Jerry Timms

None of my friends have been around the last few weekends, so I’ve kind of just been doing my own thing lately. This has been great because it’s given me a chance to sort of feel my way around some new scenes.

So, I was at a party two weekends ago and the cuter, younger crowd reminded me of one of my friends. So I decided to call him and we hung out for awhile. Since then we’ve been spending most of our free time together, and he shall now be referred to as Mr. X…

But let’s back up a bit. A few months ago Rich and I were talking about boyfriends, and about how I was disappointed over someone or another (I honestly can’t remember who we were talking about at the moment). Rich told me something that really stuck with me ever since. He said that I would probably end up with someone I least expect. I thought this was odd, because I’ve always prided myself in knowing exactly what I want. So how could I end up with someone I least expect?

Last weekend I was out with Mr. X, and I kept expecting to find something wrong with him - or at the very least something that might prove that we didn’t have enough in common, or that he was in some other way not a good fit for me. But, that didn’t happen and I really enjoyed every moment with him, and felt so at ease and happy to be around him.

What’s really interesting about all this is how much I’ve learned about myself in the last couple weeks. Mr. X is not my typical “type” and is so much the opposite of this that I even found it a little awkward to talk about him to Jerry. I thought Jerry might think I’m crazy for pursuing this. But what’s crazy is that Mr. X has managed to show me in just a couple weeks that I may have been totally wrong about what I’ve been looking for.

I’ve typically been looking for someone my age or older, preppy and successful (with career, finances, etc.). However, I’m usually disappointed with guys because they end up being either boring, emotionally unavailable or unexpressive, romantically scarred, too busy to be bothered with dating…or some combination of two or more of those attributes.

I think I got it into my head a long time ago that I was only interested in older guys because I was generally way ahead of most of my peer group in terms of career, home and other life stages. After dating some guys who were rather flaky and emotionally immature I decided that my odds of finding someone more compatible with me would be higher if I limited myself to an older age group.

From there followed the bulk of my dating history which included guys who were so busy (the lawyers were the worst about this) that they could barely be bothered to go on a proper date or stay up past ten o’clock at night, guys who were so uptight with social anxiety that they couldn’t be in a crowd larger than a dozen people, and guys who were so romantically and emotionally injured from past relationships that they could never have committed to anything more than tenuous dating. Not all of them were like this, sometimes things just didn’t click fully into place.

Well, I’ve met someone who is none of these things. I can look in his eyes and tell that although he’s had some disappointments, he hasn’t given up. He likes to go out and have fun like I do. He hasn’t determined the rest of his life so rigidly that it’s going to be impossible to figure out how to fit me into it. And when he kept our first date even though he actually had strep throat, but didn’t want to cancel…well, he pretty much had me there. And with his edge and emotional depth that I find so incredibly sexy, I can’t keep my hands off him when he’s around me. If this works out to be a long term thing then you’ll meet him!

So there you go, as you can tell I’m gushing over this guy right now. I haven’t taken leave of my senses…I know it’s only been a couple weeks. Although I can tell you that I’m very excited because it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way and learned so much about myself before. Those flashing lights come from everywhere. I’m in a little bit of a haze because everything I thought I knew about my romantic future has been swept away, and now I’m just watching to see how things unfold from here.