated. Escalated to the point that I did something I’ve never done: I grabbed my stuff and bolted out of our apartment, letting the door slam behind me, not bothering to lock it.
 
In New York, you can be alone both nowhere and everywhere.
 
I cried once in London, while walking down the high street. It was homesickness, if I remember correctly. Three people stopped me to ask me if I was okay. By the time I got back to my flat, I was smiling. London cared, London took care of me. 
 
New York could give a shit. 
 
I walked to the fountain at Columbus Circle, one of the most underrated spots in the city - especially at night - and took a seat between a disoriented bum and a beautiful teenager sketching evening gowns.
 
I was iPod-less and phone-less and money-less and crying, wiping the snot onto the sleeve of my red hoodie, sitting knees to chest. Suddenly embarrassed, suddenly very sorry, suddenly feeling very stupid and yet still too full of pride to go back. I chided myself for letting my emotions get the best of me, for not being rational, for being such a bitch. A foul-tempered bitch.
 
I fight like my mother and my sister. We’re feisty, we’re Greek, we go for the jugular. If we’re angry - no matter if it’s justified - we’ll tell you everything you don’t want to hear about yourself. We’ll spot your weakness and go in for the kill. This is an attribute that is going to make my sister a stellar divorce attorney in just a few years. However, it’s not something I’m proud of and I definitely wasn’t proud that day, sitting in front of the fountain, mulling over the things I had said.
 
I saw Cameron Diaz first, walking with an actor I recognized from Alias (IMDB says: Bradley Cooper). I welcomed the distraction that came with passing judgment (skinny but not too, a bit of a flat ass, skin looked fine, overall very pretty).
 
Then I noticed a familiar face crossing the street towards the fountain – the stubble, the mess of brown hair, the black jacket with the collar, the one I love. The ice in my veins – ice I had worked so hard all day at keeping in place – melted.
 
He came and found me.
 
He sat down next to me. We just let each other be for a short while, sitting in complete silence, facing forward. The water drowned out the rest of the city, which is the reason the fountain is my favorite place to think. You can’t do anything but.
 
I could be remembering it wrong, but we reached for each other’s hand at almost the same time.
 
Somehow, some way we got from there to a perfect pre-birthday dinner. A perfect after-dinner. A perfect after-after-dinner. A perfect actual birthday. We built back up again after a not-so-pretty crumble.
 
It’s why I’m marrying him.
 
Because we’ll fight - hopefully not often, but it’ll happen. In fact, I’m wary of couples that don’t ever fight, not even just a bit. There are times when the connection, or the communication, they’re just not going to be perfect. There are times when things aren’t going to be easy.
 
But we’ll always find a way back to each other, M and I. And that’s what makes me believe in us, with ever fiber of my being.
 

The Sexlesses. June 22, 2007

We haven’t had sex for two days. 
 
If you knew M and me, kept a log of our sex life for the past two years (except that would make you kind of pervy and I don’t know that pervy suits you), you would know that two days without sex - two days having slept in the same bed without having sex - is wildly uncharacteristic. 
 
“Omigod, we’re the old married couple. That doesn’t have any sex. Except for like once a month but even then it’s perfunctory and I’ll be thinking about the laundry and you’ll be thinking about the bills. OMIGOD. We’re just a stone’s throw away from my vast collection of romance novels, your vast collection of porn and ‘goodnight hun, see you tomorrow’ before turning over onto opposite sides. Omigod.” 
 
“I’m glad to see you’re not at all being melodramatic about this.”  
 
The truth is, I’m scared about domestic life. Excited, intrigued, anxious but also scared. Scared that it will turn us into faded versions of our vibrant selves. I’m scared that there won’t be any sex. I’m scared that life - especially a life filled with kids and obligations and car pools and mortgages - will intrude to the point that we become, essentially, roommates.  
 
It’s irrational, I know. Two days without sex does not a celibate couple make. But it’s easy to get tired and make excuses and then all of a sudden it’s been two months and you’re all, “maybe I should just put out tonight. I feel bad.” 
 
