My next Chapter

Ok....I've met someone.

J is in her late 30's. She has 4 kids which has kept me from ever seriously dating her, even though we've been casually seeing each other for the last 5 months. I'm finding, however, that the kid issue can be worked around. That will be the only thing that stops us from getting married. Which means that we'll probably stay boyfriend/girlfriend for quite awhile...maybe even up to the 2 years that I'd originally stated. She knows everything about me, though.

We met because I took out her best friend, and she wrote me to tease me about it. She lived in Montana at the time, so it was safe for me to let my guard down and be myself with her since I never thought I'd date her. Then she got a job in Utah, and moved down here in August. She's been to Karaoke a couple of times. We went out, had a blast. I even crashed a date she'd had with another guy in a weekend that she was visiting(I was her Saturday date...he was her Friday date after karaoke)

So...she's been divorced 4 years, and never wanted to get married again, but something changed for her at the temple wedding of a friend. J suddenly opened herself to the idea of that in her life again. So...one of the other guys she'd been dating asked her to be exclusive, which freaked her out, and she called me for advice. I was thrilled that she was able to take that step so I encouraged her to accept his offer. Then it occurred to me that I'd never be able to date her or kiss her again and that our relationship would change. It seriously made me cry. Of course, I 'knew' I could never offer her what he was since there was the kid issue, so I just wiped my tears and wished her well after she'd wiped hers.

Some time passed, and she texted me that he's driving her crazy and she needed to talk to me to sort things out. So, I went to her house, totally thinking that it was just her nerves about relationships. It wasn't. he totally wasn't the guy for her. It was like having a 6th child around, literally. So I counseled her to end it politely, and look elsewhere. This suddenly put me into a very interesting position. Before, I'd had pretty good emotional walls up, but those had come down earlier. So here I was, emotionally naked, and her SHE was totally available. We realized that we were in love with each other.

It took a couple weeks of sorting and talking and disclosing before we decided that we'd let the future take care of itself, but for the present, we couldn't NOT be together. So on Sept 15th I asked her to be exclusive with me. suddenly we realized that we'd both been playing the field pretty wide, and there were many people we had to let down (some gently, some not) before we could announce that we were a couple. That wasn't fun, but I don't regret my decision to be with her for one second. I've always known that I needed to find a woman that I absolutely cherished 1000% in order to have the courage and strength to not hit on everything in a skirt. That's how I feel towards J.

There are still many things that could torpedo this,(my plan to move to LA in 2009 being a big one) but as I told her...as long as we're still willing to find the gates in the fences that come up, and build ladders to scale the huge walls, we'll be OK.