Wanted: A Wife

Em and I parted ways this evening. We hadn’t been together very long, or even seeing each other in any kind of “this is my girlfriend” capacity, but I did like her enough that I told my parents she existed. We had a lovely catch-up dinner (hadn’t seen each other in three weeks - now there’s a tip-off), and parted ways really simply, with kindness and care for each other. Ironically, we were both going the same way on the subway, which did not happen once in the short weeks we were romantically linked.

I said after my last break-up that I needed to be alone for a while, I wanted to experience what that was like. And I do. We also broke up because I have a not-so-sneaking suspicion that the pendulum of my sexuality has swung very deeply into the heart of Ladytown, and it's about damn time I allowed myself to explore that. So I'm doing that, too. It's been a fight - sometimes I feel disingenuous to myself, but I know that if I don't take the time to do it, I'll regret it later.

It struck me as I walked home over the icy sidewalks of my less-than-stellar neighborhood that perhaps the reason I’ve never been alone is my ease of independence. I prefer challenging environments and being partnered, to me, is much more of a challenge. I’m good at selfish and self care; I’m bad at taking a partner’s feelings into account - I either go too far, or not far enough, and it’s a daily crapshoot as to which. I know being single doesn’t always encourage me to grow as a person. It does encourage my creativity, but I often don’t take advantage of that extra time. When I do, I’m holed up and unreachable in a way my friends find frustrating.

I’ve been in search of my other half since college. It’s always at least in the back of my mind. I have been ready to build a life with someone else, and I have had ample opportunities and many not-so-false, but less than stellar, starts. Maybe I’m not ready to get married - I absolutely do not feel like sharing my bedroom with somebody else (maybe that’s because it’s so small?) - but I am ready to know the person I want to walk into the future with.

It doesn’t matter how firm the logic inside of me says that love is something you build with your hands, I believe that when I meet my wife, I will Have Met My Wife. There will be some inescapable magic there. She will be inescapably human, and our bond wholly sacred. I don’t expect it to be easy, I know we’ll fight because being partnered doesn’t come easy to me.

I see glimpses of her in other women, I saw pieces of her in Em.

It takes me a long, long time to open up all the way and love somebody with the intensity a long, loving relationship deserves. The last person to crack me open that far was Grace, and it took me until last year (two years after her wedding to another person!) to realize I had been in love with her the whole time. It still took her a year to pull me apart and set herself in my bones. This is why I don’t like dating - who is going to have the patience for that?

I hate dating. I find it exhausting. I always have. It feels inorganic and forced. I don't really like going out in public all the time, I prefer quiet intimacy. (Plus, nobody ever messages me and I am always pursuant. I loathe pursuit. I am too shy and awkward for that shit - if you want me, come and claim me, or whatever.) I really liked dating my friends in college, and I wish I had more single friends now so I could date them instead. It can be so easy to fall in love someone you already care for. If only I wanted a husband.

I am frightened that I will meet my wife, and she won’t be able to wait. She won’t have the patience I require, she won’t have enough love left to give me. There will be too much sex in the beginning, and not enough heart. I need the heart. Grace was the most organic relationship/friendship I was ever in; we started with poetry camp, spent three months of long lonely winters sending letters across oceans, and grew together through a lot of post-college bullshit. We relied on each other and the only thing we were (and are, frankly) afraid of is life without the other. We never had the pressure of a romantic relationship, because we never said we were in one.

I think about my friend Anna, who walked out on her boyfriend, saying “It’s been a year, you either love me or you don’t.” He spent three weeks drinking scotch and crying in his cups until he showed up on her doorstep and said he loved her. He said he knew he’d made a mistake the second his door closed behind her, it just took him that long to find the courage to ask her home. They’ve been together for almost five years now. Will that be me?

Is it already?

Two Weeks

It's been a strange two weeks.

Ten days ago, I was excitedly getting ready for a first date, with a cute guy I'd met online. I felt nervous, a little nauseous even, but I'd been feeling under the weather all week. I brushed it off as pre-date jitters and got on my bike to meet him in the city. We met in the park, and left our bikes outside a cafe as we strolled around, talking music, movies, work, and about our friends and families. The time flew by, and as I raced home on my bike, I couldn't wait to see him again. I couldn't stop smiling, and, for the first time in almost a year, I had butterflies.

