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If you are curious about the resurgence in my blog writing after the hiatus, it's because I'm injured...again; one of the job hazards of teaching white belts is that they are very clumsy. A student fell on me, breaking two toes. I'm still teaching Spin and Karate, but no hiking or biking in my "spare" time.
I’m in the best of both worlds at the moment. I’m in the moony, happy, make others sick first stages of a new relationship. That relationship having grown out of a solid friendship, there is all the bliss with (almost) none of the game playing. Being with a man who does not play head games or hide his feelings is so novel to me, I get confused. I also get a little panicked.
I might be a bit of a commitmentphobe….but I am trying to work on it. The entire reason I’ve had a lot of bad boyfriends isn’t that I’m “unlucky in love”. It’s because I am subconsciously attracted to men who I have absolutely no chance of having a successful relationship with. Some commitmentphobes form attachments to the unattainable, they pick an object of affection who lives far away, is already in a relationship or has some other large barrier to being together. This way they can have all the drama of being in love without all that messy actually working at having a relationship. I go the other way; I am attracted to guys who are carrying around so much emotional baggage they can hardly stand upright. The type who run away the moment they start feeling close, only to come back again when they sense I am getting fed up. They are the ones who pursue a girl like their life depends on getting her, and then neglect her and emotionally push her away until she’s halfway out the door, then do everything they can to pull her back, all the time blaming her for “always creating drama”. I call them Lava Lamp Boyfriends.
Enter the nice guy. After years of dating Lava Lamps, I’ve met a guy who is sweet, expressive, honest and completely trustworthy. He’s also athletic, outdoorsy and fixes things like bikes….and boy can he climb a hill on his bike *swoon. Before he ever read my blog he was a perfect checklist of the etiquette that impresses me so. We are so compatible that I am starting to think I have entirely imagined him. Sure, he’s a bit younger….ok, he’s a lot younger, but he’s an old soul, I’m a young spirit and cougars are in this season. I am not making it sound impossibly perfect, it is impossibly perfect – and that’s what sets off my commitmentphobic panic alarm.
The first round of panic came early on when discussing his Movember facial hair and he said “just wait six months when it’s big and bushy”. Granted, I don’t generally like facial hair and so he thinks the look of panic on my face was at the thought of a bushy “mountain man” beard, but it was that harmless enough sounding phrase “just wait six months”. I don’t ever plan anything more than 3 weeks in advance with someone I am dating. I once broke up with a boyfriend (years ago), because he talked about teaching me to ski and we had started dating in May. I squelched the panic and convinced myself he was just goading me over the goatee.
Panic number two involved the perfect gift and a huge timeline. I am a nature loving, get dirty in the outdoors kind of gal (my guy calls me “Granola Hot”, a categorization of women I did not know existed until now). In fact it was a long hike in the woods that made us both realize our friendship could cross the line at any minute if we dared to let it. I also love homemade gifts and prefer to be picked flowers than sent them so what my guy did shows just how well he truly understands me. He is growing me a tree. “What?” “I am growing you a tree, do you want to see it?” flipping through the photos on his phone. “It won’t be ready for 3 years though. There are three, I have a tree, there’s one for my dad and you have a tree.”
Breathe, breathe, breathe. On the one hand, a guy who would grow me a tree gets me better than anyone I’ve ever dated. On the other, he’s planning to give me a gift in three years….Slow, deep breaths - in for four, out for four. Don’t Panic! It’s a wonderful gift and the fact that he is thinking long term is a good thing. These are the conversations I have with myself regularly so I don’t start to sabotage with one of the many stupid things I do to get in the way of my own happiness.
I’m not a horoscope kind of person. I read them for amusement but put absolutely no stock in them. I have a friend who does. We share the same horoscope, as does my guy and my best friend, and some of the things she tells me about the personality of our sign are pretty dead on. Years ago she told me, “Pisces are like all fish, try to grab them and they will dart away from you in fear. Swim up next to them and they will swim with you forever.” So maybe, just maybe, since we are two fish and don’t have anything to grab with, we can swim through this relationship ocean together happy and only mildly panicked.
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