Category Archives: Relationships

Lions, and Tigers, and Break-Ups! Oh, My!

Posted on by
17

Did I mention I’ve been dating someone for a couple of months?  It hasn’t been anything super serious and I wouldn’t even go so far as to call us boyfriend and girlfriend, but it’s definitely been something.  However.

You know that first spark?  The one where they’re interesting and you have so much fun and you want to see them and blah, blah, blah?  Well whatever flame had been burning has been slowly flickering out and I haven’t known what to make of it.  This is always the case.  Something isn’t quite right so it stresses me out, then I retreat unto myself, I don’t want to hang out with the other person, I don’t act in an affectionate way (tho, to be honest, PDA-friendly I am not), and I go into excuse mode.  Well maybe it’s because I’m stressed at work…  Or maybe it’s because I’m just bad at dating…  Or maybe it really is us but it’s because we only go out to eat and don’t do other things so we don’t give ourselves the right opportunity… Or whatever.

Kate the Cowardly Lion

It all amounts to this: I am the Cowardly Lion of break-ups.

Rather than owning up to the fact that I’m just not into him, I hide and I make my excuses and feel sorry for myself and ultimately end up sabotaging things to the point where we’re miserable almost 100% of the time.  Cowardly Kate, right there.  The cruddiest part of it?  I date really fantastic guys.  I know, don’t hate me.  But I do. With the exception of one guy, my boyfriends have been really great people.  They’ve treated me well, they’ve been thoughtful, and when I was suddenly pulling away, coming up with my excuses, they were there trying to be understanding about it.  Cue massive guilt.

But I do think that’s part of it.  I’ve never wanted to own up to what’s really going on because I dread that conversation and the potential to hurt someone who is so kind-hearted.  When they’ve been so good to you, how do you tell them they’re just not right for you?  Yah, yah, you just tell them.  So you say.  It was never easy and so I never did it.

Until yesterday.  Call it maturity, but I finally realized how unfair it was to the guy and to me to go on in this state.  The conversation weighed on me all weekend (longer than that, if I’m honest) and I finally brought up my concerns, fully expecting it to The Break-Up Moment.  And yah know, a funny thing happened.  Not only was it not as bad as I imagined, but he reacted in a way that I hadn’t anticipated.  He said he really liked me and wished I’d given him feedback earlier so we could work on the issues which he viewed as easily fixable.  Huh.  I won’t go into the gory details.  In fact, I don’t remember the gory details.  (Really, who does?  Do you?  Because my own explanation of The State of Things became so convoluted that I could have talked about eating SpaghettiOs at the top of the Eiffel Tower, for all I know)  Suffice it to say, we are “taking a break.”  Yes, we cringed too.  But it’s not a bad plan.  We’re giving ourselves two weeks and then we’ll see.

Spinster friends, in a matter of hours “taking a break” changed my entire outlook.  Unsurprisingly, the weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I look forward to our next outing.  I know, don’t you just want to reach through the computer screen, shake me, and go, “SEE?!?!?!  When you talk to someone about your feelings, good things can happen.”

Right.  Yah.  For all my ranting about dating and such, I know I’m not even close to being perfect on that front.  My cowardly and non-confrontational way of addressing relationship issues is right there at the top of Things Kate Must Address if She Wants to Find Her Mr. Darcy.  So I can’t give much advice on this, but if you’re waffling about your man or lady friend dilemma and whether to say something, make like Nike and JUST DO IT.

-Kate

Manfriend Musings

Posted on by
23

Hello spinster friends!  I’m a tad bit late with a post this week which is due to some Exciting and completely exhausting Happenings in the Land of Hepburn.  You might not know this, but this little Kate is an introvert so a wild week of unexpected travel, a flat tire, and not a single night spent vegging on my sofa with a good romance and a pot of Earl Grey… well, let’s just say it’s Saturday morning, I’m still in my jammies, and I intend to stay that way.

I’m not a whiner and complainer, that’s a lie, don’t listen to me, but in these particularly trying types of weeks I’m reminded of those little things that a manfriend might bring to the situation.  Sometimes, I miss them.  I give you my short list:

The Arm/Back/You-Name-It Scratch.