* * *

Later, as I sat in my home office typing an email, I started to suspect the butterflies had given way to PMS. As I fidgeted in my chair trying to find a comfortable position, I thought back to my earlier nausea, and how I'd been feeling a little off all week. Was I coming down with something? Or was it just the monthly trials of womanhood? My period should be starting any day now, right? I glanced at the calendar, counting back the weeks. I counted again.

I'm late.

* * *

It's 4 p.m. The pharmacy doesn't close until 7 p.m., but I have a team meeting via video conference at 5 p.m. For the next hour I sit there, a slow panic rising, as I try to trace back over the last four, five, six weeks.

    Before my vacation. That guy I'd been seeing. The condom that broke.

    But he'd realized right away; he didn't finish inside me. I know the chances of being pregnant are slim to none, but my periods have always come like clockwork. If I am pregnant, that's when it happened.

    I log in to the video conferencing suite, smiling at my colleagues. Working remotely, we rarely all see each other, and under normal circumstances I'd welcome the chance to see everyone's faces. But all I can think about is peeing on a stick.

* * *

I've always been a list-maker. To-do lists, shopping lists, packing lists . . . living a life as unpredictable as mine equipped me with not only the desire for order, but the ability to soothe any anxieties or upheaval with lists.

    My eyes are glazing over as my colleagues nod along to what our boss is saying. I pull my notebook towards me, the same notebook I'm writing this in now, and flip it open, drawing a line down the middle of the blank page. At the top of the left column, I write PROS, on the right, CONS. 

    Forever linked to a guy I don't want to date, I wrote in the right-hand column. I knew from my brief time in childcare how hard co-parenting was when you loved someone, and how impossible it could be when you didn't share any of the common values and beliefs child development depends on. I knew I didn't want to raise a baby with someone I didn't want to be with.

    In the left column, without thinking about why, I write But it's a baby, reminding myself of the famous List in Friends, when Ross realizes that though Julie was a great woman, she wasn't the right woman for him, because she wasn't Rachel (or, you know. Rachem. Oh, typos and the trouble they cause!)

    Costs a lot of money, under CONS. Then, under PROS, but I make a lot of money. A new category is drawn up at the bottom of the page: QUESTIONS.

    How would work and having a baby . . . work? I ask myself. Back up to the CONS: mom isn't here, and I don't want to raise children in the UK. Another PRO: My friends here are wonderful mothers, and would be an incredible support system. Also: I can make really good baby food, a nod, I think, to my general sense of feeling better prepared for family life after my time in childcare. I have no illusions about knowing everything I need to, but I know I have a better idea than many single women my age.

    Last question: How would having a baby affect my application for immigration to the US?

* * *

 

Finally, my team meeting is over. I grab my phone, keys and jacket, pull my shoes on, and race downstairs, pushing my bike out the door. I weave through the dark streets to the pharmacy and pull up outside. Deep breath.

    Silently cursing the condoms as I walk past them, I scan the shelves, looking at the many options in front of me. Some boxes have three tests, others only two. Some come with ovulation tests, or tell you how far along you are. I figure this isn't the time for thriftiness, and grab the box of three, the most highly recommended - and most expensive - brand, and turn in the direction of the check-outs. Waiting in line, I see a basket of caramel-filled chocolate eggs, and (thinking they'd probably help no matter what the results of the test are) I grab three.

    The young guy at the register picks up the box, turning it over in his hands.

    "These don't have security tags, do they? Don't want them setting off the alarms."

    "No," I say evenly. "Because that would be embarrassing."

    He looks up, mortified, and I smirk at him, letting him know I'm just busting his chops. I don't want to be a cliché, I want to be the woman who can buy a pregnancy test as if it's no big deal, a big joke.

    He bags the test and chocolate and I walk out, stuffing one of the eggs in my mouth whole. If I'm about to give up drinking, my body's going to have to get used to me mainlining chocolate as a coping mechanism.

* * *

I'd heard people say those three minutes can be some of the longest minutes we experience as women. I plugged my iPod into my stereo and hit play. At the end of this song, I'll go back into the bathroom and check, I tell myself. Another chocolate egg disappears.

* * *

There it is, then.

    Not Pregnant.

    The instructions say to take another test in three days if I still haven't gotten my period. I tidy the box away, throw out the stick, wash my hands. I make a cup of tea, and take it upstairs with the last chocolate egg, sitting back down at my desk, where my PROS and CONS list still sits.

