SEVEN DAYS...
T minus one week until I break the hearts of hundreds of women nationwide and become a married man.
To tell the truth, I don't think it's quite sunk in yet. Just eight years ago I considered myself completely ineligible for a romantic relationship and I was right; I was a socially unacceptable, emotionally distant, conceited little bastard with a stunted libido. Not that I'm much different now, but I like to think I've tempered the more obvious flaws in my personality. I first met my girl five years ago. At that point in time I had only been on a single date about three months prior and I wasn't especially sold on the whole "female relationship" thing. I had seen her in the lunch hall once or twice (not often, since at the time I was living in the townhouses on campus and not on the cafeteria meal plan). All I really knew about her from our short meets was, 'Damn, her tits are huge.' Remember what I said about before about socially unacceptable? She wasn't on my "acceptable" list as she had a boyfriend at the time and even though I thought he was a douche from the moment I met him I don't do the whole "cheating" thing. It's an appalling lack of manners.
About two weeks later the girl I dated sent me an email telling me never to call her again. I had left a message on her machine saying I was still in love with her, even though I wasn't and hadn't even thought about her in weeks. It was a recurring pattern in that relationship; I acted the way I thought the man in a relationship should act, rather than let my actions flow naturally from my own personality and temperament. I wasn't especially heartbroken; hell, I don't remember her name, face, or really why I even decided to date her in the first place. I think I just told you about it solely to make an observation: if I had started dating my current fiance when we first met, it would have gone down in flames.
Over the next year I discovered quite by accident that I had an awesome power; I could seduce any girl over the internet and make her fall in love with me without even trying. The drawback, of course, was that the girl had to be under the age of consent. And I couldn't turn it off. Talk about your cursed gifts! I quickly became a popular member of certain chat rooms, despite going sometimes for hours saying nothing more intellectually stimulating than "Heh." I didn't quite realize the extent of the danger I was in until one of the girls asked for a "chatroom wedding" during a slow time and I accepted, thinking it was just a bit of fun. She was quite serious, which ended extraordinarily poorly when I finally made it clear that, no, I am not seriously dating you and in fact I would be arrested quite quickly if I so much as considered it. As you can imagine, some of my friends had a good laugh at my misfortune. I expect this post will open up myself to them calling me "pedophile" again.
Four years ago I torpedoed a blossoming internet romance with my own deep-rooted paranoia and fear of rejection. Despite me being East Coast and she being West Coast we did like each other, quite a lot in fact. But she was something of a flirt, and it's just something I was never able to wrap my head around. Misunderstanding the situation I told her I didn't love her anymore, only to be told she still loved me. To date this is probably the only relationship mis-step I've made that I deeply regret; I really did care for this person, but in the end my own feelings mattered more than hers. In the end I simply didn't trust her. Or perhaps, couldn't; not through any fault of her own, but due to my own inability to have any faith in others. We were literally an entire country away, I did get over her fairly quickly afterwards, we fell out of touch soon afterward for unrelated reasons, and it probably never would have worked out. No matter how I try to rationalize it like that, remembering that January night still makes me want to smack myself in the head and say, "Dammit, I'm an asshole." I don't even know why I'm writing this here and now. But it's not something I can bring up randomly and I think it's a story that has to be told, a wrong that has to be admitted, or perhaps a demon that needs to be exorcised. If you're reading this now, I won't apologize to you here (that would only serve to make me feel better and nothing else), but I won't object if you want to contact me, even if only to yell at me.
From there I started a relationship with one of the girls from the Rivier Anime Club. In retrospect I think she felt something for me, judging by how she would continually ask to hang out and some of the conversations we had. At the time I was completely oblivious, enjoying her company as a friend but not really thinking of her as an object of romance. Of course, it's not like that particular relationship had a future after one of my friends (who, I should point out, can be quite vindictive) discovered that she was the internet stalker harassing him. As you can imagine, this made for some very awkward tension.
Around this time there was another internet relationship, this one with a 16 year old girl (which is legal in my state, so don't you judge me). To this day I can't really put a label on the relationship. Friends? Father and daughter? Confidants? We were close emotionally but it would stretch the term to unrecognizability to say we were seeing each other. Not because she was in Connecticut (I counted girl #2, remember), but because while she had a crush on me I was romantically cool toward her, sometimes even cold. It was with her that I had my first, last, and only session of "cyber". She declared me so good at it that I must have written lemons under a nom de plume, and I declared it an amusing experiment (especially since I was still a virgin at the time) but I had no interest in pursuing further encounters of the sort. I wasn't kidding when I said "stunted libido", either. Our relationship remained in a nebulous state until she came out as a lesbian. This did not stop me from drunk-dialing her in the early AM hours to ask, "Can we have sex now?" (in my own defense I intended it as a joke and this is how she received it). I still talk with her on occasion.
