less freakout, more love

wow. intense weekend. whoa. [remember joey from the show 'blossom'? whoa!] anyway, there was much deep and intense conversation with karl over the weekend.

saturday night we were talking about our first date, and how it took him HOURS to finally kiss me, even though i was giving bowl-you-over signals (inviting him in after we got back for dinner for 'ice cream,' sitting progessively closer to him on the couch, comparing hand sizes... it was like we were in junior-freakin-high). he's cute, though, and said that it's rough for a guy who's not totally over-confident, because one can never be sure if the signals one is picking up are real. if the guy leans over to kiss her, is she suddenly gonna be like yo! whatcha doin there!?

anyway, during the course of this conversation, he said something about that first kiss maybe being his last (our last) first kiss with someone new. we went on to discuss how, though we wouldn't give up a great relationship for that first-kiss excitement, that first-kiss excitement sure is nice.

later, i asked him if he meant it when he said that might be his last first kiss. [is he thinking about marriage?] countdown to borogovesian freakout begins!] he said, well you know, he's *thought* about it, of course. not saying that he's actively thinking about it as a definite thing, but more as a topic in the abstract. a hypothetical. you know. yeah, i do know. girls (or at least me) think about their current guy as possible marriage partner almost from moment one. [at least, thinking about it in terms of, should it one day come to pass that this relationship is good enough that we begin to think about making it permanent, will that be a good thing?]

this launched us into a conversation about how the idea of marrying karl, or anyone, right now freaks me out just a little [of course, in the way that things always go, talking about the slight freakout made it seem like a much bigger deal than it actually is. same thing is happening now--why is she devoting all this space to the freakout if it was so minor? maybe it's NOT so minor after all! let me assure you, the way i assured him, that it is, in fact, a minor freakout. nothing to freak out about.] we talked more about marriage (its merits as an institution), us, freaking out, my history with john, etc etc etc. by the end, i was way less freaked out. it was good. i end up talking about john more than i would like around karl. i asked him if that bothered him, and he admitted it did. i tried (and succeeded, i think) to calm him by letting him know that, while john is a dear friend, and will always be a significant part of my history, and while i did, for a long time, question my decision to break up with him, and did, for a long time, wonder if we shouldn't get back together, i no longer feel that way. [did everyone follow along in that sentence? oy.] karl said he had been bothered by the nagging possibility that one day i would wake up and realize i wanted to be back with john, and i'd leave him. though all last spring and this summer seeing john was bittersweet and tinged with regret, the last time i saw him it wasn't. for a long time i questioned my decision. now i don't. i love john as a good friend, and of course we've shared a lot, but i don't want to get back together with him. i did the right thing by breaking up with him. though i think i would have been happy with him, i wouldn't have been as happy as i could be. i would have been settling. i won't settle.

so that seemed to make karl feel better. we also talked abstractly about where we might want to live, if we were to get married, and about kids, and where we might raise them (he doesn't want any kids of his to have strong american accents. i think it would be weird but okay if they had english accents, too.)

we ended up realizing that we're very much in love with each other, more and more as we get to know each other better, and especially more after all this conversation this weekend. i love who he is. partly, that includes the fact that he's not freaking out. that he was willing to have this conversation (you might even say he started it!) and that he doesn't get all committment-phobic when we're really just talking about all this in the abstract. partly, it's that if we can have conversations like this with no one freaking out (too much), i have hopes for us being able to talk out actual *problems* that will no doubt arise in the future. sigh.