A wedding by any other name…

Ever since J and I got in engaged, people have been asking us, “When is the wedding?” Last summer (summer 2013), I decided that it would be in summer 2015, which seems like a long time off but basically, if you want to get married in San Diego anywhere near the water, you pretty much have to book a year in advance. We weren’t prepared to make the financial commitment last summer (to book for summer 2014), so that meant we’d have to wait until 2015. I was fine with that because a) we’re not in any particular rush (since it’s not like our day-to-day lives are going to change), and b) I figured it would give me lots of time to plan and figure out exactly what I want.

Well, ironically, as a consequence of having lots of time to plan and think hard about what I really want, I realized that there are a bunch of other things that I would really rather spend thousands (literally!) of dollars on than a fancy venue, or food and flowers that no one will remember a week later. So we decided to forget doing anything fancy and instead, we’re having a super-casual party at my parents’ house, which also means that we can do it THIS summer.

But once that was all decided, I started stressing out about what to call this thing. In particular, I was feeling oddly uncomfortable with calling it a “wedding”. Part of my discomfort was because the image I have of what this event will look like is totally different from the image usually associated with the word “wedding”. That is, when someone says “wedding”, people tend to think big fluffy white dress, walking down the aisle, someone saying, “do you take this man…” and “you may kiss the bride”. But that’s not what I want at all. We’ll certainly have some sort of ceremony where we will say vows and exchange rings but there won’t be anyone officiating and I’m definitely not walking down any aisle (the white dress is still a possibility but I’m sure it won’t be big and fluffy).

And of course, the other very unorthodox thing about our "wedding" is that we aren’t getting legally married. And I think that was posing an even bigger mental block for me. This is something I’ve been struggling with for a while. If we aren’t going to sign a marriage license, a lot of people would say we aren’t really “getting married”; so then, can we call it a “wedding”? Or to put it another way, if we do call it a wedding, and then people find out we aren’t making it legal, are we going to have to deal with anyone saying, “Oh, so you aren’t really married”? That would just bug the crap out of me…

I sort of agonized about this for a couple of days but I finally came up with a solution that I’m comfortable with, and actually kind of proud of. Instead of a “regular wedding" (whatever that is), J and I will be having “A WALLOP* of a wedding” – *With All the Love, Less the Official Paperwork (yes, it took a whole lot of scribbling to come up with some sort of acronym that captured the idea I wanted AND made something resembling sense – WALLOP came to me at 3 in the morning). So I’m still basically calling it a wedding, but also letting people know it isn’t quite your traditional wedding. I also created a wedding website where I wrote up an explanation of what we’re doing and why. I wasn’t originally going to do a website – it’s not like our event is very complicated and it will just be family – but it makes me feel better that everyone who is invited knows exactly what’s going on.

Giving thanks for… finding true love

Like a lot of people, I have a bucket list. I can’t remember when I first started adding things to it but a lot of the items have been there for several years already. Some are sort of cliché (doesn’t everyone want to travel to Australia and Greece?), some are silly, and some make me embarrassed that they are still on there (how many times do I have to say that I need to re-learn Spanish?). But one thing that they almost all have in common is that they are things that I actually have the power, if not the willpower/money/time, to do. That is, there might be various material or mental blocks stopping me from crossing those items off the list, but if I REALLY decided I wanted to do them, I physically could.

The one exception is the first thing I put on the list, however many years ago: “Experience true love”. This is the one thing on the list that I always felt maybe didn’t belong there because while it is something I definitely wanted to do before dying, it is not something that I really have any control over. It’s not like I can just decide to be in love with someone and make them love me back in the same way.

What do I mean by ‘true love’? If you’re like me, you might be hearing lines from The Princess Bride in your head at this point. And in some ways, yes, I’m talking about fairy tale love – not ‘happily ever after’ love or ‘I can’t live without you’ love or ‘I think you’re perfect’ love, but ‘willing to stick it out and work through problems together’ love, ‘life is honestly better with you than without you’ love, ‘I see exactly who you are and while you’re not perfect, I like the whole package’ love. For me, given my history of “loving” men who didn’t love me back, it particularly means feeling loved, not just knowing it intellectually but believing it, emotionally.

