Taking a Cue from Bridget Jones

 

"Will find nice, sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts... "

2nd Chance?

So today Mr. Hong Kong messaged me.....just talking about what we have or haven't done in the last four months, what we do or don't want to see happen, what it even means that we're talking now.....

Normally (or at least pre-Mr.HK) my philosphy on exes has always been "an ex is an ex for a reason"... no questions. no 2nd chances. no matter the circumstances.

But now I'm not so sure. 

So I posted a question on my FB and I want to ask it here too:

"Have you ever gone against your better judgement or personal philosophy when it comes to exes?"

So far the responses (from friends/family online) have been:

"No. Bad Morgan."

"Who hasn't? And it always comes back to bite you in the ass"

"Which EX are you talking about?"

So what about you?
Do you think 2nd chances can happen?
Have you ever given an ex a 2nd chance?
What happened?

Love of My Life - Runner Up

I came across a blog the other day - thanks to one of my readers - and it's definitely lit something inside of me. 

The topic is having a "Backup-Husband"

Now let me clarify. This is not in the if my marriage fails I have someone to fall back on and jump right into another relationship. This is more in the sense that "I become an old spinster and to make sure I don't die alone" backup spouse.

Maybe because I'm 1 1/2 hears from being thirty and recently finding myself single (again). 

Maybe because more and more of my friends are getting married and having babies (in many cases baby #2 and #3). 

But the idea of never meeting "the one" (or worse having let "the one" get away) and needing/wanting a "back up" scares me.

Not so much I lose sleep at night. Or am going to be calling my ex-boyfriends and single guy friends asking them to be my backup husband. (Although, yes, I have thought about and know who I'd ask if I ever find myself in need of back up sperm...but that's a different blog).

Something about having a back up husband just makes me feel worse (about myself) than thinking I'll never meet "Mr Right". I want to spend my life with my best friend but I don't want that best friend to be coerced into being with me.

I don't think I would ever want to be someones back up any more than ask someone to be mine. I'd feel second hand. Like your permanent doormat. If we don't want to be together now why would we want to be together in ten or twenty years?

However, my best friend (of about 20 years) and I have had a plan for years that when we're old and tired of our husbands we'll "suddenly become widowed" (*wink wink*) and then move in together to raise pug dogs. 

Now that's my idea of a "backup spouse"!!

But I'd like to know what other people think of this idea. Am I alone in feeling that I'd be settling for 2nd best (or that I'd be someones 2nd best).

Expired Membership?

It feels like forever since I've been on the "dating scene" and I'm feeling a tad rusty.

It is certainly not like riding a bicycle!

...Although perhaps it is, I never could keep my balance and ride further than a few feet without either crashing into a fence or going head over heels into a bush.

But here I am back on the horse (how many analogies can I put into one blog?); having recently signed onto a dating site (more on that later)

The friends I have talked to about me rejoining the world of singles have all been supportive in their own ways. Some tell me not to rush things (Mr. Hong Kong and I have only been split up a month) while others are eager to play wing(wo)man and devil on my shoulder. The one thing they all have in common is wanting to make sure I do what I need to do for myself.

And I am.

Part of me is wanting to just connect with someone on some level.

Get a drink after work...

Cuddle while watching a movie...

Hold hands while walking down by the river...

I need to remind myself that Mr. Hong Kong wasn't/isn't my last chance for happiness.

...I know that sounds self-deprecating and awful but we all have those moments of doubt after a break up. When we worry that we just let "the one" slip through our fingers.

So here I am, a month later, trying to figure out how to be 'single'.

I don't mean the "be happy being alone" type of single. I mean the not in a long term, serious, monogamous relationship type single.

I'm just not sure I know how....?

You know what it feels like. It's like that scene in MIB2 where Tommy Lee Jones character goes to the video rental place to find out he never used his membership card, put a video on hold but never check it out....

 

Except I feel like my membership card has expired and I'm pretty sure I never put anything on hold.

What's Best for Me.

 

This is sort of how I've been feeling the past few days. 

Down with the world falling on my head but knowing that things...
Life...could be worse. 

In March my boyfriend and I had our first huge fight. It resulted in a 24-hour "break up" but by the end of the next day we were back together - realizing words were said in the heat of the moment and not truly meant. We patched things up and tried to make things better. 

