this is where i wanted to be.

this april will be 2 years of living the single life.  i'm not going to lie - i've loved it!  the last 2 years have been about me - where i want to go, who i want to spend my time with & how i want to live.  it's been a solid run of the stephanie show & i am not complaining.

Christopher
We Dated Aug. 2010-Apr. 2012

my last relationship wasn't the best.  christopher & i met at a wedding & we were long distance from the get go.  it's not like we met & dated for 6 months before he moved away - it was always that way.  if i'm honest with myself, it was really good for the first month.  30 days of goodness.  the rest was a fight - a fight for weekends to see him, a fight for him to make me priority, a fight about money, a fight about his house, a fight about my job, a fight about his involvement with the freemasons.  pretty much anything was on the table.

all of my friends from college were engaged.  i felt like i was getting left behind, so i clinged to the next guy who asked me to dinner.  when it was good it was so very good but when it was bad it was really ugly.  we just weren't good for each other.  with everything in me i wanted him to be the one.

i gave it everything i had.

he said we weren't engaged because i was messy so i learned how to tidy-up my apartment.
he said he wouldn't marry a woman who couldn't cook so i learned how to cook.
he said we weren't engaged because i was high strung so i learned to keep my feelings to myself.

& he took me to pick out an engagement ring twice.  he took me to get my ring finger sized 4 times.  he knew who he wanted to officiate & who his groomsmen would be.  he did everything except actually ask the question.  so i held on & i hoped & i promised.

i became someone else to be with him & i hardly even noticed.

i'm not saying i was perfect in the matter, i definitely played my part.  i felt neglected, unappreciated & unimportant so i was ugly & i was mean.  i'm often surprised that it lasted almost 2 years.  & at the end i was shattered.  i was hardly a resemblance of the woman i was before him.  i was in pieces on the floor.

learning how to put myself back together was a valuable lesson.

the journey through reconstruction hasn't been easy.  but i've learned so much about myself, about the people around me, about life.  i've spent a plethora of time exploring these questions:

why is everyone else around me happily settled down & i'm single?  why do the men i date day dream about marrying me, but never follow through?  why have 2 of my 3 long term boyfriends taken me to pick out engagement rings but never asked?  how did i get here?

the answers are complex & strange.  it's funny - the dating choices i make haven't reflected who i am at all.  it's like some other person makes these choices & i go

"alright, cool.  yea he's cute.  do i love him?  yea i think so."

& once i drop the l-bomb i'm in for the long haul.  i don't drop the l-bomb & then walk away.  that's me; in it 110%.

now, if i wanted to do a complete man-history of my life, it would include more men than anyone has time for.  we don't really have time to talk about jose, darren, michael, thomas, jonathan, garret & all the other random dates, month-long-boyfriends & guys-i-shoulda-left-alone.  most of those relationships lasted 6 months or less, they're super trivial.  when i think about the other significant boyfriends i've had it's an automatic: jeff & joe.

i finally started to notice a pattern in all of my significant relationships: i'm a huge fan of unavailable men.

jeff was a high school student, a star on the soccer team & he owned his own business.  he was busy.  he wasn't really available.  joe was divorced & didn't want to get married again.  young me thought i could change that, change him.  he wanted someone, he didn't really want a relationship.  he wasn't available.

i can even go back through & tell you by name the guys i went after because they had girlfriends.  that when a guy would say to me:

"i don't want a relationship right now."

what i would hear is:

"come on.  try me.  i dare you."

when you look at it that way, it makes sense that the men who actually end up dating me aren't really all that available for a relationship.  i've found exactly what i've been looking for.  that's why i'm here.  this is where i wanted to be because loving someone & trusting your life & your heart to someone is a huge risk.  it's scary & it's unpredictable.

i'm single because i wanted to be single.
i'm unmarried because i wanted to be unmarried.
i'm here because this is where i wanted to be.

wow.  saying it out loud & seeing it flow from my fingers to my computer screen is so weird.  i finally said it out loud.  now i can't pretend like it didn't happen.

i'm here because this is where i wanted to be.

there's truth in those words, but i'm finally ready to make a change.