Love or something like that

Since I wrote about my first love here, I thought I might write about my recent love. This post will finish the trilogy of my girlfriends, there was only one girlfriend in between and not much to write about there.

I met, A., in February of my senior year in high school. I was working as a lifeguard and a swim instructor and she had started to work at the same Y as me, but as head guard and head swim instructor, never mind that she had just gotten her lifeguard certification the weekend before. We met and I was asked to show her around by my boss, who was also in many ways a big sister to me when I worked at the Y. So as I am showing A. the ropes, especially how to do the chemicals for the pool she tells me her grandmother had a pool and she already knows how to do this. I was not having a good day, but I can't remember why, but at first I didn't like her. About a week or so later, I am working and she comes in and starts to talk to me, just chit chat. We start talking about book stores and this local small bookstore that is in town that also sells coffee. So she says that she hasn't had a chance to go and maybe we should go over there one day. I agree, but don't really think that much about it. We meet one afternoon at the bookstore and have coffee. There is a connection at this point, the sparks are flying and I have no idea what the hell I am getting myself into at this point. So I go home rather late for dinner and my mom asks who I was out with, as I had called home at one point and told them I was out with a friend. I tell her, A. and she asks oh so does she go to the other local high school as she knows she does not go to the same one I go to. I tell her no, she is a little bit older. My mother asks how much older and I tell her, 26. My mother is not real happy about this as her 18 year old son is now dating (we really weren't dating yet, but still...) a 26 year old.

The relationship progresses rather fast and we are hanging out pretty much everyday as I get home from school and finish any homework that I have to do and then we meet and go to the coffee shop/bookstore where we first went or we go to a local park and just hang out and talk. Honestly, it was all very innocent and I really thought that we were just friends (I was very naive at this point in my life, I still am in many ways). We also start to go out to eat a lot more after I get off work or after we both are done if we are both teaching that day. We also hang out on the weekends, where I tend to go over to her parents house (she still lived at home with her parents, her sister who was a year younger than her who had a four year old son when I met her and her sister's baby daddy and the older brother lived at the same house during some of our relationship, although not when we first started out). This should have been the first signs for me, but I was pretty well blinded by love. I also remember our first kiss as we were at a local state park and just hanging out after going out for dinner and she started to rub my neck and we just started to make out. This then progressed to where we were very affectionate all of the time since she was just affectionate anyway and I was too. I eventually lost my virginity to her in June or so. But in March as I was flipping out one night she agreed to marry me as I was stressing over among other things losing her. The marriage talk among us became common and we decided that I would finish my freshman year in college and then she would move down to NC with me and we would get married later in my college career.

This continues for most of the summer with us having sex and spending every waking minute together. A typical day for me was that I would wake up at around 10, she would call, I would sometimes take a quick shower and sometimes not, I would meet her at the Y where we would go get lunch or just go to her house and then we would do whatever around her place. We would usually fool around at some point and then fall asleep, I would have to get up later that day and we would drive back to the Y where I would guard for a while and then we would teach some swim lessons then go back to her house and have dinner and then hang out there till either I went home between 11 and 1 or we would fall asleep in her bed and then I would have to wake up between 1 and 2 and then drive home to sleep in my own bed to then repeat this the next day. We did spend some time at my parent's house as my mom would get pretty angry at me as they would not see me all that often, but at my house we couldn't have sex so I blew that off pretty often as I was enjoying the sex quite a lot.

I then go off to college and she tells me that we should have an open relationship, so that I can enjoy college. Well, that doesn't work. I spend most of my first semester of college depressed because I miss A. and don't know how to cope with out her as for the past three months we have not gone more than a day, and even that is rare, without seeing each other. She then starts driving back and forth from PA to NC seeing me pretty often and after December my parents let me take my car down to NC so we see each other at least once a month and often more than that. I decide that I am not happy in NC and miss her too much to stay there so I transfer to the University of DE. Now that I am only two hours away we see each other basically every weekend as her dad works just up the road from UD and I rode home with him on Friday nights and then back on Monday mornings. This basically continues for the next three year with some tapering off at the end of my college career as her mother gets tired of having house guest all of the time and so I can't go to her house. She lives with her parents until well after she and I break up. During all four years of college, I have a variety of crushes on other girls, occasionally I get the feeling that they have a thing for me, but never gets anywhere, I am loyal to A. the whole time. I also tell her when I have crushes and this of course hurts her so after a while I start to not tell her as much or really down play anything if she asks. The whole open relationship thing never really gets off the ground and really it was never going to work anyway, at least in our relationship it wouldn't have worked.

So after college, I don't know what to do, so I talk to a friend who suggests that I do Americorps in DE. I already know both of the people who are doing the hiring and have been sort of friends with both of them for a while through this other mutual friend. This apparently sends A. into a tailspin, I hear this from my mom who was never a huge fan of this relationship anyway, so I take some of this with a grain of salt. But I do believe that this is the beginning of the end as I look back on the relationship. Matters are not helped when I inadvertently tell A. that I have a crush on one of the girls that I am sharing an apartment with. This crush dissipates rather quickly, but it was still there at one point and Katie and I are friends throughout the whole living together thing (I am living with one other guy and one other girl for a while until the other girl moves out and then I am living with two other guys and Katie). Anyway, so we have a great time toward the end, we go to Philly together for her birthday/Valentine's Day and have a good time. But within a few months we have broken up, really she dumps me for another guy. They are married less than a year after we break up and are still together, so the relationship between A. and I lasted just over five years. We still talk and for a while were talking rather regularly, but since her phone got turned off we have not talked for a while.

So why am I now spilling my guts out like this. Well, one it was cathartic to talk about my first love and I figured it would have the same effect to do this as well and so far it has. Also, because I will probably see her when I go home for Thanksgiving although we have tried to get together before and it doesn't normally work. Although, I did see her this summer when I went up to Baltimore with a friend of mine. It was good to see her, we share some great memories and she did help me get through some rough patches in my life. I also miss having that close a friend, I have told her that I wish we had never really dated or that we had really broken up when I went to college because then we would not have lost the friendship we had. She does not like when I say this and I have no regrets truly, but I do wonder how my life would be different if I had not spent my entire college life with one woman. I also am writing this because this explains much of my relationships from that point on with women and as I think about it, in general. I have not had any really good really close friends since she and I broke up, I have not really dated since she and I broke up and I am thinking by finally expelling much of this in this way, I will be able to finally move on. I have moved on in many ways, but I think that until I meet someone else and really start to have a more emotionally intimate not to mention physically intimate relationship I will not be able to totally move on, but also by putting this all out there I am able to write about and think about this relationship and its after effects in another way. If you have read this whole thing, than congratulations and why?? You also now know yet another part of my life and psyche.

P.S.- She has told me point blank that if she ever came down to visit it would be sans husband and that she almost stayed with me when I was in Baltimore if I had had my own room. She then continues that this would lead to sex as her husband is just not doing it for her anymore. This is the final reason that I am writing, I need to get her out of my head in so many ways as I really have no interest in having her have sex with me behind her husband's back. I am not really sure that I am interested in her physically anymore, even if she didn't have a husband. But I also know that since I have not had any affection for over five years as this is how long it has been since we broke up, the flesh would be weak and I would do something that I would regret, by posting this I am hoping to strengthen the flesh and the mind.