Without going into it things too much, this past weekend I told him I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep coming in last behind his job and the rest of his life....I felt like an afterthought. 

He still is the love of my life and it's hard to imagine him not being there ten...twenty...thirty years down the line. And (without being disillusioned or getting my hopes up) he might be. I don't know. For now though it just isn't meant to be. 

I haven't really told people (expect one friend) mostly because we "broke-up" not that long ago and the last thing I need right now is a "I told you so"..."See?" or the even worse "You deserve better". What I need is for understanding that this is a hard time right now. 

I haven't cried. 

Not really. 

I suppose part of me is still in shock.
Waiting to wake up and have in next to me and this all be a bad dream. 

I love him. 

What can I say? 

It hurts but I need to survive. 

I need to do what's best for me.

Questioning Interracial Relationships

I came across this "article" [blog] last night and it really sat uneasy with me....Here's the blog first and then I'll rant afterwards.

*     *      *

"Have you noticed a recent surge in Asian men and white women being together lately? Bruce Lee and Linda Lee Caldwell were one of Hollywood’s first Asian man/Caucasian women celebrity couples … and that was in the 60s! So what’s changed?

The question is, why is this interracial combo not as widespread as other interracial combos?

There is definitely a higher percentage of Asian women with white men than ever before. Why?

The above video [I took it out - visit the website to view video] was taken by video crew who asked random and predominantly Asian guys and girls “Why Asian girls are attracted to white guys”. Stereotype… stereotype and more stereotype!

According to this video, most respondents described Asian men as being too shy or unassertive. The woman also stated Asian men were too effeminate and even too short! Apparently this is turning Asian women away and they are beginning to look elsewhere.

Asian stereotypes have been created by society in general. Enough articles have been written about what I would like to call stereotypical racism in the Asian community – for instance, how Caucasian men actively seek an Asian woman because of their exotic looks and supposed submissivenes?. How many have this so called Asian fetish or yellow fever?

Asian females, on the other hand, have constantly been disgraced and labeled “white-washed” women busy trying to climb the social ladder by their own communities and are finding more acceptance with races other than their own.

So what about the rise of interracial relationships between the Asian man and Caucasian woman? Is it that Asian men are fed up with their female counterparts and that they take revenge by dating Caucasian women? (just a thought) Or just that there are fewer Asian females in their dating pool so they are expanding their own horizons?

My conclusion is that maybe it’s not that at all. I think people should be intelligent enough not to allow trivial stereotypes to conform to their preferences on who to date. Why do you think there is a rise in the Asian man-Caucasian woman interracial combo?"

*     *      *

First, I think I need to remind the author that the title of this article and the first sentence point that he is going to discuss Asian men-Caucasian women relationships....but instead talks about Asian women and Caucasian men....not the same....yes, same cultural/ethnic combination but he didn't go into the article saying we're going to discuss the rise of Asian-Caucasian relationships. 

Mildred & Richard Loving

Next, why does there have to be a reason other than people are finally becoming more accepting to the concept behind interracial relationship? That we're in a place today where people fall in love with a person and not a race? Why does it always come down to a fetish or rebellion? 

People forget that it hasn't been that long (historically speaking) that interracial marriages have been allowed in the United States....only 44 years. Think about it. How many of us have parents older than 44?

Or maybe it's because I'm dating a man who identifies as Asian-American (a child of an interracial marriage) but it angers me to think that people want to discover a sociological reason behind our relationship.  Does there have to be some underlining psychologically repressed reason for us being attracted to the other? Can't it just be because we love each other?

Our Love Story

A friend suggested I write a "How We Met" for a special Valentine's Day blog. However, two years ago we weren't together on Valentine's Day. In fact I didn't even know that my sweetie existed two years ago. For me our special day is the day we "met" online - February 23rd.

It had been a long time since I had opened my heart up to someone. I had been hurt one too many times and had started to think that love just wasn't in the cards for me this lifetime. But with some time, healing and a wonderful best friend to keep pushing and pushing me to try online dating I finally gave in.

At first I tried eHarmony (the website where my bff had found her husband). The yahoos I found there just made me laugh. Men who were more interested in growing their own "herbs" than they were growing a friendship. Men who were living in their mother's basements and only interested in "hooking up" if I could host. Really folks? Aren't they paying money for this site? Remind me again what the hoop-la with this site is?

