What Goes Around Comes Around
My girlfriend lives in Ventura, which is about an hour away. When I was younger, that was called "geographically undesirable" - now it's practically next door. Or so it seems.
She also has a pre-teen daughter. Her mother lives with her too. And yet she drives down here almost every weekend to see me. I guess I go up there once a month, or maybe every five or six weeks, partly because there's more to do where I live and partly because she just likes the drive, I suppose.
We've been doing a class on Judaism every Monday night for about three months, and now it's over, so I had a free Monday evening last night. She emailed me and asked if she should come down. I replied that I was going to the New Beverly Cinema to see Scarface and Hell's Angels, and that she was welcome to join me if she wanted to.
I guess that was a mistake. I can see that it might have worked better to let her know my plans in advance, tell her how much I wanted to see those movies and how I'd been looking forward to them for two months. Nevertheless, I'm actually shocked by how she reacted.
She's now wondering if I want to start dating other people, or if I want to be with her at all. I suppose she thinks I took someone else to those movies and just didn't tell her about it. It's disturbing to realize that she thinks I'm capable of that sort of betrayal. It's one thing to date more than one person at a time in a casual way, although I've never been able to sustain that kind of life for very long - it's quite another to date someone behind your girlfriend's back.
Well, I've tried to reassure her while at the same time letting her know that she doesn't get to make up stories about me that aren't true and then start looking for evidence to support them. Anyone who does that will, in fact, find such evidence, even though it isn't there. As James Burke once said, "If you believe the cosmos is made up of omelette, you build instruments specifically designed to find traces of intergalactic yolk." And you'll find it, too.
This is a learning experience for me - assuming it all works out all right, it will be just about the first time I've managed to sustain a romantic relationship through a crisis of confidence. Stay tuned.
Benshlomo says, Like everything else, love is a balancing act.
She also has a pre-teen daughter. Her mother lives with her too. And yet she drives down here almost every weekend to see me. I guess I go up there once a month, or maybe every five or six weeks, partly because there's more to do where I live and partly because she just likes the drive, I suppose.
We've been doing a class on Judaism every Monday night for about three months, and now it's over, so I had a free Monday evening last night. She emailed me and asked if she should come down. I replied that I was going to the New Beverly Cinema to see Scarface and Hell's Angels, and that she was welcome to join me if she wanted to.
I guess that was a mistake. I can see that it might have worked better to let her know my plans in advance, tell her how much I wanted to see those movies and how I'd been looking forward to them for two months. Nevertheless, I'm actually shocked by how she reacted.
She's now wondering if I want to start dating other people, or if I want to be with her at all. I suppose she thinks I took someone else to those movies and just didn't tell her about it. It's disturbing to realize that she thinks I'm capable of that sort of betrayal. It's one thing to date more than one person at a time in a casual way, although I've never been able to sustain that kind of life for very long - it's quite another to date someone behind your girlfriend's back.
Well, I've tried to reassure her while at the same time letting her know that she doesn't get to make up stories about me that aren't true and then start looking for evidence to support them. Anyone who does that will, in fact, find such evidence, even though it isn't there. As James Burke once said, "If you believe the cosmos is made up of omelette, you build instruments specifically designed to find traces of intergalactic yolk." And you'll find it, too.
This is a learning experience for me - assuming it all works out all right, it will be just about the first time I've managed to sustain a romantic relationship through a crisis of confidence. Stay tuned.
Benshlomo says, Like everything else, love is a balancing act.
posted by benshlomo at 11:23 AM
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