Let me be clear: wanting to experience true love sometime in my life does not mean that I was unhappy with being single or that I was sitting around hoping to meet “Mr. Right”. On the contrary, I feel very strongly that the people with the best chance of experiencing true love are those who are most OK without it. But I also think that if I had died without ever truly being in love, I would regret missing out on that experience. I also think that I would probably always wonder whether being happily single could really be as satisfying as being truly in love (it should go without saying that I believe being happily single is WAY better than being in a just any old relationship).

So I am deeply grateful that I met J and that I can cross this one off my bucket list. Loving him, and being loved by him, has added a dimension of happiness to my life that is hard to put into words and that I really could not have imagined before I met him. Our relationship isn’t always roses and sunshine, and neither of us is perfect, but somehow, we are perfect for each other.

Sharing the load

One of the hardest things about living with J has been the division of household chores. Not long after he moved in, I started having major issues with the fact that I felt like I was doing “all the work” (and I use the quotation marks to acknowledge that I wasn’t literally doing ALL the work – but it felt that way to me). Part of the problem was due to differences in our preferences and habits – for example, while I’m used to always doing the laundry once a week, J just waits until he’s out of underwear. So although he was happy to help, I would always want to do it sooner than he otherwise would have (and then either I just did it or had to ask him to). Also, J doesn’t cook, so since I want to eat more healthy, I do all the cooking, which means I also doing the grocery shopping. And because I didn’t have a dishwasher, the dishes needed to be handwashed, which J doesn’t like doing. He’d do it but I always had to ask him, reminding him that I cooked so he should clean. That got better when we bought a dishwasher but then I felt like I was the only one who ever put the dishes away after we ran the dishwasher.

It didn’t take long for my resentment level to reach a bad place. I did ask a lot of my couple friends how they handle household tasks and ALL of them seemed to know immediately why I was asking. I think everyone I asked (including one male gay couple, one lesbian couple, and a few hetero couples who have each been together for over ten years) said a version of the same thing: one person in the couple had a lower tolerance for cleanliness/getting chores done and would be driven crazy by the other person not doing stuff so they had to find a way to deal. So J and I are certainly not unique!

I followed one friend’s suggestion and made a list of all the chores that need to be done on a regular basis and then J and I sat down and divided up the list. I immediately felt better, not only because I felt like the division of labor was more fair but also because I stopped feeling like I was “supposed” to do stuff. That is, there were a lot of things that J was perfectly willing to do, he just didn’t think to do them on the schedule I wanted so I either did them myself or would ‘nag’ him to do them – and a part of me wondered if maybe he was specifically not doing stuff because he knew/hoped I would eventually just do it. Now, he still often doesn’t do things on the schedule that I would but I no longer feel like I have to take care of them or that he’s waiting for me to do them. This is a Very Good Thing for our relationship.

How do you decide who does what around the house?

Merging lives

I mentioned yesterday that my relationship status has changed pretty dramatically since I stopped blogging here a few years ago. To be more specific, I am now "engaged". I put that in quotes because while J "proposed" and we are going to eventually have a wedding at which we will formally commit to spending our lives together, we are not planning to sign any legal documents designating that we are "married" (i.e, no marriage license). One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again is because I could use an outlet for reflection as we navigate what it means to merge our lives without that legal designation. So far, what I know is that it means we are going to have to process a lot more paperwork, and as we do that, we'll have to consciously and proactively think about a lot of issues that many couples don't deal with until they have to (and sometimes when it is too late). So I'll be writing about some of that.

Most immediately, J moved in with me about a year ago. J's daughter was a high school freshman when we met in 2009 and he had joint custody (she was with him three nights each week) so it was pretty much understood since the beginning that major life changes, like us living together, would wait until after she was off to college (and if anyone was wondering, yes, that was an issue at times, but we're past it now so I'm not going to dwell on it). The upside to knowing we'd live together eventually, but having lots and lots of time before it actually happened, is that I/we were able to very slowly make changes to the house to make it 'ours'. We did have a conversation some time ago about whether he would move in with me or we would look for a new house together (living at his condo was never really an option). Once we decided that keeping my house made the most sense, I began thinking about home improvements differently. Big decisions, like upgrading the insulation and installing solar panels, became joint decisions. That was really weird, partly because he wasn't actually living here yet and I still very much think of it as "my" house, but mostly because I've been making those decisions on my own for so long and it just felt odd to be factoring someone else into the equation. A big issue for me is balancing what I see as my independence with what I know people are 'supposed' to do when in a relationship. That is, I know I'm 'supposed to' discuss these things with him but what if we disagree? If I know what I want to do, and I'm paying for it and it's my house, the feminist in me resists the idea that I would do something different just because this guy wants something else. And yet, even as I write that, I know how terribly selfish that sounds...