So I gave up on them and thought I'd see if I could find something better.

I did a websearch for a Plus-Size friendly dating site and pleasantly surprised with the one I found. BBWFriendlyDating (or something like that) dot com. I browsed through profiles (men and women's) before signing up for an account myself. I wanted a place that was friendly not fetish driven. I was looking for someone to go to dinner with not use dinner as foreplay. The people I found were various sizes and shapes but one thing was in common - accepting of their size and preferred a more curvaceous build of others.

So I signed up.

For a few weeks I talked with various men. Some who were looking for nothing more than someone to fulfill their Fat-Woman-Fantasy...one guy who emailed me wanted to know if I'd send him pictures of me in stockings and heels. Lol. Not everyone I emailed with were on the looser side of the scale. Some I just didn't have chemistry with or connected more with someone else.

Then the morning of February 23rd (coincidentally enough the bday of my "pushy" bff) I was browsing profiles when I came across one I had went back to a few times. There wasn't too much written. Just a few likes and hobbies. His pictures didn't match his self-description in the profile. There wasn't too much to it. Normally I'd just pass it over. No information. No chance.

But something stopped me.

I went back to it.

There was something in his eyes that made me melt.

Something in my gut said "Make the connection"

So I sent a "wink" his way.

Later that evening I got a "wink" back.

I sent an email.

I got an email back.

From there we started emailing and instant messaging all day everyday. Childhood best friends, favorite colors, politics, religion, travel, food....we talked about it all.

A week later I went back to his profile (for something...I really don't remember what) only to find it gone.

I IMed him later asking where it had gone? Why had he taken it down?

His response I'll never forget "Because I met this amazing girl named Morgan and I didn't need it anymore"

I melted and the rest is, as they say, history. We've been together two years this Wednesday.

And though there have been some rocky times and the physical distance between us just seems to increase it doesn't matter.

Because I found the love of my life (online).

Is 27 the new Spinster?

By the time my mother was my age she had been married 10years and was (more-or-less) pregnant with me. Sure times and whatever have changed since the 70s but if studies are correct the median age, for when people get married, has only increased slightly. In the 1970s, my parents got married in '72, women were getting married at 21 and men around 23 (on avg of course) - but now in the 2000s the median ages are F:25 and M:27

I'm two years older than these studies are showing but it's just averages right? 

So why do I feel like I'm suddenly sad Aunt Imogene?

Even my family has made jokes about me not settling down and becoming some crazy cat lady!

***

Now let me interject for a moment to say yes, on many levels I already am a crazy cat lady but I believe they were referring to the type you find dead in her trailer 3weeks after her 50 cats have started to consume her soft tissues. I am NOT (nor will I be) that type of cat lady.

***

So I'm just wondering:

Since when was 27 the new Spinster?

I have to admit a good number of my friends are either already married or on their way.

And when I say "married" I mean married, domestic partner, civil union, etc...

For shits-and-giggles I tallied the numbers, on my social networking list of friends, to see how many are married/engaged - I also thought to look at the number of divorced since studies are always talking about how that number is increasing. Of the 185 people I'm "connected" with: 

51 are married.

13 are engaged.

15 are divorced.

Now while that leaves 106 "single" folks - however, most aren't un-attached.

I've been with my bf for over a year and I think he is just the best man I've ever been dated. He has the same smart-ass/sarcastic sense of humor I do. He certainly keeps me on my toes - half the time I can't tell when he's joking (partly due to my gullibility I suppose). At the same time though, he's affectionate and loving. He may not be the sending flowers type of romantic but he knows when I'm in a funk and how to yank me out of it. He isn't just some bf; he's my partner. 

I know many people who feel the same way about their partners w/o there being shiny pieces of metal on their ring fingers...and with no twinge of jealousy for those that do. We're happy for our married counterparts but we're equally as happy in our relationships. 

So I just want to know why, despite statistical evidence that I am not a freak-of-nature being unmarried at 27, does society feel the need to plaster TV advertisements with Eharmony and Match.com jingles? To fill the newest Vogue magazine with engagement rings and the latest edition of Home and Garden with "How to have a successful backyard wedding"? 

Am I an anomaly to not be in any rush to get married? 

Is it an oddity that I am content in my relationship status as is? 

Or am I the new "Old Maid"?