PeaceBang

Three Month Check-In

May 3, 2008 on 7:51 am | In Love Shack |

As my regular readers know, I met SweetieBang while vacationing in Florida at the end of January. We spent four days together which were not the torrid days you might imagine, considering what happened next — which is that he drove up the entire East Coast a week later and moved in with me. Those days were filled with laughter and yes, romance, but mostly with comfort. With a sense of kinship. With a feeling of having come home in some ineffable way.

We are not an obvious couple. We are, in fact, total opposites in many significant ways. He is Buddhist in his ways of thinking and processing information, while I am thoroughly imbued by Christian practice. I am an academic. He is intellectual but definitely not academic. I am ambitious. He simply wants to do a good day’s work and earn an honest paycheck. I am mercurial, extroverted and dramatic. He is almost consistently positive and definitely introverted, more animated around me in the privacy of our home than anywhere else. I am a leader. I set a course and want to bring others along. He is an true individualist; not leading and not following but finding his own path and ambling along it.

We are also alike in some important ways. We are both inescapably Jewish in temperament and humor. We are generational peers, but I am four years older. We are both musical. We share a love of food and have large appetites. We love animals and neither of us has ever wanted to parent a child. We both have an edge, but mine is far sharper and honed by years of feminist rage. His is keen, sharpened by years of silent and solitary observation of inane human behavior. We tend to have the same visceral admiration or dislike for the same people and things.

“It’s the people that you hate together
Bait together
Date together,
That make marriage a joy.”
- from “It’s The Little Things You Do Together” from Company
Lyrics, Stephen Sondheim

We have no idea what insanity led us to agree to share our lives after knowing each other only four days. Had a friend of mine done this, I would be shaking my head and predicting disaster. But my friends and congregants, thank God, have been wonderful, respecting an innate wisdom that I myself doubted and welcoming Greg with open arms. He has a good natural knack for being the Minister’s Guy. His sophisticated technique in establishing the appropriate persona is to be himself and not worry about anything, which I think is a good one. He likes church. He goes sometimes and not others. He genuinely likes and cares about people and is comfortable at coffee hour. He admires the church’s commitments and hopes that his work schedule will allow him to be involved in our environmentalist work in some meaningful way. He does not own a tie but says that he wants to buy a summer-weight blazer so he can “doodly do” around with me to formal events. For a guy who lived on a tropical island in swim trunks and flip-flops for years before I met him, I think this shows fairly astonishing flexibility.

It has been incredibly stressful at times. We have fought. But we fight pretty constructively, and we have quickly learned how to make up and move on. He has a talent for defusing terrible situations that I greatly admire. We brought a dog into our little family almost right away, contributing another set of stressers to our new relationship. Our beagle baby is expensive, he requires constant care and discipline, and Greg and I don’t always agree on how to achieve those things. For all his Zen equanimity in most other matters, I find that he is an over-protective, worried Jewish papa when it comes to Max. This makes me laugh. I love having found the chinks in Greg’s peaceable warrior armor.

He is Togetherness Man, I am Give-Me-Some-Space Girl. We are learning to cross borders into each other’s territory, to grant space or companionship as acts of love, respect and compromise. This makes me want to spend more time with him and I think it makes him much more comfortable with my desire for privacy and time alone or with others. He goes off to work and says, “I won’t see you for another seven hours.” I say “ONLY SEVEN?” We laugh a lot. He makes me laugh every day. He does not take me too seriously, which helps me to not take myself so seriously. This is a wonderful development, even though it makes me peevish at times.

He never used a personal computer before he met me, doesn’t have an e-mail account, and doesn’t mind that I write about him, as long as its in the interest of sharing wisdom about relationships in general and not just to dish. My interpretation, not his words.

What happened here? What is this story about, so far? I think it is about timing and luck and I think it is about commitment. I have been attracted to plenty of men I’ve met on vacations. I’ve been smitten in St. Louis and intrigued in New York City and gone ga-ga in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I’ve been addled in Philadelphia and pined in Columbia, Maryland and almost married in Minnesota. The big difference here is that this time, the object of my initially very-casual-interest turned out to be a true mensch who was ready to commit himself to someone, who recognized in me that someone, and did not hesitate to take his heart out of his body, slap it on the table in front of me, and say, “Take this. I want you have it.” It was a good heart. I could see that immediately. As for my own, it was split in two: I had a Minister’s heart that was joyful, open and pulsing with life. My women’s heart was cold, shriveled and tucked away under layers of anger, resentment, hurt and disappointment. I took it out, showed it to him, said, “It’s not in very good shape but it’s what I’ve got.” He said, “Looks good to me, we’ll have it all fixed up in no time.”

This was a non-verbal transaction. For a woman who is used to analyzing everything within an inch of its life, that is profoundly refreshing. We don’t talk endlessly about “our relationship,” we just have it. A friend said to me that the first three months would be a nightmare, and then we would know whether or not we had something real. My friend guessed that we would. He just felt it.

And we do. So I want to say happy spring to my Pan, my ocean blue-eyed boy, my Troll Mate, my sweetheart. Congratulations, kid. We made it through the first three months and for all our struggles, they’ve been revelatory, and you are the best insane decision I’ve ever made.