This week there were two themes going on in my life, so it's another week where there will be two different sets of content for blog post. I know you missed me so much in October and November, I am making it up.
Friday I got to meet with a friend in my local writing group who is a lesbian. She's been someone I talked to a bit about the fabulous Dutch woman with bad timing and a grief journey ahead as a focus, and told I had connected with this new woman and things were going really well. We both started new jobs, and had a lot to catch up about.
Last week I mentioned only briefly I connected with a woman while home, and things were going really well and having a lot of fun together. The theme of this post are things that have been discussed in this personal area of my life this week:
One theme that came up: things progressing with this woman in the department of being a writer. On our first date, we talked a lot about art. I sent her a story - since she heard about the puppy, I sent her the story inspired by the puppy.
She started it and I was trying to warn her there might be triggers since it was horror, but she really liked it.
She actualy told me she thought my writing was amazing and she wanted to read it again when she was on holiday and not in the middle of daily work business. I mean that is what every writer wants to hear. When I told my friend that this weekend, she said that's the way to a writer's heart. Like that's the kind of thing that makes you think things like "I should marry this person." Am I right? (The Guy also loves my writing, but I want to focus on this situation and not bring up that strangeness at all, and that's a reference to past posts.)
She's on the road this week driving to see her family. (multiple stops in the next few weeks) We were texting a few nights. She wanted to ask me a lot of questions getting to know me. Some of them felt like they were from a list. I actually remember there being a list I saw once and tried to use in a relationship of 100 questions or something to ask to fall in love. But I didn't mind. She was initiating it, and I thought, that would be funny if it was that list I was referencing in the past and getting nowhere. Hey, she's on this page, let's ask questions to get to know each other. And fall in love? who knows.
One of her questions were the familiar question: what's a book that has been influential in your life. I don't have an answer. There are so many books that have influenced my life. There are so many chapters to my life and books that were part of them. I asked her which group of books she would like me to point to. So many books. Does anyone else have this response or issue? For me, if we talk about a book, then the question was "what was the influence of this specific book on your life?" and that would be a question I could answer!
Her response was even better than her last comment - which was that she could tell and kind of expected that answer since my writing was so amazing!
Damn girl. I feel like this is the behaviour of someone who knows what she wants and is on a mission to fall in love. For sure.
The other topic this week involved discussions about gay marriage. The US is the latest country to pass laws protecting gay. marriage, so this is very recent. My last major relationship with a woman was before many of these countries have moved in this direction in recent years, except Canada. Canada has recognised it for much longer than the rest of the world, which have adopted things much later. My last relationship with a woman was very passionate and unstable. There was not a solid foundation that we were both confident in wanting this to lead to marriage, and perhaps there was some doubt because it wasn't "officially" legal in most of the world. Removing that doubt would not have been enough to erase the problems in that relationship.
She shared her thoughts about it feeling more realistic and attainable for sure.
I thought back to childhood, and there are some women who plan their weddings as little girls, at least imagine it. What kind of wedding, what setting, where they want to have a wedding. I was surprised to learn so many women are this involved in imagining a wedding as children, because I did not think about weddings at all. Then I thought back to my first inquiry as a child about getting married. When I was five I asked my mom if I could marry the girl next door. There were two girls next door who were my best friends. We were inseparable, and played together every day. We played HARD. At that time, my parents were happy, and my model for what marriage was. However, my interpretation of what I saw in my parents' marriage wasn't that they had to be man and woman. I saw two happy people spending time together, going out on fabulous dates, welcoming my brother into the world. The way I interpreted it in my own situation was that I loved spending time with this girl next door (the older sister of the two), and that's what marriage was. Finding someone you wanted to spend all your time with. Right?
My mother's response was "I'm sorry sweetie, that's not how marriage works. Marriage is a boy and a girl waiting to have sex so they can have children together after getting married." Then a few years later started my mother's very strange very biological orientation to heterosexual sex and reproduction, quizzing my brother on what sperm were when HE was five.
I wonder if she had said "Yes, honey, you can marry her when you're older if you want," my attitude or excitement about my interpretation of marriage would have been a little more enthusiastic and something I wanted to spend time imagining or planning. My idea about marriage was just more flexible than the correction I was given and told to believe instead of what seemed natural to me.
My lesbian friend wanted a bit more insight into my dating history. It was actually good context. I said living here I had not met many women to date, and I had gotten the furthest with men. My first relationship with a man here - a very nice man, and great boyfriend, and absolute sweetheart, was missing support in an area where I felt alone. Then before the pandemic I had dated a man for a minute, and we had talked about what direction a relationship might take, and I liked the common things we shared and direction that looked like. We talked about going to church together and volunteering together, and I thought, this feels like the kind of relationship I'd like to have with someone. We had a moment, and I was catching feelings, but hadn't told him. He smoked and had a child, and was putting a lot of pressure on me about the child that made me uncomfortable, and wasn't my ideal partner. Then he freaked out and flipped over to being controlling and a bit nuts, and that ended things PDQ. Then since then has been a long dry spell not particularly dating much during the pandemic. There was one woman who was clicking with me, but then she had a complicated schedule and went nuts when MY work interfered in meeting and became clingy and needy.
So this woman has a lot of common values and interests, and that makes her really the kind of person I've been looking for or imagining having a relationship with. It's clear our connection is so good, that we should absolutely continue getting to know each other, and she's inching her way into my heart with her love of my writing. In my life, I have a good writing friend in a lesbian partnership, and my new bestie in the new job is a lesbian, planning a wedding, so it happens to be a good time in my life and I have a lot of support to consider a relationship with this woman.
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