More than one person has commented that this is a lot harder at 40 than at 20. We're both used to doing things 'our way', we know what we like, and are used to taking care of ourselves. I will say that it helps tremendously that J and I communicate really well - he actually likes it that I pretty much have to express every thought and emotion I have. So when I'm irked by something, he can just read it on my face and we deal with it. And it definitely has gotten easier, as we've slowly figured out our routine, who does what chores, etc. But I feel like this is all still very much a work in progress. Then again, I wonder if it ever stops feeling that way?

Chemistry

I don't make any secret of the fact that J and I met though eHarmony but I have to say, I hate telling people that. Not because I have any issues about online dating - I just think the eHarmony TV ads are so irritatingly cheesy that I would hate for anyone to think that the success of my and J's relationship is in any way a reflection of meeting through eHarmony versus some other online site. I've gone on countless first dates with guys I met on Match.com and Salon.com personals and I can honestly say that I never really felt there was any difference in the "quality" or compatibility of the guys I met there versus those I met on eHarmony (on average). If anything, I always worried that eHarmony's process, which requires you go through several steps online before meeting in person, sort of diminished the excitement that might have been there if I'd just met the guy sooner. That is, I think that knowing too much about someone before you meet in person can actually be a detriment - a lot of the fun of dating is finding out what you have in common with someone in person, over time. I met a lot of guys who were smart and interesting and there were some who I thought I'd probably be more interested in if I'd met them under different circumstances, like through friends, where I'd have to get to know them 'from scratch'. I'm not sure why I think it matters but I do.

Of course, having met J online, I'm now tempted to put more emphasis on "chemistry". Simone Grant just wrote a post about chemistry, wondering whether it has to be there from the start or can develop after meeting, and it's got me thinking. I've always sort of thought that "chemistry" is over-rated, and I still think it's not particularly healthy for people to believe that they will just "know" when they meet the right person. Some of the guys I have fallen for hardest have been guys who started out as friends and I never would have imagined dating them at the beginning. But on the other hand, I did know right away that J was different from the other guys I had met online, largely because there were several points during our first date when I found myself wondering what it would be like to kiss him. He was the first/only guy I've ever met online where those thoughts went through my head.* And I think that with online dating, it is important that chemistry is there from the beginning because if it isn't, it's unlikely it will develop eventually, since the only thing bringing you together is dating and you'll constantly be looking for that chemistry (as opposed to getting to know someone outside the dating context, which is what happened with the guys I mentioned earlier, where we were friends and then things developed into something more).

At any rate, I don't really know why I was attracted to J and not to the many other guys I met who were just as nice, funny, etc. but I know it wasn't because eHarmony's extensive questionnaire and personality-matching system somehow knew we were right for each other. I think us working out has a lot more to do with me finally being in the right "place" in my life...

*Of course, we also met for drinks (which led to dinner and more drinks) whereas most of my other first dates had been coffee and I always find myself more attracted to guys when I'm a little tipsy - I like to tell him that we might never have made it past the first date if he hadn't gotten me liquored up, which he thinks is bizarre because he didn't even try to kiss me that night. But the point is that I wanted him to kiss me that night.

What does it mean to be married?

On Dating Advice (Almost) Daily, Terry responds to a reader who really wants to get married:

Just because you're attracting men who are willing to do everything with you except make it legal doesn't mean all men reject the idea of marriage (not by a long shot). The next time someone refuses to marry you but suggests you bear his children, just say, "No, thank you. I want to get married, and I'm going to hold out for a man who wants to get married and spend the rest of his life with me."

Then walk away.

In the meantime, picture yourself being married, not to some clown who asked you to give birth to his children, but to a man who treasures you and makes your happiness a priority.

What would this marriage look like? Feel like? Taste like? Sound like? Smell like?

Now, I have no problem with the Law of Attraction [my personal M.O. for life includes thinking a LOT about what I do and don't want so if the things I want then happen, who am I to say that it wasn't the 'Law of Attraction' at work?]. But I keep wondering: if that woman actually sits down and tries to picture herself married, does that picture really look different than a committed, lifetime relationship that isn't called 'marriage'?