    I smile, breathe, flip the page, and start a new list for tomorrow. FRIDAY TO-DO LIST....

* * *

 3 days later and still nothing.

    It's Sunday morning. I've pretty much forgotten Thursday's events; I'd been on another date with the cutie from the park, seen a great live concert, made plans for a weeknight dinner date. I'm getting dressed for a long walk on the beach, packing a picnic, pulling my walking boots on. I'm enjoying the weekend, with last week's drama far from my mind.

    As the pebbles crunch and shift beneath my feet and the wind whips my scarf about my head, my thoughts drift back to the moment I walked back into the bathroom. In that moment, I knew which outcome would disappoint me, and it was right there, glaring at me from the sink.

    All the logic and reasoning I had couldn't take away the sadness that softly washed over me when I saw the single blue line. Not even a hint of that second line that would have turned my life upside down. No lists could tell me how I felt better than that fleeting, painfully authentic moment.

    I was relieved, of course I was. I was glad I didn't have to think about the money, whether I'd need to move, the conversation I'd need to have with the guy. I was glad I didn't have to call him and turn his life upside down too, or figure out how to raise a child with someone I didn't want to be with.

    But when I looked inside myself, I saw how much I'd wanted the test to read positive. And now . . . now I had to find a way to un-see it.

    By the time I get home that evening, my period has started. Again, expecting relief, I am hit with another wave of sadness. No excitement, no thanking God for my freedom. Just a gaping 'what if?' in my apparently empty womb.

* * *

I spend the next week focusing on other things. I work, I flirt with the guy, go on two more dates. I start to really like him. We share so many core values, appreciate similar things in life, want the same things out of life. He has a great smile, and although there are no big fireworks, I am definitely attracted to him. I've learned to value the fireworks much less in recent years, and our compatibility speaks to me much louder than sexual chemistry. There's definitely something between us, though I know he's not in a place where he wants a serious relationship, so I try to move slowly, hoping I don't scare him off.

    It doesn't make a difference. After only ten days, he tells me as I'm walking through the park where we first met that he doesn't feel the necessary spark, or perhaps just isn't ready to date at all. "Still broken" he says. Either way, it's over. I cry, just a handful of tears that were as surprised to find themselves on my cheeks as I was to feel them there.

    I look out at the river, gazing at the blue skies, thankful for such a beautiful day when the forecast said rain. I wrap my scarf around my neck a little tighter, dig my hands deeper into my pockets, and walk away.

We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve

Though this was originally written as my annual Facebook note reflecting on the year, I thought this would be a good place to share it too.

What a year.

My mind struggles to grasp the year in its entirety: there has been so much change and growth that it's hard for me to step back and really see what this year has brought.

Let's think about where I was at the end of 2012: in Amsterdam, reaching for my independent self as I prepared to transition yet again, from Italy to London, one au pair job to another. In the months leading up to that trip, I had been dumped, discovered the power of Don Miguel Ruiz and, through his words, found my own power and sense of self, which I had freely given to those I had loved for too many years.

I made commitments to myself for 2013, the content of which were not as important, I found, as the act of committing to myself instead of others. I found comfort and strength in my promises, not because I kept them in the ways I'd initially set out to, but because of their greater underlying principle: that 2013 was going to be the year I put myself first, and stopped diminishing who I was through compromises made in, and for, relationships that did not serve me in the same ways I was willing to serve them.

No more would I, Jade Forester, serial monogamist and Queen of the Rebound, get myself into a codependent, dysfunctional relationship. No more would I choose saving others above saving myself.

2013 has been the year I learned how to save me - from myself, mostly, but also from those who would seek to de-rail the progress I'd made at the end of 2012. By the end of last year, I'd thought the thoughts and was talking the talk. In 2013 I walked the walk.

As with every path I've started down in my life, it didn't go quite according to plan - I didn't completely swear off dating, or sex, and whether that was the right choice is of course moot at this point. The goal was the find out who I am when I'm not being defined by my relationships with men. Not only to find out who I am, but to figure out if I even liked that person - and if not, take positive steps towards becoming the woman I want to be, a woman I can respect and love more than I loved being in love or planning my future. I had to start living in the present and be happy doing so.

