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Sparkle (1)
Okay, so there was a period of time—maybe a few years—where I was convinced I’d never meet someone I’d want to spend a large chunk of my life with. In love or not, paired or single, the possibility of connecting with someone I’d both want to live with and plan a future with seemed just really, uh, remote. After all, hadn’t I already been married for 10,000 years and been through all the bonding and the compromises? Why on earth would I ever want to go through the trouble of trying to do that again?
As I dated, my reluctance get serious beyond a certain point was frustrating to my boyfriends. And their frustration was difficult for me. Although I understood that a wonderful 50-something man willing to commit right here and now was something to treasure, I found myself just not able to go there. In fact, the more interested/serious the boyfriends got, the more I backed off from what we already had (and yes, this led to some very sad partings).
Then, that all changed.
Somehow, without my planning on it, my relationship with A progressed from friendship to dating and then to falling in love. And somehow, this time around, falling in love progressed to wanting to spend more time together. And then spending time together evolved into wanting to see what it would be like if we lived together. So, five weeks ago, A moved in. (Even though most of his stuff stayed in the East Bay, the suitcaseful of clothes, three boxes of books , huge bag of spices and complete set of chef’s knives he lugged to my place made it abundantly clear this experiment was going to involve far more sharing than anything that had gone before.)
So now, nine months from that first dinner date, we’re talking about bringing our lives together, planning a future and getting our own shared place to live (a statement I can’t make, even to myself, with my face getting a big smile on it.) Every time I think about it, I feel a sense of amazement, and yet, it totally feels right.
So, my Blogher friends, the question of the moment is How did I manage to go from casual to committed without trying to get there? Why did things click with A, and what changed in me to make me willing to consider living with someone once again?
And what lessons might there be in this relationship that can help inform other peoples’ efforts to find Mr.--or Ms.—Right—And/or to make the most of the relationships they have?
Some of the things that made it easier for our connection to evolve:
No expectations, fewer fears
One of the big differences in my dating A, I think, was that I had no expectations about how this relationship was going to evolve, or where it might end up. Not only was I not looking for a serious relationship, I was completely open about what sort of relationship we might create—in fact, looking at A’s past partners, I doubted that we would truly, deeply click. This meant that my expectations were zero-based along the way.
My logic was more along the lines of since I doubted we’d get really serious, why not just enjoy what we could share and let that be enough? In other words, fears of blowing it, of doing the wrong thing, of making a mistake so A wouldn’t like me, well, they just never kicked in.
Letting things evolve at their own pace
Another plus, this time around, was that neither one of us was in a rush to make our relationship go anywhere. We focused a lot on getting to know one another, spending time together and talking, but neither one of us was in a hurry to get serious. In fact, A was the opposite; he had whole sets of criteria and perspectives on what it would take for him to truly accept a partner that had as much to do with life style and political values as it did with basic compatibility.
Given that I didn’t feel any need to please anyone but myself, the fact I probably wasn’t going to pass A’s tests didn’t seem to much matter( and then, when it came down to it, it turned out our lifestyles and values were a lot more compatible that we might have thought—but that was much later.)
Going for honest disclosure
Since we didn’t have big
