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cosmolinguistThere are times when I'm sure that "smitten" really is the past tense of "smite," because I feel like I've been hit by something blunt and heavy (that's the smiting part) and I don't really mind (that's the smitten part).
A long time ago, when it first occurred to me that I might like the idea of dating Matthew (which was about year before I did date Matthew), I remember Katie telling me about the undesirability of long-distance relationships. (At the time she was engaged to someone who was in Washington D.C., which is sort of far away from Minnesota.) So, much later, when I had a reason to, I mentioned to Matthew that Katie had told me long-distance relationships are no fun. He said, "That's not true. They're sometimes fun."
Indeed. They are sometimes fun.
It's not just the actual rarity-of-seeing-him factor of the long-distance relationship that bugs me, it's how that causes us to act when we are together. In contrast, my previous boyfriend lived a few minutes away from me, so we'd randomly visit each other (or not, if we were busy), do homework, watch dumb stuff on TV, and in general live our lives with the other person as a nice component of said life.
But now I live most of my life without Matthew around, so when he is here I pay attention to little else. Usually when I miss someone it's for some specific reason, but I find myself just wishing he was around. So when he is around, I have all that's necessary to make me happy and so I can't think of anything else to do. And when I'm around he's less inclined to do the stuff he usually does, which mostly involves computers and being antisocial, because he can do that more often than he can spend time with me.
So this makes it sound like we don't have any fun together. Which of course is wrong, but hey, I could stand the chance to get complacent! (That's a joke, of course. I don't believe in complacency! I'm smitten, remember?)
Yet despite how much we like to spend time together, by no meand do we spend it all with each other exclusively. There is the implication of comfort or security implied in not feeling like you need to be conjoined twins--in the metaphorical if not the physical sense--and I really like that. I thought of this on Sunday when Matthew and Seth were putting Slackware on Seth's secondary or tertiary hard drive or whatever it is, and I was in the living room watching the Twins. He doesn't like baseball and I don't know anything about Linux, and we are not delusional enough to think that only the other person is interesting. As fun as it is to be with Matthew, it's also fun to live fairly normally while he happens to be around.
A long time ago, when it first occurred to me that I might like the idea of dating Matthew (which was about year before I did date Matthew), I remember Katie telling me about the undesirability of long-distance relationships. (At the time she was engaged to someone who was in Washington D.C., which is sort of far away from Minnesota.) So, much later, when I had a reason to, I mentioned to Matthew that Katie had told me long-distance relationships are no fun. He said, "That's not true. They're sometimes fun."
Indeed. They are sometimes fun.
It's not just the actual rarity-of-seeing-him factor of the long-distance relationship that bugs me, it's how that causes us to act when we are together. In contrast, my previous boyfriend lived a few minutes away from me, so we'd randomly visit each other (or not, if we were busy), do homework, watch dumb stuff on TV, and in general live our lives with the other person as a nice component of said life.
But now I live most of my life without Matthew around, so when he is here I pay attention to little else. Usually when I miss someone it's for some specific reason, but I find myself just wishing he was around. So when he is around, I have all that's necessary to make me happy and so I can't think of anything else to do. And when I'm around he's less inclined to do the stuff he usually does, which mostly involves computers and being antisocial, because he can do that more often than he can spend time with me.
So this makes it sound like we don't have any fun together. Which of course is wrong, but hey, I could stand the chance to get complacent! (That's a joke, of course. I don't believe in complacency! I'm smitten, remember?)
Yet despite how much we like to spend time together, by no meand do we spend it all with each other exclusively. There is the implication of comfort or security implied in not feeling like you need to be conjoined twins--in the metaphorical if not the physical sense--and I really like that. I thought of this on Sunday when Matthew and Seth were putting Slackware on Seth's secondary or tertiary hard drive or whatever it is, and I was in the living room watching the Twins. He doesn't like baseball and I don't know anything about Linux, and we are not delusional enough to think that only the other person is interesting. As fun as it is to be with Matthew, it's also fun to live fairly normally while he happens to be around.
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Date: 2003-07-29 09:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-29 11:12 am (UTC)Stop that!
Date: 2003-07-29 03:19 pm (UTC)Re: Stop that!
Date: 2003-07-29 03:20 pm (UTC)Yes, yes.
Date: 2003-07-29 03:33 pm (UTC)I guess it's no longer true that I don't know anything about Linux--I think I know about three things now--so that sentence was obviously misleading.
Though the third part of it is still true.