Читать книгу It’s Just a Date: A Guide to a Sane Dating Life - Greg Behrendt - Страница 7

It seems like I should have figured that I was doing it wrong after the fiasco of my first marriage. Want to talk about going fast? I met him and it was love at first sight … except for the fact that he had a girlfriend. It was a matter of months before they broke up and we got together, so to make up for lost time we spontaneously got married in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. That’s good, right? I had never been to his home, we hadn’t met each other’s families and probably didn’t know each other’s middle names. We did have similar record collections, so that, along with our young love, should have been enough. Well, not surprisingly it turns out that we didn’t really know each other that well among other biggies that eluded us like similar values and the desire for children. So that didn’t work out but I learned my lesson about jumping in too fast. Right? Or did I, as my next relationship went straight from “Nice to meet you” to “We should go to Barbados on vacation.” At least I had seen his house before packing my bikinis and we did have similar record collections. But ultimately we got too intense too quickly and it we burned out on each other. Strike two! It’d be nice if there wasn’t a strike three but there he was and who could resist the best friend that proclaims his love after too many Heinekens? Not I. So into instant boyfriend I fell. You know what happens when you go from being best friends to instant boyfriend/girlfriend? You realize that you probably weren’t meant to be boyfriend/girlfriend but are trapped in a relationship with a person you love but “not in that way.” That didn’t end well. So at this point I was recognizing that speed was my foe and the way I dated wasn’t working for me. The relationships I got myself into were plagued by the lack of certainty from rushing myself or someone else into feelings that weren’t fully there. Then I met Greg Behrendt, who must have been doing the same thing in his life because he was Mister Take It Slow. Nice. We went out on our first date, which was very good, in fact we decided that we would go out again while still on the date. But then I broke up with him. Huh? It’s a long story involving an ex-boyfriend that wouldn’t go away. However he said the most amazing thing upon hearing my true but cockamamie sounding story about the ex-boyfriend on my lawn, “It’s also okay if you don’t like me like that.” What?! Who the hell was this completely self-possessed guy? I told him truly that I didn’t know yet whether I liked him but would be interested in finding out. So we dated, the old-fashioned way. He called ahead, asked me out, plans were made and we went on dates. We also dated other people while dating each other. There was no hopping in the sack, no racing to lock it down, no panic about what the other was thinking, feeling, doing. Then one day he said something mind-blowing, “I’m not going to date other people. I only want to go out with you but I don’t expect you to do the same until you’re ready to.” What?! Who the hell is this guy who is going to stop dating other people but not demand I do the same? So we continued dating and soon after I came to the same conclusion that he had … I didn’t want to date other people. So there we were as boyfriend and girlfriend because we both truly wanted to be that and had figured it out at our own pace. Revolutionary! Then shortly thereafter he says those three magic words followed by the even more magical words that I had never heard before, “I Love You. But you don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to be at the same place emotionally that I am but I know that I love you and I wanted you to know it.” Holy crap!! Are you kidding me? Where did this alien creature come from that is so comfortable in his own feelings that he can allow me to have my own feelings? That’s how foreign the idea of taking things slow and actually figuring your feelings organically was to me. Normally at this point in a relationship I would have felt obligated to blurt it right back and hope that I grew into the feelings later, but because he was so self-possessed it made it effortless for me to be too. That being said, when I actually experienced having a relationship in real time, on my time, it became the one that has lasted the longest and burns the brightest because it’s real and taking place in actual time. We’re on this journey together side by side instead of one dragging the other behind. Our story is the reason that we decided to write this book because we know what is possible if you learn to do it right.