Since my last post there have been a couple of new things going on. The weekend after the "first date" a few of the girls from work and I went out to this dueling piano bar that I love. We had a blast. And now a couple of the girls seem to want to make "girls night" a semi-regular thing. This is totally awesome! Many of the girls that I work with never get out because they're grad students and when you're a grad student school is your life. They are also absolutely awesome people and it's just so much fun to get them out into a place where they can let loose a little. This weekend dude and I went on a second date. Yeah, yeah. I know I said that I had some rule against dating in the workplace. Don't judge. I don't meet a lot of guys because I'm not into the whole "let me pick one up at a bar" thing. Second date was good. We went to this little place that was featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" for dinner. He was impressed at my hamburger eating skills. (He just doesn't know how much I can pack away.) We went back to his house and watched a movie and then I convinced him to watch the pilot episode of BONES. And he liked it. So I'm converting him (or, as a friend put it, I'm missionary dating him - Bones style). We chatted it up a little before he took me home. We hung out again on Sunday night, which culminated in a DTR. I think it was a little early for that, but if that's what he wanted to do then whatever. We decided to be exclusive, but not really act like we're in a relationship while at work. We don't want to deal with the whole "dating a coworker" thing. Plus, we don't know how the boss would react to it. I can't believe that I'm back in a relationship. I mean, I know it's been a year, but I wasn't planning on doing this again because I'm leaving in July. That was another reason that I was hoping to keep this kind of casual. I was really hoping to avoid hurt feelings in the end because I really don't see this leading to anything super permanent (ie, marriage).
You may be asking "why did girlie agree to being exclusive if she just wanted something casual?" Good question. Here are a few things that I have noticed about myself since this dating thing with dude started:
1) I'm having fun. It's been a while since dating was just fun and I didn't feel the need to overanalyze it.
2) I have felt like I can be more "myself" than I felt with my ex. I feel more confident and comfortable with who I am and I don't feel the need to impress him. I don't know if that is because we've known each other for two years so we already had an idea of each other's beliefs and personalities or that I'm just not taking this too seriously.
3) I can see in myself some of the ways in which I have grown and matured in the last few years. Some of the conversations that we have had over the past few weeks (dude is a major talker) have shown me just how much I have changed. Some of the things that he has told me are things that I would have been super judgmental about just a few years ago, and probably would have made me nix this whole thing on the spot. However, I have come to accept that people have pasts. That's just a fact of life. It doesn't make them bad people; it just means that they made some bad choices along the way. And sometimes, their bad choices can lead them to being better people. Some of the most wonderful and caring people that I know have done things in their pasts that they are not proud of. I think that is also part of why I feel comfortable around him. In the world's view, I probably haven't done that many scandalous things, but I have done things that I'm not proud of myself for doing. Knowing that dude doesn't hold those things against me makes it so much easier.
I'm sure that I will come up with other things to say about this in a future post, but right now lunch is calling!
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