I know what a slippery slope it is because it’s exactly what happened with the gym and me. I used to go five, six nights a week. The cycling room was my second home. I was dedicated, enthusiastic. And then, well, life started to get in the way. I got busy at work and then I got engaged and soon I stopped going. I was “too tired.” Or I “had a headache.” Or I “just wasn’t in the mood.” And now it’s been weeks - WEEKS! - without a single visit to the gym. And I have no intentions of going back. Carving time for the gym is no longer a priority.  
 
See? See how that worked? See how easy it is to substitute “sex” for “the gym”?  
 
“Well,” he said to me this morning as I, fully-clothed and ready to go to work, lay next to him, shirtless and sleepy, “I’d be more than happy to seduce you right now if it means you’ll worry less.” 
 
“No! No! Then we’d be doing it just to do it and then we’re no better than The Sexlesses. Oh, and if you could see inside my head, I’ve capitalized Sexless as if it’s a last name because that’s what we’re going to call the imaginary family that we don’t want to turn into.”  
 
I know we’ll have sex tonight and it will be awesome and I’ll be all, “remember my meltdown? Ha ha ha, I’m so dramatic. We have nothing to worry about.” But still. Slippery slope, I say. Slippery slope.  
 
Note: I should probably be channeling all my nervous energy into worrying how the hell we’re going to help pay for this wedding, but as you can see, I clearly have my priorities in exactly the right order.

No dying. June 6, 2007

This is just pointing out the obvious, but I’m the irrational one in the relationship. I’m the one who, late, in bed, after Stewart and Colbert and some fooling around, will blurt out “you can’t die!” followed by some tears and some sniffles, apropos of absolutely nothing except maybe the onset of my period.  
 
I’m emotional. M is a solid consoler. It works. 
 
He came home last night around 1am. I woke up to his arms wrapped around me, him watching me sleep.  
 
“Hi there,” I said, willing myself to wake up and enjoy a few minutes with my boy. 
 
He put his hands on my face. “I love you. I just think you should know that,” he said with such seriousness that it startled me.  
 
Of course - me being Ms. Gloom and Doom - I got suspicious. “Why? I mean, I know that you love me, of course I know that you love me (I recently found out that you bought a diamond, you fool - Ed. Note), but why, what’s wrong?” 
 
M launched into a story about how he got to talking with a colleague of his. The conversation turned to plans for the weekend and the colleague mentioned that he has a charity tennis tournament to attend. In fact, it’s his charity’s tennis tournament.  
 
“You started a charity tennis tournament?” M asked. “Good man.” 
 
“Well, my wife died twelve years ago. I started a charity in her name.” 
 
It hit M so hard, that conversation.  
 
“Clink.” He was lying on his back; I was curled up alongside him, my face buried in his neck. “It’s just - this guy had plans, you know? Plans with his wife. Who ever thinks that the person you’re going to marry is going to die?” 
 
Then, borrowing from me and one of my many emotional outbursts, he said, calmly, “You can’t die. OK? No dying.” 
 
I promised that I would do my best.  
 
It’s hard, this love thing. The fear of it all being taken away is the price paid for allowing yourself to fall. For me, for a while, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I let trust issues overwhelm and overtake and I was sure that it would all be taken away not by death but by someone else - someone thinner, prettier, more successful.  
 
Now, not so much. Now it’s more about God, the Universe, Whatever reaching down and ruffling a smoothly laid out life, a life with concrete plans. A life that does not work if one element - the most important element - is missing. 
 
I’m still feeling the aftereffects, I guess, of the funeral. M is certainly still feeling the aftereffects of his conversation. This will pass, I’m sure, and we’ll go on floating through life, believing that it won’t happen to us because what other way is there to live? As much as the Culture of Fear is alive and kickin’ (“these are people who want to kill your families,” to paraphrase our president), I won’t buy into it for longer than a few chunks at a time. Enough time to reflect and thank God, the Universe, Whatever for what I have. But not long enough to stop me from living.

Newsflash: Marriage Declared ‘Hard’ May 7, 2007

M called me as soon as the “fasten seatbelt” sign was turned off.  
 
I was stuffed into the backseat of my parents’ car, driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, anxious to get home to him. 
 
I could hear it in his voice that something was off. Not ‘angry off’ or ‘not feeling well off’ but ‘introspective off’. Like he had been doing a lot of thinking and something was on his mind.  
 
