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Compton and Long Beach Together Now You Know You In Trouble

My first real "Relationship" with a woman was actually my first everything. My first kiss, first sexual encounter, first love, and first break-up. For me, My first girlfriend was really all about those firsts. I was so excited and eager to jump into that phase of my young adult life that I don't think WHO the girl was really mattered all that much (Sorry Sara). That first relationship was simply a voyage of discovery. Like Columbus but without the smallpox and rape.

My second Relationship was about taking everything I thought I knew about women and scraping it. I made the foolish error of assuming all women were exactly the same. It was terribly confusing for me to watch all the things that seemed to make Sara crazy about me, simply make Liz crazy. So where my first relationship was basically a nessesary exploration of ME and MY reaction to all this stuff. The second one forced me to realize that there were actually TWO people involved. Good lesson.

Subsequent relationships were really just fine tuning the lessons learned from the first two. Specifically: Understanding what I need combined with what I should be willing to provide. Each romantic experience leading me to where I am today...which is relatively clueless.

Things have changed of course since I first began dating. 17-year-old Baditude (A.K.A "Acne-tude") had different conscerns and goals than the 31-year-old version. Actually it's more acurate to say that both versions share the same goals, but 15 years later I just have more things I'm trying to accomplish. [ATTN Math Nerds: all ages are aproximated. Get off my back.]

Trying to determine if the woman I'm dating is someone I want to have children with adds a whole different dimension to things. It kinda adds a lot of baggage to an already crowded overhead compartment. This added concern can weigh a realtionship down and cause one to over-analyze the person they are with rather than just enjoy their company.

Enter "Long Beach Becky" - another first for me. My first entirely casual/romantic relationship with a woman. I've kinda known Becky for years now since she's been lurking around the fringes of my social circles. At New Years we found ourselves talking quite a bit and getting along well. We were also the only 2 unattached peoples at the party (which may have helped). One thing led to another and by the wii hours of the morning we were giving the married couples something to giggle about.

One of the things that attracted me to LBB that night was her laid back but adventerous spirit. It is this very combination of personality traits that makes our relationship fun and easy and doomed all at the same time. This is because Becky's adventerous spirit is taking her out of the country for 2 years come July. But it's her laid back attitude that allows us to still have fun together.

Now I will freely admit that while the two of us have no problem getting along, I'm not entriely sure that we have a lot in common in terms of how we chose to spend our time. If the circumstances here weren't so finite, it might give me pause for thought. I'd have to go through all these different senarios in my mind: "Are we compatible in the long run?", "Would we be a good team in terms of rasing kids?", "Would our families get along?", all those annoying questions that start to pop into my 30-year old head when I start to "evaluate" a potential partner.

But LBB is outta here in a couple months and there's really no reason for me to harbor any expectations. There's no need to break anything down. We just hang out and have fun. Which is pretty cool. I would even go so far as to say that I probably enjoy this whole thing MORE as a result. There's no pressure, no hard and fast rules and we are both understanding of the other's situation.

Basically this means I don't get bent out of shape when she can't hang out due to her crazy schedule (I actually haven't seen Becky in like 3 weeks), and I'm free to investigate other possible romances. In a word this whole thing is just "easy". Will I be bummed when she leaves? Of course. At the same time I dont know if I would have gotten very attached to begin with, without things being so...attachment-free.

So there we are. Oh and those of you paying attention to the title of this post: Yes that does mean that I'm the "Compton". This is because I'm gangstamuthafucka.

-E

PS: I turn 31 in a few minutes.

PPS: It's about time someone did this.

Labels: becky, girls