background info

right. time for some background info. i'm 24, female, in my second year of graduate school in psycholinguistics. john, the guy i'm in the midst of breaking up (separating?) with, is also 24, and in his third year of graduate school in chemical engineering.

we met in our last year in college. at the time, i was dating ben, but it was long distance. ben and i had agreed to casually see other people so i started casually dating john. it got serious, and after a couple of months, i ditched ben for john. when we graduated, we moved up to delaware together. he started grad school and i waitressed for a year, taking computer science classes.

last may (may 8, 1999), john and i were at atlantic city, ostensibly to celebrate me being done with my master's thesis, and he asked me to marry him. i said yes. it wasn't surprising, since we had been ring shopping together. i had picked out a beautiful antique style platinum, diamond, and emerald setting, and we picked out a 3/4 carat round diamond for it.

soon after the engagement, we picked july 30, 2000 as the wedding date, and started planning. i was getting the jitters, though. i sat on it for a month or so, and in septemeber 1999 i told john i wasn't sure i wanted to get married. that was rough. all during the fall, we talked about what to do. we had rented a place for the wedding reception, and hired a photographer. i bought a dress. we set a deadline of christmas to decide whether to postpone the wedding or not. come christmas we decided to postpone.

for awhile after christmas, things were better, mostly because the stress of making the postpone or not decision was over. then, in our couples therapy session one day, john asked me if i was attracted to jared, a research assisstant and future grad student in the lab. i told him i wasn't, (plus, jared has a girlfriend), but that got me thinking, and pretty soon i was in fullcrushmode. after a night out dancing with jared and some other people, i spilled my guts to him about john. great to talk to about this. would be a great friend, if nothing else.

anyway, i decided that i should probably move out, for at least 6 months-1 year, to get a grip on things, and try to figure out what i really want from him (john), and for me. so i told him, and we talked about it with our therapist, and i started apartment hunting.

found a place in west philly, but i can't move in until september, so i've got a sublet for the summer. bummer to have to move twice, but that's the way it goes.