This isn't a trivial question - it's one I've been asking myself a lot. I have always said that I really don't care about being married, largely because I know a heck of a lot of couples who are in lifetime relationships but who aren't legally married (interestingly, all straight couples). What I do care about is being with someone who is committed to me and our relationship, and by that, I mean someone who fully expects to spend his life with me and is willing to do the work necessary to make sure we stay happy together.

But of course, one has to be careful what one asks for (btw, this should be in huge letters on the front of books about the Law of Attraction!). My relationship with J is pretty much exactly what I'm always said I wanted, right down to the fact that he does not want to get married. It's not a commitment thing - he says he is committed to us, wants to grow old with me, and I believe him. For him, it's a political thing - he's super-libertarian and he doesn't think the government has any business being involved in marriage in any way. He actually has no problem with a wedding (which is good, because I want one, but that's the subject of another post) or being married by a minister, if I were religious (which I'm not), but I don't think we will ever be married in the eyes of the State. And I think I'm OK with that. But once in a while, I'm not sure. And then I start wondering why I'm not sure (did I mention I think a LOT about what I want?) - how would being married be any different than not being married? Am I just reacting to society's expectations? And let me be clear that by 'society', I do mean the nebulous world 'out there' since there isn't a single person who I care about personally that would ever ask me "why aren't you and J married yet?" or the equivalent. But it's hard to fight the subtle matrimania that seeps into every aspect of our lives.

This will surely be a theme I return to a lot, especially with some big weddings coming up this spring. As always, I welcome your thoughts...

Public mushiness

Clever Elsie's very thoughtful comment on my last post got me thinking about public displays of affection. I mentioned that my S.O. is relatively affectionate and I like that. I don't think we ever act inappropriately but I can definitely imagine others thinking we are too mushy. Let me be clear - I absolutely believe there is a line for acceptable behavior and it makes me really uncomfortable to see people totally making out in public (if I had to be totally blunt, I think I'd say that if tongue is involved, that's over the line). But when I see people holding hands, or with their arms around each other, smiling at each other and maybe sneaking a periodic smooch, my personal reaction tends to be, "awwww" (again, sucking face with tongues down each other's throats is a whole different scenario). When I really started thinking about it, it occurred to me that my reaction is not that different from when I see people playing with their dogs. I think it's sweet, it makes me happy to see that tail wagging and the smile on the owner's face.

I know that when some people object to PDA, they are thinking of the "get a room" type of behavior that makes most sensible people uncomfortable. But there are some people who think any PDA is inappropriate and that's what I don't understand. That is, I get that some people are, themselves, not touchy-feely people but what I don't get is the objection to other people being touchy-feely. To me, it's just a difference in personality - some people are physically demonstrative and others are not. As long as someone isn't being physical with someone who is an unwilling participant, why is this behavior, in itself, a problem? If a particular couple is being affectionate (in an appropriate way), why is that any more objectionable than a puppy running around wagging its tail?

Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years (though I've never been particularly bothered by others' PDA). We recently went to dinner with some friends who were celebrating their seven-year anniversary (and they've been together more like thirteen) and as they were walking up to the restaurant (where my S.O. and I were already waiting at the bar), the wife said to her husband, "You can tell they haven't been together that long - they're still holding hands." For the rest of the night, we kind of joked about that but it did make me wonder. Right now, I love that my guy always holds my hand, partly because my previous boyfriends never did and it always bugged me. I've always been a physically demonstrative person and touch is important to me. But I'm sure we'll eventually reach a stage of our relationship where we'll be less affectionate than we are now, and maybe that's why some people think that PDA is a sign of insecurity (as suggested by one of the commenters on the Bella DePaulo post I mentioned last time) - the longer a couple has been together, the less likely they probably are to be affectionate in public. But the same could be said for any physical contact - lots of couples also tend to have sex less frequently the longer they've been together but does that mean that any couple that is still having a lot of sex is insecure?

I guess the main point I wanted to make is simply that for anyone who is bothered by public mushiness, I'm sorry you feel that way but please try to keep in mind that maybe what you're witnessing is simply two people in love. Instead of being offended, just think of it as puppy tails wagging and then ignore us...

Can I be sappy without being seen as smug?

