“What does your significant other think of all your Sunday Boyfriends?”
Man do I get this question a lot.
“Doesn’t he get jealous?”
“Does he read the blog?”
“Is he real?”
I get those questions, and hundreds of variations of it, too.
So let me set the record straight: Yes, he exists. Yes, he reads the blog. In fact he is the first person to read it as I rely on his honest and supportive perspective to help me make each post as strong as it can be. But let’s be clear…if you’re asking if he gets jealous, then you’re missing the Sunday Boyfriend point. Remember, a SB is comfortable and always there for you; there is nothing, let me repeat, NOTHING comfortable about jealousy. Jealousy is fear, insecurity, and lack of trust. And I can assure you my Significant Other is courageous, secure, and both trusting and trustworthy.
While a Sunday Boyfriend relationship can be salacious (and all the more power to you if you are single, have one, and that is what you want). For me, having a Significant Other, I am not in the market to betray anyone’s trust. Because once that’s gone…it’s gone. Yes, I am a flirt. Yes, I have multiple Sunday Boyfriends. And yes, my Significant Other knows all about my friendships with them because I tell him. While you could say it’s polyamory, there’s nothing sexual about my Sunday Boyfriends, so if that’s what you’re thinking…well, cut it out! I believe in surrounding myself with great people and that’s why I choose to have my SBs around. They all enhance my life experience in their own unique ways and I hope that doesn’t change. And seriously, couldn’t we all benefit from a little more care in our lives? Why are so many people afraid of having strong friendships with members of the opposite sex?
My SO is the type of person, not just type of man, who knows a well-rounded individual is one who continually learns from multiple sources of wisdom. As such, he doesn’t get jealous of any of my friendships, Sunday Boyfriend or any other kind. He wants me, and encourages me to be the kind of person that continually seeks out knowledge so we always feel as though our lives, our decisions, our contributions matter. I hope I am serving up a fair amount of reciprocity because I am a better, happier person when sharing with my SO. Sure, sure, we argue; goodnight Irene, we’re not perfect. But we learned the hard way what it takes to work on something we value.
From his point of view, and mine, all that matters is that our friendships add value to our overall happiness. A happier you/me means a happier us. It doesn’t matter if our friends are male or female. We both know that it is unrealistic, let alone unfair, to think one person on the planet is supposed to fulfill all your happiness needs. All the life connections we had before we met, the connections that helped shape the people we are today, shouldn’t suddenly be negated because some societal, Disney-esque notion tells you there is only one way to achieve “happily ever after.” Nor should you stop developing and nurturing friendships just because society tells us you shouldn’t. Get comfortable with the idea that nurturing your own growth includes addressing all your needs in this life. Because if you aren’t taking responsibility for your own care and happiness I have news for you…you’ll never be happy. And the flip side of that…others around you won’t be happy. So let go of the taboo about a woman being friends with a man (see my other post tackling this subject). Go after the things in this life that matter to you, and be the type of person that celebrates and encourages happiness…in whatever form it makes.
And while my Significant Other thanks all of you who have compared him to a saint and have wanted to know if he has a brother, he wants you to know he’s just a guy who loves a girl. But being together nearly half our lives, I know he’s more than this modest statement. My Significant Other and I work well together now…but that wasn’t always the case.
Like every young love story, we couldn’t get enough of each other in the beginning. Ah, instant attraction can be so powerful, can’t it? The moment he starting working at my place of business, I started summoning my courage to ask him out. At that time I’d asked guys out in the past, but it was still a nerve wracking experience. A year after my father’s passing, I was still very much in the throes of grief, but I was tired of kicking myself for not going after what I wanted in the past; a sucker for a smart, confident, and sarcastically funny brunette (no Brad Pitts need apply, thank you), I set a course to rid myself of fear in order to dive in.
After six weeks of reciting Stuart Smalley (“you’re good enough, smart enough…” yada yada), I eventually got the ball rolling with a carefully crafted email invitation for lunch. He responded in five minutes with, “How about dinner instead?” Like I’ve said several times in my blog…confidence is sexy.
So we had dinner.
And another.
And another.
And were together eight years.
Wait? Are you thinking that would make me 16? Ah, no. Not even on a good hair day could I pull off being 16 again (plus you couldn’t pay me enough to go back and do it all over again…it was hard enough the first time). The short version: We were together. We were young and stubborn. We were apart. While apart we found ourselves. We came back together as stronger individuals and discovered life can be a more interesting and fulfilling journey if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, to be wrong, and to live your life from your gut.
