a blossoming relationship?

Since I last left you, Brad and I went on a half a dozen more dates — from a fun sushi dinner to dinner at his place to a microbrewery tour and sampling. Gosh, we’ve had fun! We’re flirty and cute together — and I love how boyish-looking he is!

And all the while, I continued to wonder if this was going anywhere. Between our parenting schedules, we managed to see each other every ten days to two weeks — which was simply not enough for me to feel a growing emotional closeness. He greeted me with such affection that, even if I was feeling a little grumpy about the interval between our dates or the quality of our communication between times, any tension simply dissipated on contact.

Finally, after our evening the brewery, I said to him:  “You know one of the things that I find so attractive about you is that you’re so ‘F*CK YEAH!’ about life…so if I’m anything less than a ‘F*CK YEAH!’ to you, you’ve got to cut me loose.”

Without hesitation, he exclaimed, “F*CK YES!”

And we kissed (some more). And talked about whether we were ready to be in a relationship…YES! And we talked about meeting him meeting my children and our consummating the relationship (remember my rule:  intercourse only after exclusivity) and other things to come. And even if we hadn’t yet negotiated all of the details, I tossed and turned for hours that night with the giddiness of a schoolgirl so so happy that I could now call Brad my “boyfriend.”

As a few days went by, it became clear that the momentum had not, in fact, changed. Nor had our communication:  while mine might be sweet and flirty, his was tactical / functional — the sort of communication you might get from a husband…or an even more disinterested party, e.g.:

“I’m in training today. How’s your morning?”

And so I looked forward to our next date, during which I would share this communication challenge / opportunity as something that might be a risk for us in a relationship…