How well I know him. As soon as I arrived home, smothered him with kisses, warmed up some pizza and settled into my bed next to him, my boyfriend–never one for long discussions about feelings as there is only room for one over-emotional crazy in this relationship and I was awarded that title long ago–opened up about how four days spent in the company of his sister, his brother-in-law and their son gave him a crash course in marriage. Specifically, What The Stress Of Having A Baby Does To Marriage 101. 
 
M and I are similar in that we both look at our future and see a path of solid gold bricks lined with sugar-coated tulips and a bright blue sky filled with cotton-candy clouds. We think, because we have found each other in this city of millions, in this world of billions, that everything from here on out will be sunshine and sausages. Finding each other was the hard part, right?  
 
(Of course, that’s a bit unrealistic. In fact, our La-La-La-Ain’t-Life-Grand bubble is surely to be popped once M starts law school in the fall and the books become his mistress and I’m sitting in bed alone at night, missing him and wishing we could fast forward past the hard part.)  
 
M was a bit shell-shocked that his sister and his brother-in-law, once the epitome of in love and happy, are now practically strangers who only have one thing remaining in common: their kid. And they can’t even agree on how to raise him (her: no sugar, ever; him: that’s ridiculous). M got a peek into what happens when the bubble bursts and it terrified him. 
 
“I don’t want that to be us,” was his point. 
 
“It won’t be, if we don’t let it,” I told him.  
 
At this point in my life, I can’t imagine not feeling anything but in love with and proud of and supportive of and supported by M. I know that life–marriage, career stress, kids–can change all of that. Right now, our only responsibilities are to our landlords, to our bosses and to each other. We don’t even have an animal that relies on us each day in order to survive. This is the easy part. All the rest of it is when you either grow stronger together or fall apart separately.  
 
In some ways, M’s experience in Wisconsin (“I felt awkward most of the time, as if I was caught in this constant passive aggressive battle”) came at the perfect time. He and I are about to embark on what we hope will be a lifelong journey. Now we know, after a few hours of intense discussion last night, what route we don’t want to take. We spoke of keeping lines of communication open so as not to breed resentment. We spoke of discussing child-rearing and a game plan for it before the little buggers arrive, so there is a united front instead of two warring factions. We are going to dig out that “25 Questions Couples Should Ask Each Other Before Marriage” article in the Times and go over it at length. If we’re well-armed before heading into the trenches, perhaps we can be the rare few to make it out the other side unscathed.  
 
I don’t like that all of a sudden I’m comparing marriage to war. I know that M and I are very different from his sister and brother-in-law. I know that many of their problems, as M has told me, were planted in the beginning of their relationship but have only now–with the arrival of a child–been fully exposed. I know that the fact that M and I can talk to each other about this kind of stuff gives us an automatic head start. He’s my best friend and, as I told him last night, there’s no one I’d rather experience anything–marriage, children, a walk through Central Park–with.  
 
I don’t like discussing M’s family mainly because that’s his business, and not mine to expose to an audience of internet strangers (no matter how very cute you are, guys). I will say that he did not have the best example of marriage when he was growing up and I think that part of why he came back from Wisconsin a bit defeated was that he had high hopes that his sister would be able to overcome their childhood and be the mother and wife they always wished their own mother could be. He was disheartened to see her own marriage crumbling around her.  
 
I promised him that we won’t let that happen. In fact, I pinky-swore. And we all know that pinky swears? Well, they are binding. For life. So M and I, we’re going to be a-ok.

Yeah, I know a thing or two about jealousy issues. May 2, 2007

To the women who have found my blog by googling the following: 
 
“jealous of his ex”  
 
“GORGEOUS EX GIRLFRIEND HIS”  
 
“my boyfriend’s chunky blonde ex girlfriend jealous”  
 
You, my friends, have come to the right place. No, I’m not any of the ex-girlfriends in question. At least, I don’t believe I am. Except maybe that middle one. I could be her. I kid! I kid! 
 
What we’re dealing with are some jealousy issues here. And, while I may be merely the Queen of All Slot Machines, I am the Czar of All Jealousy Issues. 
 
