the best first date ever

...That wasn't a date.

He's over for dinner and it's like... that eye contact, those jokes. We're all over each other and don't ever leave the table. Later, we're lying on the floor and talking for hours about things and he's just so cool, so intelligent, sharp and nice. The ex-jock body doesn't hurt either.

The line is bright. And I don't know that I want it. Crossing, in a serious way.

But right now I just want it to be less serious, maybe. Like maybe I don't know what to do about tension with other people I'm attracted to, maybe I still want to kiss other people, maybe I need to figure it out.

No one tells you about this. It's supposed to be happily ever after, with sometime relationship CPR involving lingerie and new locales. No one tells you how to give up, what you will give up, when to do it.

I wonder if I'll ever have friends like that again, the relationships that develop out of the unattached dynamic. Or if I have to draw boundaries now, if the ambiguity of attraction needs to be controlled; like, is it only wrong if I feel guilty? If something happens? If something happens I wouldn't want done to me? Being with my boyfriend is awesome, he gets me and he's unreal, but we haven't meshed our lives and I don't know where he fits and the pressure to do what I'm supposed to is stifling and confusing. I care about him and the reason my former behavior, essentially acting like I'm single, in check is because I know how hurt he would be.

(Surrender, but don't give yourself away.)

I don't know if I want it as an act of resistance against the claustrophobia of stability, one of the things we talked about tonight. It's not that I don't want to be the little wife right now, it's that I don't want to be the little wife ever, and it's hard to say that out loud without feeling like the option to be the woman gets sold out. I don't want to 'wear the pants,' power doesn't do it for me. It's hard to underwrite the commitment with your own terms so that what comes from it makes sense.

I'm going to bed tonight thinking about him. Which him? That's an open question.