Paper Anniversary
Drew and I are getting ready to celebrate our one-year anniversary. The one-year mark is, in my opinion, a good time to take stock. After The Canadian, I promised myself that I wouldn't date a person longer than a year if there were fundamental problems that would prohibit it from becoming a lifelong partnership. (Not that you can ever know for sure if something is going to last forever... but I think you can know for sure when something is definitely heading for the crapper.)
Drew and I have very, very few problems. Here they are in no particular order:
(1) I'm poor. He's not. This can cause a strain at times (mostly on me, who hates to feel like I can't support myself.)
(2) He's in a creative field and I'm in a scientific field. The fact that I have to study acids & bases all day today is of very, very, very little interest to him. When he asks "What's your favorite shade of teal?" I have no idea what teal looks like. (I just googled it to make sure it wasn't something hideous that would make him say, "I read your blog today. I HATE teal! How could you not know that?!?!")
(3) In two years I'll be going to medical school. Hopefully I'll get into a great school in L.A.. I may, however, end up in [insert heinously boring city here]. If we're still together, Drew would have to move to [Chicago? Boston? Bloomington?]. Which could be really rough on him.
We had a long talk about these things a couple weeks ago. Obviously, they're all manageable. #3 is a big one, but there's not much we can do about that now; besides, that's two whole years away so there's really not much point in trying to figure out how to deal with it just yet.
I'm a little more nervous at the one-year mark than I thought I would be. I love him and I love our apartment and I love our life together. But I remember how things turned so sour with The Canadian... how we started taking each other for granted and stopped sleeping together and how it ended with me smashing every dish in the house and shit-bombing his record store.
Okay, I didn't really shit-bomb his record store.
Isn't there a point in any relationship when you have to start sacrificing more of the short-term good for the benefit of the long-term good? "No, Canadian, I don't want to go to your stupid club tonight. I have to get up at 6am. But I'll go anyway because I love you." There's a moment when it starts to feel like work. I'm fine with work; it appeals to my midwestern, blue-collar side -- the side that says if you're not exhausting yourself, you're a useless piece of turd. But I don't want to work for something that's going to end in a pile of broken dishes.
Drew and I aren't at the work point yet. At least I'm not. I'm still stuck in the honeymoon phase... hopefully that'll last another year.
Drew and I have very, very few problems. Here they are in no particular order:
(1) I'm poor. He's not. This can cause a strain at times (mostly on me, who hates to feel like I can't support myself.)
(2) He's in a creative field and I'm in a scientific field. The fact that I have to study acids & bases all day today is of very, very, very little interest to him. When he asks "What's your favorite shade of teal?" I have no idea what teal looks like. (I just googled it to make sure it wasn't something hideous that would make him say, "I read your blog today. I HATE teal! How could you not know that?!?!")
(3) In two years I'll be going to medical school. Hopefully I'll get into a great school in L.A.. I may, however, end up in [insert heinously boring city here]. If we're still together, Drew would have to move to [Chicago? Boston? Bloomington?]. Which could be really rough on him.
We had a long talk about these things a couple weeks ago. Obviously, they're all manageable. #3 is a big one, but there's not much we can do about that now; besides, that's two whole years away so there's really not much point in trying to figure out how to deal with it just yet.
I'm a little more nervous at the one-year mark than I thought I would be. I love him and I love our apartment and I love our life together. But I remember how things turned so sour with The Canadian... how we started taking each other for granted and stopped sleeping together and how it ended with me smashing every dish in the house and shit-bombing his record store.
Okay, I didn't really shit-bomb his record store.
Isn't there a point in any relationship when you have to start sacrificing more of the short-term good for the benefit of the long-term good? "No, Canadian, I don't want to go to your stupid club tonight. I have to get up at 6am. But I'll go anyway because I love you." There's a moment when it starts to feel like work. I'm fine with work; it appeals to my midwestern, blue-collar side -- the side that says if you're not exhausting yourself, you're a useless piece of turd. But I don't want to work for something that's going to end in a pile of broken dishes.
Drew and I aren't at the work point yet. At least I'm not. I'm still stuck in the honeymoon phase... hopefully that'll last another year.
Labels: Drew, Medical School, Money, The Canadian
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