Well, I may have been recently demoted seeing as I have learned to control and deal with mine (without the help of a mental health professional! All by myself! Am awesome), but still. I know a thing or two about jealousy. I may have even googled something similar back in the day in order to find words - anyone’s words, really - that I could either a) learn from or b) sympathize with.  
 
Most searches came up short, which is why I’m devoting a post to you, Ladies Who Are Now Where I Very Recently Was. Which is to say: jealous, and freaking out about that jealousy enough to comb the internet for information.  
 
Those people who do not harbor an inner green-eyed monster will spew very helpful advice on the subject, such as: “he’s with you, that’s all you have to know” or “if you don’t stop acting this way, he’s going to leave you” or “wow, you’re a psycho.” They don’t understand what it’s like to appear to be a perfectly normal human being on the surface and yet be forced to confront and manage paralyzing jealousy each and every day.  
 
Your jealousy issues most likely stem from insecurities within yourself: not feeling good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, funny enough, smart enough. And, therefore, you assume his ex-girlfriend (or that co-worker he hangs out with, or his best friend’s sister he’s close with) is prettier and thinner and funnier and smarter and fuck it, you should just give up shouldn’t you? Because you’ll never live up. Because he’ll eventually realize he wants to be with her and her tiny thighs and perfect hair and you’re just headed for heartbreak and what the fuck is the point? 
 
Sound familiar? Don’t lie. Yes it does. Otherwise you wouldn’t be googling “GORGEOUS EX GIRLFRIEND HIS.”  
 
Now, there is an exception to this: there is a chance that the insecurity is coming from an external factor. Such as, oh, your boyfriend. If he makes you feel insecure or compares you unfavorably to his ex or if he even still has pictures of his chunky blonde ex-girlfriend lying around the apartment and not shoved in a shoe box, long forgotten, in the back of his closet, then maybe you should rethink dating someone who doesn’t make you feel awesome. I don’t have much experience with that, but it doesn’t sound like much fun. 
 
My experience, clearly, has been within myself. Fighting my own demons. Me versus my evil brain. A brain so evil it manages to create the most unrealistic scenarios and convince me that they are real (he’s sneaking out of my room at night to sleep with my roommate! I know it!). It’s not an easy battle to undertake, but it’s necessary for you and your relationship. Because as obnoxious as people who have never had to deal with jealousy can be, they do have a point: your boyfriend will probably get sick of it, eventually, and end things.  
 
So, you found a photo of his ex. Or you know his ex. Or perhaps you stumbled across her blog, like I did. And now you have an image in your head - an image that is probably very far removed from reality, but still - and you are competing against that image and always assuming that you come up short. 
 
I don’t know anyone who has ever stumbled across their boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s photo and breathed a sigh of relief after seeing that she was 20 pounds overweight and covered in acne and wearing clothes she apparently acquired while dumpster-diving. Do you know why your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend isn’t hideous? Probably because he dates attractive women. JUST LIKE YOU, DUH. Take it as a compliment. She’s not prettier than you, she’s just in your league. And that’s a pretty hot league to be in, if you do say so yourself. You should, like, high five her or something!  
 
And then you should leave it at that. Don’t return to her blog (HA! If only it were so easy). Don’t whip out the picture from his drawer when he’s in the shower and analyze her. It’s not worth it. In fact, ignorance is bliss. You don’t want to know about the sex they had. Or the trajectory of her career. Or where she was from. Because no matter what, you will take that information and store it inside and live with it and mull it over so hard and so long that you end up distorting it to the point that, in your mind, she is the Queen of the World and you? Well you just suck.  
 
I used to crave information about his past. I’ll admit to having done some light snooping in his room. I’ll admit to having done some heavy snooping on the internet. And not one piece of information I discovered ever made me feel better about myself. If anything, I was digging myself deeper and deeper into a self-pity hole and I was dragging my relationship right along with it.  
 
There are some things you should know about your boyfriend’s past: has he gotten checked for STDs? What’s his family like? Has he ever killed a small dog using a pellet gun? All vital information as to his character or values or upbringing. Knowing that he used to call his ex-girlfriend “sexy pookiebear” and that their favorite position was reverse cowgirl is not need-to-know information. So don’t know it. Don’t ask, don’t snoop. It’s really not worth it. 
 