I just got back from an overnight trip to L.A. to visit a close friend who recently moved there with her husband. I drove up with my Significant Other, who my friend was very curious to meet, and we had a really fun evening, with good food, drink and conversation. This morning, the guys watched football while my friend and I took her dog for a walk. Of course, I wanted to get her opinion of my S.O. This is a friend who knows all about my previous, incredibly unhealthy relationships, and she's been hearing about this new guy for a while. What she said this morning was that the guy is great but more than anything else, she has never seen me this happy, that she thinks she heard me laugh more in the previous 24 hours than in the last several months, and that she is really, really happy for me.

I'm sharing this because I think that readers of this blog know that when I talk about how happy I am in my current relationship, I do not intend in any way to belittle or diminish those who are NOT in relationships, or to refute anything I have ever said about how important it is to be comfortable with being single. Mostly, when I talk about how happy I am in my current relationship, I do so because this happiness is new, certainly a departure from relationships I have known in the past, and honestly, I'm still kind of incredulous about it. I think that people who care about me will be happy to know that I have found this happiness, as my friend said this morning. But Bella DePaulo has a couple of posts that have me feeling sort of defensive. Her first post was about people who post annoying Facebook status updates about their relationships; her follow-up post talks about how people with these sorts of updates must be insecure (that is, these folks must be insecure or else they wouldn't feel the need to "act" so affectionately in public). What bugs me about that is that lately, I have been one of those people and I know that my motivation is about as far from what she's saying as you can get. When I post something on Facebook about the amazing weekend I had my guy, I'm not bragging about my relationship; I'm letting my friends know that things are great and I'm happy (I should say that I am only friends on Facebook with people that I am actually friends with in real life). Without exception, my friends have responded with comments like "You deserve it!" or "I'm so happy for you!" My S.O. also happens to be a really affectionate person, which I love since I did not get ANY public affection in my last relationship (heck, I didn't get much private affection either). I am sure that to other people, we are probably annoyingly affectionate but a) we are still sort of new at this so maybe it will lessen over time and b) if it doesn't, well, I hold his hand and sneak a quick smooch because it makes me silly happy to do so, not because I want others to think anything in particular (and just to be clear, I'm not talking about making out in a restaurant here).

I get that there are plenty of people who buy into matrimania and who want everyone to know they are in a relationship because they think that they will be seen as a 'loser' if they aren't, and I get why DePaulo feels they should be mocked. I guess I just wish that DePaulo, and many who commented on her posts, wouldn't sound so much as if everyone with sappy Facebook updates must fall into that group. DePaulo talks a lot about 'singlism' which she defines as "the stereotyping and stigmatizing of people who are single"; maybe it's just me being defensive now that I am part of a couple, but sadly, I feel like the singles community is just as likely to engage in 'couplism'.

Compromising is rational

I'm growing my hair out. I've gone back and forth on my hair length a million times and usually what happens is that I start trying to grow it out and then I get so annoyed with it that I decide to just cut it all off (for any readers who don't really understand what I'm talking about: long hair is great if it's long enough to pull up, out of my face and off my neck, but there's always an in-between stage where your hair is long enough to get in the way but too short to put up - that's the point where I usually get impatient and just cut it off). But this time, I'm trying to stick it out and put up with the in-between stage. Why? Because my boyfriend likes long hair (by the way, what is up with guys and long hair?). But the other night, when I made some comment about growing out my hair, my boyfriend said, "Are you doing that because I said I think you'd look good with longer hair?" and my instant, knee-jerk reaction was to say, "No, of course not!" I mean, god forbid I do something for him that I wouldn't choose to do on my own, right? Of course, growing out my hair is a pretty minor thing but it's slippery slope - today, it's my hair; tomorrow, who knows?

I know I'm particularly sensitive about this because in past relationships, I have often suppressed my own needs, trying to be whatever I thought would make the guy like me more. And in a lot of cases, I would convince myself that whatever it was I was doing, I was doing just as much for me as for him (case in point: I actually DID enjoy hiking several miles every weekend but the fact that I haven't done it a single time since Mr. Outdoors Guy moved away tells me something about my real motivation). But over the last several years, being single has allowed me to do exactly what I want to do without worrying about anyone else's opinion or feelings and this allowed me to discover what I truly want/like/need, in a way that I know I couldn't really figure out while in a relationship.