Though I wouldn't be so arrogant as to sit back at this point and say "I'm done," as if a person's growth is something that is ever complete, I can say that I achieved my goals for 2013. I found out who I am when I'm not busy being a girlfriend. I found out that I'm pretty awesome on my own, and that I have the most amazing family around me - and I mean not only those that I'm related to, but those who came into my life along the way, and stayed. I found out that I don't need to go looking for love; I am surrounded by so much I can hardly breathe, I am so overwhelmed with gratitude at the blessings I have been given.

I realized I didn't know myself well enough in the past to have patience with those who fell short of my high expectations, or the clarity to realize the depth and breadth of the ways I contributed to others' unhappiness. I am working towards being more self-aware and to change old habits and assumptions, and am quietly optimistic about the future.

I have never been so humbled by any year as I have this one, though I'm sure many of my closest can think of others that my have been more outwardly momentous. But the journey from child to adult isn't always greatest in the milestone moments: the distance between student and graduate, or Maine and the UK, was not so great as the miles I travelled within myself this year, as I searched to discover and redefine who I am and what I want.

I am exhausted, yes, but exhilarated. I have never felt so ready to take on whatever life throws at me. Never have I had so much to be thankful for, or as many reasons to smile throughout my day. Never have I felt so fully my capacity for good, or my strength for change, or my ability to achieve my goals.

I don't have any resolutions as I move into 2014 beyond this: keep it up, Jade. Remind yourself of how far you've come, and what you are capable of when you open your eyes, your mind, your heart, to what you need.

Show yourself every day that are worthy of love - and that means loving yourself. Remember Stephen Chbosky's words from The Perks of Being a Wallflower: 'We accept the love we think we deserve.'

Show those who support you how much they mean to you whenever you have the opportunity to do so. Remember how much they've done for you, and don't forget it or take them for granted. Remember how it felt when you withdrew yourself from them, and don't let it happen again!

Open yourself up to falling in love again, even if it doesn't look or feel like it used to. If you don't want the next relationship to end like all the others, you probably don't want it starting like all the others. Take your time. Breathe. Hold on to yourself without holding yourself back.

Remember the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don't take anything personally
3. Don't make assumptions
4. Always do your best

The Perils of Taking Online Dating Offline

*This is not an exploration of the pros and cons of online dating - nor offline dating, for that matter. This is just a story about a Friday night. Or more accurately, it's a story about a Saturday morning.

This was too perfect...

I woke up on Saturday at 1:24 p.m. - which is about four hours later than I ever sleep in. I rubbed my eyes, my head, wondering if the previous night was just a bizarre dream. I check Facebook - the most reliable and uncompromising record of recent history in most of our lives.

Status update from the early hours of Saturday morning: OH. MY. GOD. NO.

I wish I could just leave it there. I wish a lot of things with regard to Friday night. However - in the interest of processing what happened, and hopefully preventing someone else making the same mistakes - I will share my experience with you, albeit with a bit of reluctance.

The picture: I'm sitting in my gorgeous apartment on Friday night, having finished work late. I'd eaten a delicious dinner, read my book, and had settled down with Netflix and a glass of red for the evening. At a few minutes past midnight, my evening bliss was broken by the buzz of my phone ringing.

It was the guy I'd been talking to online for a few days, with whom I'd made plans for Saturday afternoon. We'd talked about going for a walk through Bute Park, which runs alongside the River Taff in the centre of Cardiff, then maybe finding a pub for a quiet drink. I hadn't felt butterflies, but he seemed nice enough, cute enough, just enough for a Saturday afternoon.

I assumed he was calling to talk about our plans, or possibly to cancel. It was late, and I was tired, but I picked up the call, curious to hear his voice before meeting in person.

As soon as I picked up the phone, I could tell he was having a good night. He laughed a lot, I could hear the smile in his voice and it was infectious. He cajoled me into agreeing to meet him for a drink, and I dragged my butt off the couch and got dressed - nothing too impressive, I didn't want anyone to think I was prepared to put in effort for a last-minute meeting after midnight.

As I walked toward the buzz of Cardiff Bay, I couldn't keep myself from yawning and hoped the guy wouldn't be too put off by my obvious exhaustion. Turns out, I needn't have worried about what he was going to think - about me or about anything else. He was already wasted, with the sole intention of getting even more so, and no interest in getting to know me at all.