Someone very wise (I’m not sure who, exactly, but trust me, they were smart) once said, “Once you know something, it is impossible to un-know.” (Note: does not apply to keys because, yeah, you once knew where you put them but clearly, as you’re frantically tearing apart your apartment and you’re already ten minutes late for work, you have undoubtedly un-knowed where you put them.)  
 
I’m not saying that you should ignore relationship red flags. If you truly think his ex is still an issue due to his words or his actions, then by all means, re-assess your relationship. The “ignorance is bliss” mandate really only applies to those of you out there who are like me in that you are searching for the relationship’s downfall because it’s too good to be true. Other shoe, dropping. Etc. Since you can’t find anything wrong with your man or the way he treats you, you go to the past and, as a result, cripple yourself with insecurity to the point that you can barely function anymore in the relationship. I’ve been there. I got through it. So will you. 
 
The first step is to stop googling “his ex girlfriend hottest thing in the entire world so fucking jealous.” Stop thinking about her. Stop worrying about her. Stop analyzing her. It’s exhausting and a waste of time and you, pretty girl, have a relationship to enjoy! Go enjoy it! Trust me, once you stop making being jealous of his ex-girlfriend a top priority, the jealousy issues will soon be non-jealousy issues and you’ll be all, ex what? Former girlfriend who? AND LO, IT WILL BE GLORIOUS.

More. March 14, 2007

I know, I know: Wah, wah, wah. Woe is me. I’m batshit insane and need to get over myself.It may seem unimportant or self-involved or jealous or immature. It may not be something you’d be angry about or something you’d let affect your relationship.

To which I say: congratulations, you are a better person than me.

I don’t like that seeing her name in the acknowledgments section bothered me to the point of tears and rage. If I could pick out my feelings each day like I pick out my clothes, I would definitely leave “insecure” sitting in the back of the closet, never to see the light of day, right next to “jealous” and “vulnerable.”

It is M’s book and since it is his name on the cover and not mine, he had sole discretion as to who got thanked and who did not.

Do I wish he hadn’t thanked her? Of course I wish he hadn’t thanked her. Who would want their boyfriend to thank someone who has viciously affected their relationship? I haven’t gone into all the details as they are entirely too personal, but rest assured that she has, in fact, done things directly to both me and us as a couple. Things that made M take a step back and decide he didn’t need her in his life. There were no ultimatums from me to that end; he came to the conclusion himself.

However, somewhere deep down where unadulterated rage toward her doesn’t exist, I understand why he did include her.

Do I wish he had spoken to me about it beforehand? Absolutely. And I will stand by my argument that, since we are in a relationship and a potentially lifelong one at that, it is something he should have brought up before I stumbled across it on my own. He admitted that he knew it would bother me, so it’s not like my hurt feelings came out of left field.

It’s a respect thing. He knows that this is someone who has affected our relationship and he knows that I dislike her for very valid reasons. While it was absolutely within his rights to include her, out of respect for me he should’ve at least given me a gentle heads up about it. I deserved that much. I would’ve given that much to him.

He’s gone now, for eight days. Jet Blue is about to take him south, toward 85 degree weather. I was dreading it at first but now I’m actually looking forward to having some time to myself. I’m looking forward to stepping back and assessing what we have and coming to the conclusion that it’s all worth fighting for. To say I’ll ever be okay with her is ambitious. If she fell off the face of the earth, I would lobby for a national “Yay! The Whore Fell Off the Face of the Earth! Day.” But I can be okay with my relationship which, in turn, will mean that she ultimately does not matter.

As I was writing this he called, from the boarding gate. To thank me for the ‘congratulations! Your book came out!’ card I secretly stuffed in his carry on and also to tell me that he’s been thinking a lot about what happened and that he apologizes for not bringing it up sooner. For not telling me. I, in turn, apologized again for letting the situation get the best of me and for not handling it with a cool head. I was hurt and I should’ve just voiced that hurt without turning it into a fight.

Apologizing to each other doesn’t undo what we both went through, but it goes a long way toward repairing it.

Oh, and since today is all about being positive and working towards a better version of both myself and my relationship, if you leave a nasty comment devoid of constructive criticism or even if I don’t like your tone, I will delete it. I may have opened myself up to it yesterday, but not today. I never claimed this was a democracy.