Spinster friends, you know what I’m talking about!  Nothing is more lovely than a night spent in, forcing your beloved to watch HGTV’s Design Time Saturday Night, and getting a good arm scratch.  One of those wooden back scratchers just will not do.  And nevermind if most men have nubs for nails.  It’s soothing either way.  Plus, I’ve perfected the technique so the future Mr. Hepburn need not put out more effort than necessary.  It’s called the Hot Dog.  Step 1: Place arm directly in front of partner.  Step 2: Manfriend starts scratching arm in a horizontal motion.  Step 3:  Rotate your arm like a hot dog at a hot dog stand and behold! total arm scratch satisfaction.

The Flat Tire Savior.

I know how to change a flat.  In fact, it was one of the first things I did in driving school.  (Aside: Did you know that in Texas we didn’t have to take behind-the-wheel tests???  We required only 7 hours of actual driving time.  Yah, I know.  So, if you’re ever in this state, forgive us on the road.  We know not what we do.  Well, I mean, I do but I can’t say the others have a clue.)  So when I get a flat tire, I just want to have someone to call.  Someone who would come and hang out with me while I remedy the situation.  Or if not that, and if I was fortunate to have an awesome company that sends someone to fill my tire with air, someone who would at least lend me their car so I’m not scrambling to figure out how to get to Very Important Places the next day.  That’s a particular spinster challenge, I feel – the lack of a second car option is the pits!

Breakfast in Bed

Alright, alright, nobody has ever made me breakfast in bed.  But as I’m sitting here in my jammies it strikes me as something that would be really nice.  I’d like a stack of four pancakes.  No, make that five, just in case.  With a little pat of butter and two bitty twin pots of crème anglaise, and raspberry jelly.  A cup of Early Grey with a tiny spoon that has a dob of honey would also be nice.  And a big glass of 1% milk.  Oh, and sausage links!  I love sausage links.  And if Mr. Hepburn would be so kind, that romance I left on the couch the other night.  He romanced me enough last night, I’ll give him a break this morning.

What am I missing?  What other nice things might a manfriend* do?

*Or ladyfriend as I can’t leave out our beloved gentlemen spinster friends!

-Kate

I’ll Admit It, I Call Him Baby.

Posted on by
29
Louis Armstrong

If Louis said it, it's ok by me.

For as long as I can remember, I have absolutely hated the term “baby” when used for anyone other than an actual infant. I mean, seriously, what in the world is romantic about calling someone baby? Babies aren’t romantic. Making babies is romantic, but the actual babies are full of poop and snot and tears and also are incredibly adorable, but they are not romantic. For years, whenever I would hear my friends refer to their significant others as baby, I would proceed to tease them mercilessly and insist that they admit calling someone you love romantically “baby” is absurd. In short, I was obnoxious. Incredibly and inexcusably obnoxious. I see that now.

My sudden self-realization was brought about one thing: falling madly in love.  All of the sudden being called “baby” was the sweetest and sexiest thing in the world. And furthermore, I wanted to say it back. For the first time in my life, I wanted to call my boyfriend “baby”. This meant two things to me.

  1. Woohoo! Being in love is amazing!
  2. I’m going to have to admit to my friends I call him baby, and suffer through the “I told you so’s” from the friends I had teased about it, and also the “That’s ridiculous, don’t call him that’s” from the friends whose side I was previously on in this issue.

First, I admitted my newfound fondness for the term “baby” to the friends/family I had previously teased about calling their loved ones that. Surprisingly, it went over really well. Sure, they said “I told you so,” but the sting of that was tempered by how happy they were for me. All in all, admitting I was wrong wasn’t nearly as awful as I thought it would be. And it certainly involved a lot more squealing and hugging than I thought it would.

Next up were my friends who had always fought on the side of “calling someone baby is inane and annoying.”  Before I admitted my love of the term “baby,” I decided to arm myself with some historical background.  Unfortunately, that involved a lot more research than I originally anticipated. There were quite a few accounts of where the pet name “baby” originated, but they all had different dates and historical references. Blurg. Obviously, the universe wanted to make this difficult on me. In the end, after like a week of reading, I finally landed on what I thought made the most sense, sort of an amalgam of several accounts with similar dates and references. What I landed on date-wise was the 1920’s and the jazz-era. It may not have been the first time someone called a loved one “baby,” but it certainly became very popular during that time. So, armed with that knowledge and the fact that if Louis Armstrong sang it, it can’t be that bad, I admitted my use of the term baby to my friends who think it’s stupid. And you know what? They were pretty nice about it. I mean, they still think it’s stupid (Right, Grace?), but overall they seemed to accept me switching sides. Sure, their acceptance was akin to the type of acceptance you feel if someone who was crazy did something crazy, but I’ll take any kind of acceptance I can get.

