Day Three - The Catch

When you start any relationship, you are always somewhat weary of all the things you have to learn. Entangled with the excitement of first dates is the awkwardness of trying to figure out if that seemingly perfect new man you found is or isn't a serial killer. Or worse, a Dutch insurance salesman.

I hate prefacing anything with the phrase: "Now, I am not the most trusting person". But in the interest of full disclosure, I am not. I came of age during a period where my hometown became infamously known for a string of teenage female murders. Not really all that confidence inspiring for, you know, a teenage female such as I used to be. Seriously, you see those pretentious posters that undergrad females post in liberal arts colleges with the pictures of random guys that read "This man is a potential rapist"? Well, those were my teens, except the posters bore the legend: "Wanted. For Rape".

Over-hyped as that may or may not have been (the closest I came to an actual rapist was that guy who taught P.E. at my catholic boarding school), that was really just the start. My high school sweetheart? He turned out to be gay. My first straight boyfriend? A mean, dumb, jock of a drunken jerk. My ex-fiance? Cheated on me with the neighbor girl, got her pregnant and stole money from me. The last relationship before Ryan? Neglected to say he had a wife. So you can see where that slight mistrust of menfolk may come from.

Now, online relationships are a bloody minefield. It is just so easy to lie about all sorts of things. Like when I first met Ryan. I hate one of my names, so I lied about the order of my first and middle names. Something that was in the grand scheme of things, not at all relevant. So when he and I started dating I have to say, I was afraid. He is sweet, smart, funny, cute, almost thirty and single, employed...

It killed me to think what the catch was. There had to be one, right? He didn't seem to be gay, I had proof that he held a job, other than a foot-in-mouth (and not in a kinky way) tendency, he had a way to say the smartest and wittiest things and no wedding ring tan line! So my imagination wandered. Actually it didn't so much wander as it fixated on one single thing. That guy was surely not single. He probably had a girlfriend and a kid hiding in the other room while he pretended he was using the laptop to play Halo. And suddenly a streak of vicious jealousy that had been hiding somewhere inside of me for 29 years suddenly came out. So, you are playing "cards" with a "girl" are you? Cheater!

And now I think about the myriad of things he might have considered I was after. His bank account (which is not bigger than mine), a green card (a non MTG one, at that), selling him to white slavery (huh?), or just a quick fix on the side. All of these were utterly and completely wrong. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I do have more than one catch.

To wit:

I snore, sometimes more than others. I am not the best cook in the world and rely way too much on frozen microwavevables as part of a balanced diet. I splurge, sometimes without thought, on gifts for people I love. I still treat my kid brother as if he was 10. I stay up to late, and if you let me I'll stay in bed all day. It takes me an hour to decide where to have lunch.

Maybe they are all little quirks. Maybe they are dealbreakers. I will reveal most of those to him in good time. And just let him decided where to have lunch.