Would you be mad? March 13, 2007

Let’s play a round of “Would You Be Mad?” (in my head, that sounds like a studio audience shouting “WOULD! YOU! BE! MAD!?, just so you know).

Are you ready? (ARE! YOU! READY!?)

So, let’s pretend that you have a boyfriend. And he is gorgeous and smart and talented and lovely and totally into you and whenever you’re around him you feel compelled to just smush his cute face while making cooing sounds because he’s just that delicious (go with it, okay?). In sum: you are in love. He loves you back. Life is pretty good.

Your delicious boyfriend wrote a book, which he dedicated to you. You are no dummy; it means a lot to you that your boyfriend would essentially, as he told you, write a book for you. Nothing that is about to go down could possibly take away from the honor of seeing your name on the dedication page. It means the world to you.

You decide to pick up your boyfriend’s book and re-read a chapter that was recently excerpted in a major publication. Before flipping to the chapter, you stop momentarily on the acknowledgments page, realizing that you haven’t read it in its entirety.

Almost immediately – as if you have inner Whore Sensor – you zone in on her name.

Who is she? Why, only the bane of your very existence, the thorn in the side of your relationship. She was the woman in his life before you came along, and she has not taken kindly to being rocked off her pedestal. They never dated. He had a crush on her when he first met her – through work – but it dissolved into a close friendship. She’s the one who helped him pick out those shoes that you love. She’s the one who accompanied him to weddings and holiday parties. She’s the one he leaned on while going through rough times.

The fact that she was important to him once is not why you don’t like her. Well, not entirely. You don’t like her because she is a goldigging skank with loose morals. She sleeps with famous and semi-famous married men, uses them to both obtain material goods and for her own professional benefit. She is the woman that all women hate; she drags down the good name of the gender through her very existence. Since she doesn’t get much more than access to a black AmEx through her “relationships,” she leans on your boyfriend for emotional support. She even had him use his connections to put a halt to a very public scandal that would’ve outed her as a homewrecking whore.

He’s scaled back their friendship since the two of you have been together; no more nights at the movies, no more dinners, no more being a shoulder to cry on when her latest relationship goes south. He acknowledges that there is some validity to how you feel about her. But he cannot cut her out completely, he says, because they work together. But their relationship – as far as you know – is nothing more than a work acquaintanceship. A phone call or email every once in a while, but nothing more. Long gone are the days that he would consider dropping everything to be by her side. In light of that, you try to put it out of your mind that, at the very beginning of your relationship with him, you walked into a party and saw his hand resting in the small of her back. You try to convince yourself that that was then and this is now. You believe him when he says that he doesn’t have feelings for her, that you are the only girl he wants to be with.

So, imagine your surprise when you see her name among those he has thanked – his friends, his family, your family, his journalism professors, former bosses. There she is, grouped with a few of his colleagues. Not singled out, but still present.

You immediately shut down, chide yourself for being so naïve as to think he wouldn’t include her. Have you been duped? Has all that he said been a lie? Has he been hiding a friendship with her so as to spare your feelings?

You bring it up, when the TV and the lights have been turned off. When he’s thinking sex. Not so fast, buddy.

Okay, maybe you don’t so much “bring it up” as “scream about it.” You’ve lost your cool; you are furious. Why did he feel the need to include someone that has wreaked so much havoc on your relationship? And why didn’t he at least tell you about it, give you a heads up, offer a chance at a reasonable discussion? Why did he leave you to find it out all by yourself and fume quietly over it before eventually bursting Sunday at midnight?

So, this is where you come in. Because maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am, as he said in the heat of the moment, making a big deal out of absolutely nothing. Maybe I should just let it go.

But I feel that my reaction was valid. We’ve worked it out – we’re actively loving each other again, of course, despite the threats and crossed arms and turned backs of the other night – but it still eats at me. She will forever mar his book, something that is so special to me and us. She will always be in it, just as she will always be in our lives – for one reason or another. She always seems to find a way and he always seems to let her in. He says he included her not because of who she is to him today but because of whom she once was: someone who helped him along the way, in both life and his career. He doesn’t feel I should be threatened and in truth, I’m not. I don’t think he’s cheating or even carrying on an illicit friendship. But at the same time, I don’t want her in our lives anymore. This is someone who has never treated me or our relationship with respect. I can’t wrap my head around why he felt she deserved a place of honor in his book.

