19 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
19 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
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Date: 16 Oct 2011 05:53
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Topic: Where To Even Begin?
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Modified: 23 Dec 2011 17:07
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As you can see by the title of this blog, I am married.
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I never thought I would be. I never thought I wanted to be. These are words I never imagined I'd ever be writing in a thousand lifetimes. If I were to go back in time 10 years and suggest to my former self that this whole concept was even possible, he'd have laughed me out of the house as some kind of nut case.
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Lots of guys have girlfriends and sex lives. _Not me. _Lots of guys get married. _Not me. _Lots of guys struggle with conflict, negotiation, and communication, in their relationships. _Not me._
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No, really. Not me.
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I am a hardened bachelor of 43 years. I've never had a romantic interaction of any kind, let alone a full-blown relationship. Yes, that includes decades of sexual abstinence, to the point of absolutely chaste self-denial.
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For decades, I've oscillated between fear and loathing of my desire for love, and sarcastic incredulity at my capacity for it. As a consequence, I studiously limited my social interactions to only those that kept me employable, and never engaged in conversations of a personal nature with anyone. I desperately feared the possibility that my vulnerability would get me hurt, or worse. So complete and so intense was my own self-surveillance, that I would not even permit myself the luxury of movies that included romantic interactions, let alone sex scenes. As a friend once described men like me, I was quite literally a "philosophy monk."
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Well, all that has changed. On Sunday, September 11, 2011, at around 2:30PM, my one true love CJ and I exchanged solemn vows with each other before good friends in a private ceremony in our home that lasted just about 15 minutes. And now, I am a deeply, intensely, happily married man.
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But, wait a minute!
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How does an emotionally emaciated man of 43, after 30 years wandering in a desert of lonely exile (only partly self-imposed) somehow find his way out, and manage to stumble onto the love of his life on the first encounter? How is this possible? Doesn't this sort of thing only happen in movies?
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No doubt, you are thinking I must be deluded, or trying to put a fast one over on you. I certainly would have though that, reading these words 10 years ago: "It can't be."
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I'm here to say now, it can be. It is. I wish I could _give_ you how it feels, because describing it just doesn't do it justice. My heart is awash in gratitude, joy, pleasure, excitement, and any number of other emotions, 24 hours a day.
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It wasn't easy. Not at all. And, to be completely honest, I wasn't simply stumbling out of the desert. I had help. Lots of help from a few extremely important people, without whose understanding, patience, kindness, and willingness to brave the storms of my transformation, I would not now be writing this.
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There is so much to say about how I got here, that I just can't fit it all in this post and expect you to read it entirely. But that's what this blog is all about. How I got here, what life is like for me and CJ now, and where we are going in the future.
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So hang in there, fellow travelers, as I episodically recount for you my experiences and introduce you to the various characters that contributed to this odyssey. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll expose the spectacle of how I exploded my former sheltered life in the suburbs of Chicago, and of course, how I met CJ and how we fell in love forever.
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It is my hope that you might find some inspiration or insight in the stories I will tell, but I make no pretense at being any kind of superior thinker or expert in any way. I just want to share. In any case, I can assure you at least one thing: if nothing else, you will be entertained.
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