There was one final torrid (har har) relationship. I don't remember much about her, other than that we hung out a few times and that we were a salt and pepper couple (I am a pale white, she was rather dark-skinned... Hawaiian, maybe? Don't remember). I remember talking about religious beliefs with her, and I distinctly remember telling her that while I did not condemn sex before marraige, I didn't think it was necessarily a good idea (I should point out that I no longer believe this for totally unrelated reasons). I say "distinctly" because she dumped me the next weekend. I later learned that she had wanted to fuck me pretty badly. Like, from the moment we met. Ah, why could I have not thrust off the chains of repressed sexuality earlier?! Ha ha ha, that's a joke. No really hon, you can put the baseball bat down now...
Which, I suppose, brings us full-circle; during all this time I had become a friend of my current fiance, and we hung out together often. She had broken up with her boyfriend, somewhat messily. We began officially dating about three years ago; it only took as long as it did to get together because I didn't want to manipulate her by catching her on the rebound. I lost my virginity about a month later (the terminally curious can look through the archives of this journal; I made an unassuming but cryptic entry on the day it happened). About two years ago we began living together and haven't been seperated since. Throughout this time I have become intensely aware of her strengths, her interests, her idiosyncrasies, her thought process, and, yes, even her flaws. I've given up quite a lot to stay with her. I've had to smooth out more than a few feathers she's ruffled among our mutual friends. There have been times I have been furiously angry, deeply frightened, and inconsolably sad. But there really isn't anything about this relationship, past or present, that I'd want to change.
There is probably... no, most certainly nobody on this earth who understands me to the depth that she does. There are aspects of my personality that I fear making known, even to my closest friends; she has accepted all of them. If I am my own worst critic she is my greatest cheerleader as well as my most ruthless editor. I love her as I have loved no one else, and if all she asks in return for staying by my side is my name than I am happy to give it.
Jesus, how did that post get so long?
So anyway, I'm getting married in a week and I'm really looking forward to it.
To tell the truth, I don't think it's quite sunk in yet. Just eight years ago I considered myself completely ineligible for a romantic relationship and I was right; I was a socially unacceptable, emotionally distant, conceited little bastard with a stunted libido. Not that I'm much different now, but I like to think I've tempered the more obvious flaws in my personality. I first met my girl five years ago. At that point in time I had only been on a single date about three months prior and I wasn't especially sold on the whole "female relationship" thing. I had seen her in the lunch hall once or twice (not often, since at the time I was living in the townhouses on campus and not on the cafeteria meal plan). All I really knew about her from our short meets was, 'Damn, her tits are huge.' Remember what I said about before about socially unacceptable? She wasn't on my "acceptable" list as she had a boyfriend at the time and even though I thought he was a douche from the moment I met him I don't do the whole "cheating" thing. It's an appalling lack of manners.
About two weeks later the girl I dated sent me an email telling me never to call her again. I had left a message on her machine saying I was still in love with her, even though I wasn't and hadn't even thought about her in weeks. It was a recurring pattern in that relationship; I acted the way I thought the man in a relationship should act, rather than let my actions flow naturally from my own personality and temperament. I wasn't especially heartbroken; hell, I don't remember her name, face, or really why I even decided to date her in the first place. I think I just told you about it solely to make an observation: if I had started dating my current fiance when we first met, it would have gone down in flames.
Over the next year I discovered quite by accident that I had an awesome power; I could seduce any girl over the internet and make her fall in love with me without even trying. The drawback, of course, was that the girl had to be under the age of consent. And I couldn't turn it off. Talk about your cursed gifts! I quickly became a popular member of certain chat rooms, despite going sometimes for hours saying nothing more intellectually stimulating than "Heh." I didn't quite realize the extent of the danger I was in until one of the girls asked for a "chatroom wedding" during a slow time and I accepted, thinking it was just a bit of fun. She was quite serious, which ended extraordinarily poorly when I finally made it clear that, no, I am not seriously dating you and in fact I would be arrested quite quickly if I so much as considered it. As you can imagine, some of my friends had a good laugh at my misfortune. I expect this post will open up myself to them calling me "pedophile" again.