Let me elaborate.
When we first met, I was wrapped up in black and white thinking. Every argument had a clear cut right or wrong answer and I wanted to be right (winning) more than I wanted to be wrong (losing). So while we had fun and great conversations about things we both enjoyed, I became a ferocious orator when conflict arose; being hot headed and Irish, my young and foolish tendencies to avoid losing, and his “I don’t want to rock the boat so you’re always right” mentality made even us more the losers. We didn’t realize until years later that had one of us broke our patterns (me allowing myself to see the strength in the words, “I’m sorry;” and my SO to start taking more care with his needs rather than subduing my anger), would we have been all the more winners (in ways that are so much better than Charlie Sheen could ever know).
But sometimes, much to the chagrin of my gotta-have-it-now-psyche, wisdom arrives at a tortoise’s pace. It took years for wisdom’s lightbulb to go on – at least for me. I had a hard time letting go of this “I gotta-be-right-all-the-time-or-I’ll-break” mentality. For each year that went by where I continued to “solve” arguments at the top of my lungs, I really kept losing…faith, desire, my Significant Other, myself. When it got down to the point of saying, “Why bother talking? We’ll just fight about something,” my Significant Other and I decided to call it quits. Yep. After eight years of my negative, winning-at-all-costs behavior, and his fear to rock the boat, we quit. It didn’t mean we didn’t love each other. We were just exhausted having the same arguments with the same outcomes and leaving with the same feelings of, “Why doesn’t (s)he get it?” And although, in my mind at the time, I won more arguments, that winning feeling went away quickly when I took a long hard look at myself. Turns out, I was a big loser.
Getting to that place of finding out everything you thought was right is wrong is humbling. It nearly broke me. I literally hit rock bottom when I saw how angry, closed off, and ugly I was because this is not who I wanted to be. So while it was a four year-long process of digging my way through self discovery, it was well worth the payment. And it turns out, my Significant Other was going through his own process, too, which was the hardest and best thing we could have done for ourselves and each other.
We are now in a place where we can jokingly call our time apart, “The Dark Times.” We each had serious and not so serious relationships during these four years. (Lucky for me, I met both my East Coast and West Coast Sunday Boyfriends during the Dark Times.) All of these experiences, great or not, enabled us to put a perspective on both who we are and who we wanted to become as individuals. And this lesson, taking the time and making the investment in yourself, is one they don’t teach you in school. It is, ironically, the hardest lesson to learn because not everyone puts in the time to get to their nitty gritty; to look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge the warts and all. Too many times we downplay faults because we are told they don’t make for good conversation.
Plus, there is this erroneous idea that showing your weaknesses means you’re weak.
I wish I could eradicate this thinking with the wave of a magic wand like in fairy tales, but I can’t. I can only be one voice out there telling you, reminding you, that showing, sharing, owning your weaknesses makes you courageous, strong, more confident, and beautiful. Any one who tells you different isn’t worthy of your time and energy. Let them be ugly away from you. You can make that real choice and live in the real world and be really happy…I promise.
I don’t want you to walk away thinking the coming back together of my SO and me was easy. It wasn’t. It started only when I struggled to think of a time I had apologized to my SO. In the eight years we were together, I was saddened to discover I hadn’t taken ownership of any of my faults and shortcomings – rather I pinned them all on him. And in those eight years he never told me to get a grip and pound sand. He just took it. And that was the ugliest slap in the face to take…to learn all those years I thought I was a princess, I was really the wicked queen. Sure, there were two of us in that failed relationship, but to remedy my part, I needed to get my big girl pants on and finally apologize.
So I called.
He didn’t hang up.
I was surprised by the steady flow of tears as I let go years of shame and apologized.
He still didn’t hang up.
Instead he reminded me that many people love me…and then asked if I wanted to get a cup of coffee.
So we had coffee.
And another.
And another.
And made a promise to have many more.
Here’s hoping we can all be the kind of people, Significant Others, who encourage being true to who you are, accept and love all the warts for what they are, and are open enough to hear what needs to be said…no matter how long it took to get there.
As always, stay comfy and be good to yourself, your Sunday Boyfriends…and your Significant Other.
If you are looking for more SB information, check us out at our blog, our Facebook page, or Twitter.
