So I'm in a relationship again. For some time I had merely been in the Dating Zone, that nebulous, hauntingly shadowy-gray area where you're getting to know the person and see if you're compatible. Now... now she is my girlfriend and I will confess that I say that word with a certain amount of pride and abject fear. My track record is not so good. My marriage was good..... for about 45 seconds. I tell people that the difference between She Who Must Not Be Named when we dated and when we married... well, let's just say Jekyll and Hyde became reality for me.
She quit her job after we married and expected me to support us on a Wendy's paycheck. Then she expected me to support her and our two kids on a Wendy's paycheck. She got involved in drugs, would stay out all hours of the night while I watched our two toddlers and tried to get enough sleep to manage a 50 mile drive to work and a 10 hour work day. She eventually found a job and liked what she did. I was happy. Until I found out the reason she liked it so much was because she was sleeping with the boss.
I dated off and on afterward. Even tried eHarmony. Then I met a girl with whom I eventually had a relationship with. We were together a couple of years. We even discussed marriage. I moved in with her and things seemed okay until one night, out of a blue clear sky and with no warning whatsoever, she asked me to leave. I never did get a reason as to why, but I certainly didn't want to stay where I wasn't wanted. But after all of the sorrow and depression and moping I had time to reflect. She had been controlling. She wanted me to be her idea of what I should be. Not who I was.
I'm a nerd and very childlike, which is different from child
ish. I liked, and still do, comic books and Star Wars and cartoons, etc. We were at Walmart one afternoon and while we were in the Electronics section, I was perusing the new movie releases and I saw the first season of The Greatest American Hero. I loved that show when I was a kid and I was pretty vocal and excited that I could snag this thing and relive some cheese from my childhood. I embarrassed her, she told me. She was molding me into whatever it was she wanted because who I was didn't suit her. That was eight years ago. I'm friends with her on Facebook and to this day she finds a guy who's good to her then breaks up with him, complaining about some trivial thing he does that she can't stand.
Which brings me to now. She, referred to hereafter as Super Mom, is amazing. She loves her kids. Juggles her work as a teacher with basketball practices, helping with homework, cooking dinners, organizing holiday events, spending time with her recovering-from-a-car-accident dad and taking care of her pets: a 50 pound Pit Bull/Weimeraner mix who thinks she's a lapdog, a cat in a near-constant state of sexual frustration, and two kittens who take playful to a level of destruction I've never seen in my lifetime.
And still finds time to care about me. She doesn't get embarrassed if I think the Captain America shield in the toy department is freakin' awesome. She listens when I tell her the plot of the new Justice League comic I'm reading. She flat-out bends over backwards for me. She is the most caring, loving, unselfish woman I have ever known. She even went public on Facebook.
To quote her youngest child, "That's romance, right there."
How lucky am I?
This Thanksgiving.... I hope you have someone special to spend it with. I went many years spending holidays alone. My kids were always there, sure, but I missed that other sort of companionship. And when the kids went home, I was alone again. I hope that you have that person that can put your life at a whole new level. Someone who respects you and genuinely cares for you in such a way that you never have to question it. That makes Thanksgiving dinner taste that much better. Or makes the star on your tree glow that much brighter.
Someone who....
likes you.
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