As we walked into a bar, we ran into three boys - I can't call them anything else, they looked like they were about 14 - and ended up chatting with them for a while. One was tall with Bieber-sweep hair, and formed an instant drunken bond with my date. One wasn't drinking, and was kind of cute (for a man-child.) The third one . . . well, he at least had some interest in getting to know me. Over lunch, the next day.

I politely declined, at first out of respect to my date and the plans for the following day, which I could tell I was probably going to cancel at this point, especially after he went outside with his new little bro to smoke a cigarette. Dating smokers just isn't my thing.

Before they went outside, Bieber asked me what I wanted to drink and then bought me some sickly pink cocktail that I couldn't drink. I pretended to be sorry, he pretended to be offended. Or perhaps he was truly offended. Either way, I ordered three shots of tequila and said thanks for the drink, while his two friends, and my date, looked at me with bewildered admiration.

Manchild #3 asked me again if he could meet up the next day for lunch. I asked him how old he was.

"I'll be 22 in nine days." I couldn't help myself, I burst out laughing. I almost told him I was 24-and-three-quarters, but caught myself.

He was persistent, showing his age as he began to beg - beg! - me to let him take me to lunch, or coffee, or anything. At a couple points, he leaned in to kiss me, and my own laughter wasn't enough to stop him, though pushing him away to arms' length was.

He told me he was mature for his age, in spite of my efforts to explain that a mature man knows what "No" means without continuing to beg for what he's already been denied. I continued to decline his offers, less politely, for a myriad reasons, some more legitimate than others - but none of them were enough.

Weary from trying to explain why I didn't want to go to lunch and trying to inflate the kid's self-esteem, and feeling tired from the booze, though unfortunately nothing else, I watched Bieber stroll in with my date and announce he had to leave. Who knows what happened out there, but suddenly I was left with a swaying, slurring guy who kept calling me dude (which I kind of like) and accidentally hitting my boobs every other emphatically gesticulated sentence (which I didn't like.)

Now he was sufficiently shit-faced, the topic of conversation (read: monologue) turned to getting high and coming back to my place to hang out. He leaned in to kiss me, his tongue rapidly going from right to left as it approached my face. He didn't even register my look of disgust or my laughter as I pushed him away and told him I'd be going home alone.

Regardless of any "stranger danger" element here - the guy was clearly harmless, just someone who'd had a bad week and gotten too drunk to do anything but drink and rant about work - there was no way in hell I was bringing anyone home with me. I told him as much. I didn't want to help him walk anywhere, I didn't want to help him up four flights of stairs, I didn't want him crashing at my place, I didn't want to deal with him in the morning, I didn't want to meet up in the park.

I. Don't. Want. You.

I wasn't sending mixed signals, I was being completely unequivocal. I was done here.

Well, almost done. He'd lost his sense of direction, and I knew he had to get to the other side of the city, probably two miles from where he currently stood, leaning on me for support. I hailed him a cab, took out the cash I'd withdrawn to pay for drinks, and gave it to the driver, telling him to take my date to wherever he could unlock the door.

Waving them off, I turned, shuddered, and walked home, where I finished the bottle of wine I'd started earlier, and looked at the clock. Almost 3 a.m., I though, shaking my head. What a weird night.

After finishing the wine, the movie I was watching on Netflix, and skyping with my best friend to regale her with my crazy night, I collapsed into bed at around 4 a.m., struck by the surreality of the night, and laughed gently to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

Now, I realise I shouldn't have gone out for a drink with a guy who calls at midnight. But when he said, "Why not?" I literally didn't have (or perhaps want) a reason why not. I just moved to a city where I don't know anyone, and was getting pretty tired of sitting on my own in the evenings. I wanted the spontaneity of deciding to go out at midnight, having a wonderful time with a guy I'd just met, and coming home again. The potential was there. Unfortunately, the guy was not.

I think I'll keep my spontaneous meetups to the daylight hours from now on.

Geek Girl Problems

Do you ever have the problem where you bring your boyfriend to an event, and everyone there assumes that you are there as his guest, instead of the reverse?  That happened to me today.

To catch you up, my boyfriend dropped out of the Society for Creative Anachronism in 2008.  We got together around June and I've been persuading him to come back.  I've only been involved in the SCA for a couple of years, but I've managed to do some neat things.  However, I'm not very well known in my own region.  My boyfriend however, before he quit, had been fencing in the society for twenty years and had developed a reputation.

Kinda like dating this guy.

