The guy I should be looking for...

According to my best friend and college roommate... I should have listened to her all along.

1) Intellectual, able to foster and appreciate your love of thinking and ability to come up with on-the-spot answers that sometimes seem crazy, but always make sense. You're going to marry someone that just wants to lie in bed and listen to you talk about whatever, just because he finds you interesting and wants to hear the sound of your voice (and vice versa). Rational: Whenever you praise the guys you're dating, you always always talk about how much you like talking to them about anything and everything. How the conversations turn interesting, whether or not you have the same opinion. You're very intellectual in a non-snob way and I think you need that in another person. (he had that... but there will be others right...)

2) Outgoing personality, whether that means coming with you to a bar night with your friends and being social or jumping in the truck for a camping weekend by the lake. Shares your enthusiasm for life and adventure, but not over the top. Rational: You're naturally an outgoing person that has a sense of adventure and a need to escape every now and then. You have a real connection with nature and appreciate its beauty. I feel like you want to share that with a partner. (I thought he was this...)

3)Emotionally intelligent, hopeless romantic, and rational. Rational: you talk about your feelings and you naturally have a desire as a psychologist to understand your feelings. You probably want a guy that takes the time to know what he feels, how to communicate those feelings to you, and committed to always being open with you (but yet to a certain extent "be a man" and not be overly emotional). You also want to be madly in love with someone that is equally mad about you, yet rational to know that wild feelings may fade and is willing to commit to you based not solely on passionate feelings. (after we broke up and he came back and proposed... I thought he had this because he wanted to be sure of his feelings... he still does but didn't figure it out and just asked. I think as he "grows up" whoever she is will be very lucky)

4) Family focus, yet independent. Above all, family is utterly important, particularly your family. You want a man who will devote himself to the family you grow together and has similar devotion and loyalty standards that you have in your family. At the same time, you don't want a mamma's boy and you want to be #1 in his life. The family he comes from probably has to be of similar structure/type as yours or maybe he will come from no family or different family but appreciate/want your family-style, but above all he has to value family. I don't think you can escape your long-standing desire for children, but you might prove me wrong.
(The more I hang out with kids... the more I realize I have no patience for them... I would have a nervous breakdown.) I feel like you were never really comfortable with his family, whether that be the class differences, how they treated you, or how he treated you in relationship with his family. (This is very true, this is the area in which we had the most conflict and should have been a red flag... I don't think he ever really trusted me... he never tried to make me a "part" of his family... )

So My EX-Fiance had most of these traits... I was close.... maybe I was willing to settle... but I don't think it wold have been settling. He was the most honest and good person I ever met. He was honest and had so much integrity. He made me want to be a better person and I knew I didn't have much to offer him other than me... but for the first time in my life, I thought I was enough. I would have worked so hard to give him everything he wanted in life... because I thought he would do the same. We only wanted each other to be happy all the time, which sometimes lead to a stalemate... but it was always okay with me. It is so hard because my head understands the logic, understands it probably wasn't right... but you can't control how you feel... what your heart feels. Maybe in 76 weeks my heart will feel something different.

Sleepless nights...

I hate it when I can't sleep. It is one of those viscous cycles that doesn't end. You try so hard to fall asleep and it is precisely because you are trying that you can't. I have a trick that usually works... but not even that helped tonight. I say my ABC's over and over again... well singing it in my head. I do it to just stop the rest of my thoughts, or drown them out because even though most people know their ABC's frontwards and some even backwards... it still takes concentration on the chunking used, as well as the tune and draws on happy memories from childhood that make you feel warm and fuzzy and kind of protected. At least for me... but there are times when it doesn't work... like tonight. When your subconscious mind if overwhelming and you don't know what you are thinking about but your mind won't quit. So going on two days with just a couple hours of restless sleep is going to be fun... I know what is bothering me... but there is nothing I can do about it... so I keep thinking it over... trying to find something I missed. I am hoping this will be enough of a distraction to clear my head for just long enough that I can fall asleep. Wish me luck.

First Friday Night Alone

Well, I guess I survived my first Friday night alone in a long time. I was lucky to avoid it for the last two weeks because my brother was in town, and then because I was at home with my family. I had some invites to go out... but I stayed home and watched Charlie and the Chocolate factory. It was a lonely night, but I kept busy by cleaning and "washing my hair".... ;) It was very bittersweet because of everything I was looking forward to... I was looking most forward to him having Friday nights off. I was like, we can "date" like normal people. I was bummed about the rest, about not seeing each other three days a week, but then I thought it would also be a good "adjustment" period while we were first married. Allow us to get used to each other without being around each other all the time. I was excited and had so many plans... we could go ride the paddle boats a the lake, go for a bike ride together, they have these really cool moonlight hikes at some of the national/state parks around here. We could take a night and drive out to Bartlett lake, pitch a tent in the dark and be back the next day in time for him to go to work. We could go out drinking, dancing, and eat greasy food after 2am when the bars closed... I wanted to go to the clubs downtown, and I LOVE dive bars. We could have finally had a long dinner over fondue... driven up to Flagstaff... taken a day in Sedona... Hiked Camelback mountain... gone to the drive in movies... stayed up talking all night because we could both sleep late... watch a movie and have sex all night without either of us having to go to work... driving out to the middle of the desert to look at the stars and watch the sunrise together. Gone to the grand canyon to do the same.... Share a pitcher of Sangria at Cafe Boa so I could get hime a Caprese salad that he loved so much... play basketball in the park late at night... play midnight tennis.... take walks along the lake... Go to the Ostrich festival and eat until we had a stomach ache... Go to the state fair... play twilight golf... go to a night event at the zoo or a waterpark... catch a diamondbacks game together... watch a hockey game together... maybe even try to get tickets to a Cardinals game.... go to dinner with his family... hang out with my sister and her friends... visit his friends... drag him to a broadway show at Gammage... watch a "movie in the park".... go to a wine bar together so he could teach me about wine.... hit the driving range... ride those go-karts he loves so much... take a 24 hour trip to Vegas... go to a concert... Go to a casino in AZ together ( I still haven't been to one here)... Climb a rockwall in a gym together... sit out on the patio and fall asleep out there in each other's arms... maybe even take a cooking class together... or just experiement with cooking... go iceskating... Share a banana split together... try every kind of shake there is at Chee burger chee burger... go for a midnight swim... trade massages... run through the sprinklers together in the park at night like when I was a kid... play board games... play video games... watch bad movies... and those are only one night iteams on the things I wanted to do...

I guess overall I was looking forward to having a "real" date night. So now, Fridays are a very sad night for me... I will probably stay home on Friday for awhile... at least until I won't feel guilty for being out... until I think I won't feel like I am going out of obligation or to entertain others... I know I can still do all these things, and probably with lots of different people... but it won't be the same... becasue those people may come and go and I will have to relive the memories by myself... if we had been together... we could have laughed and relived the moments together... but hey, at least I have survived this first one. : / I hope he is having more fun on his Friday nights... Actually, I'm sure he is.