But my knee-jerk reaction to my boyfriend's comment about my hair got me thinking about compromises. One of the core principles of economics is that rational people make decisions by comparing costs and benefits - if the benefits outweigh the costs, then you do it; if the benefits are less than the costs, then you don't. That may sound incredibly obvious but I have often found it a powerful aide in making sense of other people's behavior. If someone does something that I don't understand, I ask myself what benefit could they be getting from that action, or is it that they do not perceive the costs in the same way I do? Usually, this helps me get to a place where, even if I don't agree with the choice, I can at least understand it.

Unsurprisingly, I also tend to apply cost-benefit analysis in my own life, sometimes in ways that I'm sure seem strange to other people. And while it may not sound very romantic, I've found that thinking about my relationship in terms of costs and benefits can be helpful. Like the costs and benefits of cutting my hair - in the past, I've always gotten to a point where the costs of dealing with it outweighed the benefits and so I cut it off. But now, although the costs are basically the same, there is an added benefit, i.e., my boyfriend thinking I look good. And that's enough to tip the scale toward continuing to grow it out. The totally geeky, economist way to put it is that we have interdependent utility functions - his happiness contributes to my happiness and vice versa. I think the trick to not going overboard, to not compromising so much that I feel like I'm only doing something because of him, is having a rock-solid understanding of what MY costs and benefits really are before I start factoring him in. So yeah, I guess you could say that I am growing out my hair "because of him" but that doesn't mean I've suddenly become a spineless, irrational ninny.

Dating a father

In honor of Father's Day, I'm finally getting around to a question that Zandria posed a month or so ago: would you date someone who has a kid? Her answer is 'probably not', and I think that might have been my answer as well when I was in my 20's. As I got older, my view started to change. It's partly that I think how a man approaches his responsibilities as a father can tell you a lot about him as a person (and potential partner). But it's also that as I became more and more sure that I don't want kids of my own, the idea of dating someone with kids actually became more appealing. That might sound odd but the way I see it, dating someone who already has kids means a) it's less likely to be a big deal that I don't want kids myself and b) I get some of the perks of having kids around without any of the responsibility. Still, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that, all else equal, I'd probably prefer to date someone without kids because it just seems like kids make things more complicated.

Well, now I'm dating someone who has joint custody of his 15-year-old daughter, meaning that she lives with him half the week (the mother lives across town and they are very good friends). I have to admit, when we first met, this freaked me out for numerous reasons. A teenager? Half the week when I basically don't get to see him (and that includes Friday and Saturday nights)? An ex who not only is very much around but who is a good friend and whose extended family is basically HIS family? Let's just say that this has not been the smoothest ride. But he's an amazing father and to me, his dedication to his daughter speaks volumes about him. It's also reflected in the fact that his daughter is a really great kid so there's been no drama - as far as I can tell, she's completely secure in her dad's love for her so I think she knows there's no reason to resent me. I haven't met the ex-wife yet but we've had many conversations about her and he's always so honest and upfront about their relationship that I'm feeling OK about that too.

But the main point I wanted to make is that, as someone who had a pretty full life before I met this guy, I've found that dating a dad (at least one who has joint custody) has one huge benefit that I never considered before: I get a lot of space. As one of my friends put it, it's kind of like having a long-distance relationship without the expense of plane tickets! It's not that I never see him during the time he has his daughter, but I'm definitely not spending 24-7 with him. I realize that for a lot of women, this would be a cost but for me, it's definitely a benefit. The thing is, I know that if a guy actually wanted to spend 24-7 with me, I'd probably be turned off by that; at the same time, if a guy didn't want to spend 24-7 with me, I would probably feel insecure and rejected (hey, I have never said I'm not neurotic!). But with this relationship, I get to feel like he wants to spend more time with me but can't, for reasons that have nothing to do with how he feels about me, so I get the space I need without feeling insecure about it (admittedly, it also helps that he is awesome about checking in with me on the days that I don't see him).

What I find particularly interesting is that if it were up to me, I'd spend more time with him than I currently do even though I know that would be bad for me in the long run. In past relationships, I've tended to 'lose myself' a bit; in this relationship, I'm basically forced not to, and I'm glad. I wish I could say I was strong enough not to need the forcing, that even if he were available, I would make sure to carve out time for myself and to maintain all my other important friendships, but I'm honestly not sure what I would do. So it will be interesting to see what happens as his daughter grows up - she is starting to be more independent (she'll have her driver's license by the end of the year) and he'll have more time to spend with me. Hopefully, I'll be smart enough not to lose this balance...