To start off, it's been a very rough week, relationship-wise.  I knew going in that he had communication issues.  What I didn't know was the scope of the problems that could create.

Fast forward to todays' event.  This was our first time attending an event together as a couple, and his first in five years.  Before we even reached the gate, he spotted a posse of his old fencing friends, none of whom he's contacted since quitting.  He decided to approach them first.  They spotted us and and converged on my boyfriend before we even reach the awning.  He immediately dropped my hand and started catching up.  A couple of people are awkwardly left out in the initial rush and end up beside me.  Feeling oddly stranded, I introduced myself to the people whose body language told me they had zero interest in who I am, except as relating to my boyfriend.  I can't blame them - that's how everyone reacts when meeting new people attached to an old friend.  He told me later, in the car, that he had just panicked at seeing so many old friends converge on him at once.
What bothered me was that my boyfriend, by separating as soon as they approached, sent very clear messages that we are less than attached.

Sorry babe - you're cramping my style.

Eventually, we approached Troll and I paid for him to get in, since he'd forgotten to get cash.  He was then immediately swept off by another unknown woman with a short cryptic explanation of "Apparently she needs to show me something, I'll be right back".

I spoke with a friend from my theater troupe for a bit  by the gate and ran into my boyfriend in the hall a few minutes later.  He said the woman was showing him where the dayboard was, so he could get some water or caffeine (dayboard being event food).  At this point, we ran into another woman who, when I introduced myself just said "Oh, you're the one who came in with Boyfriend" - with the inflection implying that's why I was at the event or in the society.  I replied that I'd been in the SCA for awhile, and that I had been working on X, Y, and Z.  Her reply was "Oh, I just meant that was how I remember you.  Now you have another characteristic" pointing to my apprentice belt.  Great.

We both ended up having a good time at the event.  Mostly by virtue of splitting up, he to the fencing list, and I to the throwing range.  But in the car ride home, he kept giving me these worried looks.  I felt tired, and a little irritated, but it was hard to put my finger on why.  But I think I have it.  He kisses me as we part, on the lips, on the forehead.  But there's something missing.  I don't feel that he wanted to spend time with me at this event at all.  And when we were together there, I was treated as an accessory.  So I didn't want to spend time with him, either.  What marked it was how conscientious some of my male friends at the event were in contrast to my absentminded and absent boyfriend.  They'd greet me courteously and come sit just to talk to me, and he could barely give me the time.  Near the end, I asked him to watch me throw axes as I'd just learned today. He forgot or didn't listen, and left for the fencing list again.

That last throw had a bit of extra oomph.

He wasn't fencing today, just catching up.  I really enjoy fencing, and was looking forward to trying the SCA style.  I wanted to start fencing with him.  But if all of the other fencers treat me as some kind of self mobilizing baggage attached to my boyfriend, I cannot start.  I'm honestly not sure what I can do to be more assertive of my personality without coming off as a so-called bitch. This isn't to say everyone reacted this way. Just enough.

But I won't tolerate being treated as arm candy.

"Arm Candy" started as a joke.  I'm seventeen years younger than my boyfriend, and at twenty six, I still get carded.  So it's easy to understand how our relationship could be misinterpreted at first glance.  We've joked about it between the two of us.  But I didn't think I'd have to worry about that in the SCA.  It's full of creative people who have serious hobbies.  I never have this kind of issue when I'm on my own, making my way.  And yet, when I appear with someone, I'm immediately dismissed as lesser.

Fuck.  That.  Shit.

I've developed a sudden affinity for axes.  And throwing things.
These shall be my method of rebellion.
Woe unto the shortsighted.

His relative inattention didn't help either.  I may be making mountains out of molehills, but I don't think he flirted with me once today.  There were kisses.  There was some hand-holding.  But there was nothing behind it.  Not once did I see a flirty gleam in his eye.  Not once did he seem excited to see me, or to be there with me.  And whenever I saw him, I felt my own enthusiasm for the event drain out of me.  I tried to suggest joint time at the different activities, and it worked for a little while.  But one or the other of us just seemed to keep getting bored.  And any time he looked at me, he just seemed unhappy.

Part of me wants to find a way to assert myself as a human being with separate talents while broadcasting that we're happily "taken".

The rest of me wonders what the hell happened to the fun and the fire, and what can be done to light it again.

You can fix anything with a bit of solder, right guys?