Oh my

Relationships are hard. Do you like them? Do you like them a lot? Do you love them? Do they like you? Do they like you a lot? Do they love you? Do you both feel the same way at the same time?

It’s a miracle that we ever actually find the people we do and get involved with them at all.

Relationships are such an amorphous, vague, ethereal thing. They are incredibly delicate and yet as strong as anything the universe has ever created. I’m not trying to wax poetic. I’m just looking at life and recognizing how relationships are pure luck when you begin them but so much work once you start.

You randomly find someone who attracts you and who is attracted to you and then try to figure out what you have in common and what you can negotiate around the things you don’t have in common. After you make it through a few dates, you decide if it’s worth it to continue, then you date for a while and decide if you want them to meet your friends and eventually your family. Finally, you reach a point where you have to decide if you are comfortable being with that person for the foreseeable future or if it’s been fun, but it’s time to move on.

There are also a million variations on the theme. Some people skip right to ‘happily ever after’ and some never seem to make it past a first date. Some people enjoy the process and some loathe it. Some people think it’s all part of life, and some cannot fathom why anyone would bother.

Why bring it up? Because it is almost Spring in the Northern Hemisphere and hormones are starting to rise like the sap in trees, almost as naturally too. Most of the time you don’t even think about it. You just wake up one day and think there was that person at the event you were at who seemed interesting. Or you saw someone when you were shopping and you’ve seen them before and you begin to wonder about them.

What happens next is often the beginning of some of the strangest stories ever told.

Like the time I dated the guy from another state and went to spend a long weekend with him, which included having dinner with his family, and found myself sitting at the kitchen table where I was given a giant can of beer and served a strange dinner culminating in a second can of beer, it was the only thing I was offered, and chocolate cake and ice cream like a child’s birthday party. That wasn’t even the strange part, although there is something incredibly surreal about drinking a giant can of Foster’s and eating chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. After dinner, the other guest who was there got up and came back in with a vacuum cleaner he had made into a makeshift Flowbee. Which, if you’re not old enough to remember, was a vacuum cleaner attachment which you could use to give yourself and your loved ones a home haircut. Yes, you guessed it. It was home haircut time. But the story doesn’t end there. After the styrofoam plates from dinner were thrown away so the table was cleared, the Flowbee man started to set up. I thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, but then my boyfriend’s mother pulled off her wig to get ready for a haircut. Yes, I said pulled off her wig at the table, in front of me, and offered up her head to the Flowbee man. Uncomfortable doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt.

Then there was the time I met someone, and he seemed nice so we talked and then met up and went for a walk and then went back to his place so we could have a drink because it had rained all week so the ground was soggy and there were mosquitoes everywhere so indoors seemed like a better plan. When we got there, he told me he lived with his sister, still not the weird part. We talked for a while and then we heard a key in the door. Instead of introducing me to his sister, he hurried me into his room, put me in the closet, I was too shocked to say anything, and shut the door on me. Then he whipped oped the closet door again and threw in a Woodstock stuffed animal and slammed the door again. I could hear his sister the whole time. I have no idea why I stayed there; I suppose I was young and foolish, but when she left after a short while he came to get me and apologized and explained she was going through a divorce and he didn’t want to rub salt in the wound. Why I believed him, I’ll never know. Needless to say, I was the unknowing other woman. Which came back to bite me karmically when almost two years later he informed me he was sleeping with eight other women. Not over time, all in the same time frame. Talk about a rude awakening.

There was also the time I was dating in college and my boyfriend came over insanely early to help me pack up and move home for the summer. He arrived about fifteen minutes before my father and soured their relationship forever, since my father could never be convinced he hadn’t stumbled upon the morning after. That only exacerbated the issue when the first phone bill came and it was atrociously high because that was back in the days when calling someone before 5:00 meant you payed more for the call. That was a rough summer for a number of reasons but when my boyfriend visited and met my great grandmother and my grandmother and they both liked him, things eased up a little. At least, until the next phone bill arrived.

Then there was the few months I dated someone from the deep south who was uncomfortable kissing me in public because we were an interracial couple and he kept waiting for someone to either verbally or physically attack us because we weren’t the same race. That was unfortunate because he was the first person to meet me at my door with flowers and take me on a legitimate date. I was 21 at the time and a senior in college at the time. What can I say? I was a late bloomer.

Then there was the three months or so I dated a Russian who was in the US working on for a company that got him a visa. I thought it was slightly exotic until I spent several months of every weekend being him coming to my apartment with Hillshire Farm ‘Lil smokies’ sausages and pasta and cheese and chocolate pie and a flower only to spend the entire weekend eating sausage and pasta and cheese and pie on my couch. The weekend he came over with a cold and stuffed garlic up his nose was the end of it, though. I was fine with home remedies but when you’re sick, you should use your home remedies at home.

There was also the year and a half I spent with someone who had returned from Iraq with medical issues and we did what we could, but in the end he needed what I couldn’t give him and I needed what he couldn’t give me. His mother wasn’t any help to the situation, but we made our mistakes and had to live with them. The day I found myself on the floor with him on top of me because the kids’ next door were popping balloons and he wanted to protect me from gunfire was one of the saddest days I’ve ever experienced.

There have also been dates that never turned into relationships, like the time I got double conjunctivitis and tried to cancel, but he said it was fine. Clearly it wasn’t fine since my red weepy eyes meant I couldn’t wear my contacts and my glasses were old since I never wore them. I remember going out to dinner and not being able to find the car because it was dark, and I’d forgotten where I’d parked. That was definitely a night I’m sure neither of us forgot. Or the time I went to a party for a friend of mine leaving the place we both worked and met a guy I took home because he was too damn adorable and found out he was a fisherman from a giant Portuguese family which wasn’t ever going to tolerate me. It was a great night, but disappointing to be rejected for who I was before I’d even had a chance to screw anything up. Or the time I dated the intellectual who did crossword puzzles in ink and wouldn’t deign to start a Sunday without reading the Times from front to back, so he’d be well informed. He also liked obscure poetry, which he was always surprised I’d never heard of before. That didn’t go anywhere because my Sunday mornings started with a big breakfast and TV and included laundry and grocery shopping for the week. I was far too mundane for his exhaled life. There are too many more to mention.

Finally, there is my claim to fame, the time I had three dates in one day. I had breakfast with an Italian in construction with a diamond stud in his ear and a wicked grin who kissed me at Dunkin Donuts and smelled like cologne and coffee. I had lunch with a very repressed man who I remember nothing about except that he was so concerned about everything that I was stressed just being around him. The day wrapped up with dinner with an expense account, having businessman who was proud to show off his Escalade and the fact that he had a personal shopper at an expensive store by laying his suit jacket down with the inside out showing off the label sewn onto the pocket. He was unimpressed with my pizza dinner but he was late showing up and there wasn’t going to be anything open by the time he got there so I ordered pizza. Unbeknownst to me, that was a plebeian meal he just couldn’t deal with.

Basically, what I’m saying is relationships can be any number of things with any number of people and can end up going any number of ways. Sometimes you’re lucky and end up with something great, sometimes you get a great story out of it, and sometimes you end up remembering that being single isn’t so bad after all.

If you found this piece interesting be sure to click the little heart button and check out my other work on Vocal. I write on a wide range of topics from different perspectives. If you really liked that you read, please share with your friends on social media. Tips are also welcomed and appreciated. If you want to say hello or ask about my writing experiences, send me an Instagram DM @jennifer.rj.ryan and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you so much for reading.

~Jennifer