So, wise Internets, I ask you…

WOULD! YOU! BE! MAD!?

Fingers Crossed. December 8, 2006

Friday isn’t really Friday when there’s work on Saturday. So while I’m excited for the weekend, I’m not excited. And that italic is really all the difference.

I’m also tired (not just tired), and that leads to overthinking and overanalyzing and overworrying and overeverything.

I’ve sense a slight shift between the Boy and me. Something that cannot be detected by the naked eye but, when put under a very tight microscope (like my overanalytical brain), reveals a distortion.

We’re us but we’re not us. It’s impossible to describe and, even if I attempted to put it into a string of coherent paragraphs, I would most likely come across as oversensitive at best and nonsensical at worst.

So I’m just putting it out there. If he breaks up with me tomorrow, next week, next month I can point to this post and say “see! Guys! I fucking predicted it! I knew something was wrong and even though I didn’t specify what was wrong, I knew something was wrong. See, I was right! And now I’m heartbroken. Please pass the Kleenex. And the tub of Ben and Jerry’s.”

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully it’s just me. The problem with me is that I can’t trust my gut instincts. They are unreliable because my gut instincts pass through my brain and my brain distorts everything, even gut instincts, transforming them into Worst Case Scenarios and therefore what I feel is actually the worst thing I could possibly imagine being passed off as a gut instinct.

Whew. Sorry. That probably only makes sense in my (very, very unreliable) head.

Hopefully things will seem familiar once I start my weekend, at 6pm tomorrow evening. For a day and some change maybe I will again feel like my bubbly, giddy, fun-loving self and if I feel like myself, maybe my relationship will feel like my relationship.

Fingers crossed.

Honest. November 22, 2006

For lack of a more creative description, my relationship is a rollercoaster at the moment.

There are various factors contributing to the constant ups and downs lately: my job (by the time I leave work today, I will have put in almost a 40 hour week in just 3 days), his job, my mild seasonal depression, the major side project he’s finishing up, PMS, the fact that he’s studying for the LSAT.

I’m all emotion right now; he’s all get-down-to-business.

I am trying to be Understanding and Supportive and Pleasant and Forgiving and all those wonderful things that the Perfect Girlfriend would be at a time like this because the Perfect Girlfriend would realize that this is temporary and that some sacrifices have to be made. I, however, fall quite short of Perfect Girlfriend status in that I can be a selfish, spoiled brat.

Case in point: the Boy told me last night, on the phone, that he was planning on driving back to Queens from New Jersey (where we will be celebrating Thanksgiving) tomorrow evening, after dinner, so that he can study. My initial reaction was not very Perfect Girlfriend like. In fact, I may or may not have blurted out “you can’t be serious, jesus, what’s the big deal? It’s one night!”

Yup, that’s me. Always saying the right thing at the right time.

He thinks I don’t understand; I don’t think it’s necessary for him to drive an hour and a half late at night on a holiday when he can study for the test at my parents’ place before and after we go to my aunt’s, therefore fulfilling his self-imposed 3-hours-a-day quota. He can then drive back into Queens on Friday morning, allowing us to have a few more sacred hours together, seeing as it will probably be the only time we have together all weekend.

If I’m being honest, I am so fucking sick of this fucking test. It has become central to our relationship at the moment – fitting it in, working around it, sacrificing for it. It’s important, yes. It’s his future, yes. I want him to succeed, yes. But I’m a selfish bitch and I finally have four goddamn days off and, in a perfect world, I’d get to spend part of that time with him. The fact that he’s not letting on that he’s disappointed or frustrated or upset that he has to hit the books instead of laying around, watching television and eating leftovers with me contributes to me being even more selfish, and a bit hurt. I’m not used to not being his first priority. There. I said it. Name-call as you will, but it’s the truth.

He promises that this will all be over December 2, after he takes the test. I’m looking forward to that day, in a circle-the-date-in-red sort of way, but I can’t help but think that, if he attends law school, this is exactly what the next 3 years of my life are going to be like. And it is a distinct possibility that I won’t be able to handle that.