I’m glad it wasn’t love at first sight when I met you.
Back then, we were just friends. Although we found each other attractive, we both had a lot going on. You thought I was colorful, flashy, a real character — but possibly the bad kind of crazy.
I thought you were sweet and friendly — but kind of boring.
And it was only after about a year of casual friendship that turned into not so casual friendship that turned into best friendship that we finally went on our first date.
I remember going into it thinking that you were such a great person and had such a great heart that unless the physical chemistry were atrocious that I’d probably date you for a long while. Because we had so much in common as far as values, and we complemented each other so well as friends, that I would be willing to work through bad sexual chemistry. And build something mutually satisfying.
Imagine my surprise when we hit it off physically, too. It was shocking.
I fell hard. So hard. And you did too.
I never even stopped to ask myself if there was a catch. Because I didn’t care. It was too wonderful back then to go there. Loving you was more intoxicating, more powerful, than my anxiety. This hadn’t happened to me for a very long time, not since I was a kid, back before the first time my heart was broken.
Yes, There Was a Rough Patch #
Would it always be easy? No. Several years in, we started to challenge ourselves and each other. It got difficult for a while. And it was a new kind of difficult that I’d never dealt with before.
Most of what hurt me was really a byproduct of you fighting yourself. Challenging yourself to be a better person — and always impatiently, because you’re like that. You are impatient when it comes to improving yourself. (And I am, too.)
But at the time, you didn’t know that. And I didn’t know that. I thought it was my fault. That our love was actually one-sided, that I was crazy about you and you didn’t actually return my feelings, not after the New Relationship Energy wore off.
But eventually you figured yourself out a bit better. And we emerged from this one rough patch better than we went into it.
This Should Have Been a Second Rough Patch, But It’s Not #
This past year has been quite hellish. Not too long after a stressful cross-country move, the pandemic settled in. It locked us inside for the vast majority of the time. Made travel — my favorite thing in the world — a lot more difficult and dangerous.
My father passed away. Grief swept in.
You’ve felt a lot like a caged animal lately. We’ve both suffered major work stress.
In a lot of ways, this was the perfect setting for a second rough patch. But strangely, I’ve been getting along great with you. Does this mean we haven’t fought at all this past year? No, not at all.
But I’m finding that when we do argue these days, we recover better. And we emerge from conflicts with fewer hurt feelings and a better understanding of one another’s positions.
This should have been a second rough patch, but it’s not.
That tells me that the work we did before was worth all the effort we put into it.
I’m Glad It Wasn’t Love at First Sight When I Met You #
Anyway, I’m glad it wasn’t love at first sight when I met you. I’m glad I thought you were just some boring guy and that you thought I was a girl who was probably the bad kind of crazy.
I’m glad we really got to know each other, who we really are when we have our guards down, before we got thrown into that crazy soup of chemicals that comes with new love.
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