Four years ago I torpedoed a blossoming internet romance with my own deep-rooted paranoia and fear of rejection. Despite me being East Coast and she being West Coast we did like each other, quite a lot in fact. But she was something of a flirt, and it's just something I was never able to wrap my head around. Misunderstanding the situation I told her I didn't love her anymore, only to be told she still loved me. To date this is probably the only relationship mis-step I've made that I deeply regret; I really did care for this person, but in the end my own feelings mattered more than hers. In the end I simply didn't trust her. Or perhaps, couldn't; not through any fault of her own, but due to my own inability to have any faith in others. We were literally an entire country away, I did get over her fairly quickly afterwards, we fell out of touch soon afterward for unrelated reasons, and it probably never would have worked out. No matter how I try to rationalize it like that, remembering that January night still makes me want to smack myself in the head and say, "Dammit, I'm an asshole." I don't even know why I'm writing this here and now. But it's not something I can bring up randomly and I think it's a story that has to be told, a wrong that has to be admitted, or perhaps a demon that needs to be exorcised. If you're reading this now, I won't apologize to you here (that would only serve to make me feel better and nothing else), but I won't object if you want to contact me, even if only to yell at me.
From there I started a relationship with one of the girls from the Rivier Anime Club. In retrospect I think she felt something for me, judging by how she would continually ask to hang out and some of the conversations we had. At the time I was completely oblivious, enjoying her company as a friend but not really thinking of her as an object of romance. Of course, it's not like that particular relationship had a future after one of my friends (who, I should point out, can be quite vindictive) discovered that she was the internet stalker harassing him. As you can imagine, this made for some very awkward tension.
Around this time there was another internet relationship, this one with a 16 year old girl (which is legal in my state, so don't you judge me). To this day I can't really put a label on the relationship. Friends? Father and daughter? Confidants? We were close emotionally but it would stretch the term to unrecognizability to say we were seeing each other. Not because she was in Connecticut (I counted girl #2, remember), but because while she had a crush on me I was romantically cool toward her, sometimes even cold. It was with her that I had my first, last, and only session of "cyber". She declared me so good at it that I must have written lemons under a nom de plume, and I declared it an amusing experiment (especially since I was still a virgin at the time) but I had no interest in pursuing further encounters of the sort. I wasn't kidding when I said "stunted libido", either. Our relationship remained in a nebulous state until she came out as a lesbian. This did not stop me from drunk-dialing her in the early AM hours to ask, "Can we have sex now?" (in my own defense I intended it as a joke and this is how she received it). I still talk with her on occasion.
There was one final torrid (har har) relationship. I don't remember much about her, other than that we hung out a few times and that we were a salt and pepper couple (I am a pale white, she was rather dark-skinned... Hawaiian, maybe? Don't remember). I remember talking about religious beliefs with her, and I distinctly remember telling her that while I did not condemn sex before marraige, I didn't think it was necessarily a good idea (I should point out that I no longer believe this for totally unrelated reasons). I say "distinctly" because she dumped me the next weekend. I later learned that she had wanted to fuck me pretty badly. Like, from the moment we met. Ah, why could I have not thrust off the chains of repressed sexuality earlier?! Ha ha ha, that's a joke. No really hon, you can put the baseball bat down now...
Which, I suppose, brings us full-circle; during all this time I had become a friend of my current fiance, and we hung out together often. She had broken up with her boyfriend, somewhat messily. We began officially dating about three years ago; it only took as long as it did to get together because I didn't want to manipulate her by catching her on the rebound. I lost my virginity about a month later (the terminally curious can look through the archives of this journal; I made an unassuming but cryptic entry on the day it happened). About two years ago we began living together and haven't been seperated since. Throughout this time I have become intensely aware of her strengths, her interests, her idiosyncrasies, her thought process, and, yes, even her flaws. I've given up quite a lot to stay with her. I've had to smooth out more than a few feathers she's ruffled among our mutual friends. There have been times I have been furiously angry, deeply frightened, and inconsolably sad. But there really isn't anything about this relationship, past or present, that I'd want to change.
There is probably... no, most certainly nobody on this earth who understands me to the depth that she does. There are aspects of my personality that I fear making known, even to my closest friends; she has accepted all of them. If I am my own worst critic she is my greatest cheerleader as well as my most ruthless editor. I love her as I have loved no one else, and if all she asks in return for staying by my side is my name than I am happy to give it.
Jesus, how did that post get so long?
So anyway, I'm getting married in a week and I'm really looking forward to it.