Original blog: "Lowered Expectations"

Original post date: 15 Jan 08

Lowered Expectations

The Beatles were on to something. I’m already nostalgic for yesterday. Yesterday, Mr. Coffee asked me out and I was so overcome with !YAY! that I had to leave the room as soon as I got off the phone with him. I couldn’t wait to call my girlfriends. It was pretty awesome. We squealed, and described him, and provided verbatim transcripts of the conversation. It was all great girly fun.

Today wasn’t as awesome.

Fresh from an evening and morning full of daydreams and excitement, I went to see him today and learned a new euphemism for “divorced,” which is what he was yesterday. Today he was “technically” married. I’ll give him credit for not dropping that on me six months from now but it goes without saying that my excitement from yesterday has cooled considerably. He is legally separated so I suppose I’m not a home-wrecker but it still seems vaguely wrong.

I’m torn. This is very unlikely to end well. Not because he isn’t the swell guy he seems to be but because he’s already been more of a distraction than I welcome. I’m already a person I don’t like. That person who reacts to a flicker of interest by becoming super excited and obsessive. I’m the person already with the most to lose--the one who is more into it. The person who has to work to dial it down a notch. People in relationships rarely respect that person. I’d like to feel more like my approach to grown-up relationships reflects that I’m in my 30’s. Instead I’m writing in my grown-up journal about a boy who hasn’t called me yet.

I’m putting ‘being over this’ on the to-do list.

It seems wrong, however to write him completely off and treat him like a pariah just because things didn’t work out quite they way I’m sure he hoped it would when he married. I don’t want him to feel that he’s doomed to be alone because he’s in between the life he knew and whatever is next for him. Ugh...I do this every time. I get wrapped up in not hurting people’s feelings. He’s a big boy. Big enough to pursue me through the pain and big enough to find a suitable substitute for me. I’m not that important and it’s not that deep for him.

I’ll always have yesterday. It was fun to imagine the possibilities. It’s the one thing I think I might miss if I inexplicably end up being married. No more moments of delighting in the potential of a new person and no more marveling the seemingly magic coincidences that bring those people into your life. Onward and upward.