MEN!

As I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to write about in my new blog, my boyfriend looks over my shoulder and reads the line under my title. Life, liberty and the persuit of learning about myself and happiness...to this he responds "I'm all the damn happiness you need!"...smart-ass. However, it's been true since I've met him.

I dated a good amount before him. Not a lot of men, but I think I covered all the bases, tall, short, poor, rich, commitment phobe, obsessive, younger, older. The list goes on...really. I dated all the losers. The guy who told me he loved me the first time we talked on the phone, the college guy who called drunk every saturday night after the frat party, the guy who said he wanted a serious relationship only to find out that he was married and just using me to get back at his cheating wife, and my favorite, the guy who was afraid of my kitten (I'll tell that story later). The funny thing is that my friends, family and I thought I was a commitment phobe because I would never get serious with any of these guys. It's funny that we all thought I was the problem. Are these guys the norm now? I knew I dated differently. I dated with confidence. I knew what wasn't working and got out. I didn't take it personally...well for the most part. You know how they say that you keep dating the same type of people again and again. These guys were all different. From one guy to the next, different, different, different. The one thing they had in common...they were all loosers!

I remember thinking I need to stop dating all these loosers. I mean my match.com profile went from cute and funny (yes it was witty and I got compliments) to cute and funny with a list of terms and conditions at the end. I actually wrote "no casual sex" in my profile (didn't stop them from trying). I liked dating but was really getting fed up with these guys. One night after a very strange call from a nice man I had been seeing. He was visiting home and called me up and asked if I got any strange calls from boston. A "friend" of his had gone through his phone and wondered what my name and number was. Meaning he was decided to hook up with an ex while at home. I'm not dumb, I knew what was going on and deserved more respect than that. That relationship was finished. I remember saying out loud that it was time to change who I was seeing. I really couldn't deal with these guys. But how do you change who you are dating, when guys are such good lairs and will do or say anything to get a girl in bed. I have a good gut instinct that had kept me out of some very bad situations, but it wasn't totally honed to keep out all the losers. All I knew is that I needed to crack down on who I was willing to go out with. I had no idea how I was going to do this.

Cut to 1am a week later. I got an email to my match account. Now a girl has rules. I would never respond to an email or wink until a day or two later...don't want to seem to eager. But this email was different. It was honest, charming, funny, and caught my attention. I went to his profile and read. It was good...very good. Funny, loves his family, friends are wierd but the best, no bragging, just a good straight forward fun profile. I got a good feeling about this guy. So I broke all the rules and wrote back that night. We ended up writing emails back and forth for a few nights. We moved on to instant messaging. This went on for a month. I don't know if it was actually saying outloud that I needed something different, but this was definatley different. This guy was nice, got to know me, told me about himself and never brought up sex. It was very different. After a month of just talking and a particularly stressful day, we finally decided to meet for coffee. We talked for a few hours. I knew that what ever happened, that I would like to hang out with this guy. I didn't know where it would go, he didn't even try to kiss me after our coffee date. This was definately a new experience! We didn't kiss until the forth date and as we first kissed, I remember thinking "oh I'm in trouble!"...in that he's the best kisser ever kind of trouble. We've been together two years now. Looking back, I realize that dating all the loosers taught me a lot about me and I don't think I would appreciate my man as much had I not been through all of that. Now girls, that's not an excuse for being in a bad relationship, but in each relationship there is definately something to learn about yourself and other people.