And now, I can say to the world without hesitation or shame “My boyfriend calls me baby and I like it. And I call him baby and he likes it.” Huzzah!

What about you kids? Any pet names you love, hate, love to hate, or hate to love?

- Mae

My Dearest Katharine…

Posted on by
25

My workplace is limiting my email storage so I’ve been forced to look at emails I wrote back in the day.  It’s fun to see how unprofessional I was when I was a wee little Kate, making my foray into the business world.  Like the time I used 17 exclamation points in one message.  That was really cool.  I’m sure the Vice President who got my three-paragraph thank you email about lunch thought that was really cute.  But I digress. It was during this clean-up that I came across a rather large group of emails from my last boyfriend in ::coughcough2007coughcough::. It would have been weird to go through them, re-read them, re-live my mindset from back then, so I quickly glanced at a couple then did a mass delete and it felt good.  But! I was reminded of something missing in my life.

Where have all the love letters gone?  [When I think these words they are to the tune of that Paula Cole song and it adds a little something.  You should try it.]

We live in an age where the love letter has been replaced with the email or the text message.  While I could use this as a platform to lament the use of the email or the text message, I will not.  You see, I actually like them quite a bit.  As opposed to a letter, they’re something you can get unexpectedly, any time of the day.  That text message I got after a grueling meeting from a date telling me he looks forward to see me tonight?  Yah, I’ll never object to it.

However, it’s the sheer volume of text messages and emails, and the obvious ease of sending them, which makes the love letter special, coveted, and missed.  It says something when your significant other takes the time to pull out the nice paper, the nice pen, and spend the time to come up with the perfect way to describe your golden locks or the way he goes all mushy when you tilt your head just so.

Further:

  • Love letters provide the perfect opportunity for you to use your lover’s full name in a way that’s really sexy.  In romance novels, the heroine always notices when the hero uses her first name for the first time.  I don’t know about you, but seeing Katharine on the page would definitely make my lady parts quiver a little bit more than seeing Kate.  And that’s just the first word!  Nicknames are acceptable but I would caution anyone that the love letter is not the place to test out that new “pumpkin cheeks” name you thought of when you saw your loved one bending over in the supermarket aisle to reach for that can of peas.
  • Love letters are an acceptable place to describe that weird quirk about your lover that you never knew how to say in person.  Or maybe shouldn’t say.  Like the fact that in he mornings you like watching his nostrils flare while he’s still sleeping.  You think it’s cute.  But imagine the conversation if you were to say that to his face.  Awkward!  The love letter, instead, lets you express this and avoid the strange look he might give you.  It might then even turn into a blush and he’ll take a certain pride in his schnoz, knowing it gives you so much pleasure.
  • Love letters have an enduring and tangible aspect that just isn’t with an email or a text.  I once found the love letters my dad wrote to my mum.  She keeps them in a box and I have to tell you, I was (still am) impressed with my 12 yr. old self and the fact that I respected their privacy and didn’t read them.  This, coming from the snoop of all snoops (I was a really awesome babysitter but my gawd, such a snoop!  “I wonder what’s in this drawer!”).  Still, it was very romantic and while I don’t know if she ever references them, it’s the idea that she could.  No digging through filed emails or trying to remember that sweet text message from five years ago.  The letters are there, in your hands, always available, and looking more loved and cherished over time.  Someday, your kids might even think they’d be great scrapbook material!  That wouldn’t be embarrassing or anything.

This is not exhaustive, but I hope you get the point.  There should be no objection to the love letter unless your dearest took out a restraining order.  So I encourage you to go forth, put the pen to the page, and resolve to write more love letters in 2012.  The world as we know it is coming to an end so it’s not like you have anything to lose.

-Kate

Dating And Blogging- A Spinster’s Dilemma.

Posted on by
34

Dating and Blogging

I am a blogger. And not only that, but I’m a blogger who blogs without censor about my life. So, if you’re a part of my life, i.e. my boyfriend, you’re probably going to get blogged about. So it goes.

When I was single, I joked about how this was going to play out if I ever got into a relationship. You know, directing the boyfriend to a particular blog post about how I didn’t appreciate his snide remark the night before, or writing posts about the size of his penis, or even using my blog as a vehicle to break-up with him, thereby creating the most awkward and ridiculous break-up ever by inviting all my blog followers to comment on the relationship. However, once I got into a relationship (and a pretty spectacular one at that) all I wanted to do was protect him from my blogging. Me, who was so dedicated to the idea of not holding anything back in my blog, was holding something very big (seriously big y’all, he’s 6’4)  and very important back. And not only was I holding him back from my blogging, I was holding my blogging back from him- I refused to let him read my blogs for quite some time. Why? Because my blogging is a whole lot of crazy y’all. A whole lot of over-sharing, awkwardness, muppets, and tampons. And I’ve always been quite proud of that to be honest, and still am, but I was afraid it might be a bit overwhelming for my new (and uber-dreamy) beau.

But I knew that the “each of you in your corners” approach couldn’t last forever. So I fretted about how to handle this blogging/relationship situation. My dilemma was trying to figure out how to make two major parts of my life come together in harmony. Seriously, I stressed and angsted over this for weeks. And of course, like so many things I angst over, the solution came about so simply and naturally that it became incredibly apparent to me that I had angsted for naught. I mentioned, casually, to my boyfriend that if he wanted to he could totally read my blog. He didn’t have to, if he didn’t that would be fine, but you know, if he ever got curious, it would probably be ok. And he did. And he laughed. And he started offering me some killer suggestions for future blog posts. It was as simple and lovely as that.

Also, it helped that I set up some ground rules for myself.

1. No passive agressive blogging. I will not use my blog as a vehicle to complain or chide him.

2. No embarrassing. The only person who deserves to be humiliated by my blog is me.

3. Under no circumstances am I to use my blog to avoid having difficult conversations with him. I have to woman-up and face it if ever the need for a difficult conversation arises. No “blogging out” so to speak.

There you have it folks. That’s how one uncensored and often profane spinster blogger figured out how to be in a relationship and blog at the same time. It probably shouldn’t have taken me so many hours of angst to arrive there but I got there in the end and that’s (probably) what matters.

The Meet The Parents Clock Is Ticking

Posted on by
9

Ticking Clock

As a young women in her mid-twenties, I have a lot of clocks to keep track of. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on the ever ticking uterus clock known as the “biological clock”, a term which has always baffled me. I mean, Men are biological creatures too, why should Women be the only ones with a biological clock? I much prefer the term “ticking uterus” it’s so much more specific. Unfortunately, I can’t give proper focus to my ticking uterus, because the marriage clock hasn’t struck midnight yet. (Or whatever time these clocks chime and tell you you’re allowed to marry/procreate/die). And I can’t really focus on the marriage clock, because the meet the parents clock has yet to chime. And that’s where I am right now. Watching the meet the parents clock, hoping it will give me some clue as to the proper timing of that event. (Because according to my Mom, it should have chimed already….)

And sure, I know meeting the parents isn’t necessary or even all that important to a lot of people, but it is to me. I’m incredibly close with my family and it’s important to me that they get to know my boyfriend and even more important that they like him. Having said that, I’m not sure what the right timing is around the whole meet the parents thing. When is too soon? When is too late? What’s the sweet spot for meeting the parents?

I took an informal poll of my friends and, to my dismay, they all had very different answers. Way to be individuals, ladies! Some said 6 months or later, some said as soon as you’ve had the “Are we exclusive?” talk, otherwise known as the dreaded DTR, others said “At the wedding.” so……there definitely seemed to be a lack on consensus on the matter. What makes it worse is that they all had valid points to back up their opinions.

Those that said 6 months validated their opinion by saying you would be more secure in your relationship 6 months in, and that you would have a much better feel for how the meeting would play out. This made a lot of sense to me.

Then, I talked to some friends who said it made more sense  for your significant other to meet your parents as soon as you have the “Are we exclusive?” talk, because it’s the sweet spot between committed and very committed. Their point was that you want your significant other to meet your parents before you get too attached. What if they don’t like him? What if he doesn’t like them? How will that effect your relationship? Basically, what they’re saying is that if your parents not liking your significant other might be a deal-breaker, you want to find that out before you’re so attached to them that breaking up is excruciating versus just painful. That made a lot of sense to me too.

Then I spoke to  my friends who were of the “At the wedding.” argument and they made a really good case for their position as well. What it boils down to is avoidance of drama. Again, it made a lot of sense to me.

After all of that, I was back where I started, which was the place of utter befuddlement. I have a wonderful boyfriend and a wonderful family, the question is, when is the right time for them to wonderfully meet? Seriously y’all, because my Mom wants to know.

- Mae