Like many young girls, and women for that matter, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life. (Sounds greatly philosophical, but I assure you it never really feels that way during the process.) Many of the guys I dated, as I said before, lost interest somewhere along the way and started taking me for granted. In retrospect, I don't think they were completely to blame. Since I didn't know who I was I think I often tried to be whomever they seemed to want me to be. It's no wonder they got bored of me because the person they were seeing wasn't the real me anyway.
Perhaps that is all a little confusing. Lets skip to the point when I actually started to just be myself. Now, truth be told, I am still trying to figure out who I am as a whole, and people constantly change as they get older. What I am referring to here is the point at which I decided that I was going to say to a male population "This is who I am. If you don't like it, I am not the one for you. Please move on." Harsh? Not really. In the end it was what really worked and got me the best man for me.
When I started working at my present place of employment, some four years ago, I still was a little confused. I met my husband just days after starting my job (yes, we work together) and recall thinking "Here is a nice single guy, too bad he is not my type." Over the next few months I became friends with several people at work, including my husband. One of my co-workers had told me that, now that I was entering my 30's, I was finally going to be honest about who I really was, forget about looking for a guy, and then he would turn up out of the blue. I didn't take much heed to what she said. Let's face it, she married her husband in her early twenties after dating him for over 5 years. However, she could not have been more right if she had had a crystal ball sitting on her desk.
My husband and I hung out outside of work, became Facebook friends, and talked often during coffee breaks; things that we did with others that we worked with too. We both attended some local charity events and, since neither of us had someone to go with, went together. It wasn't until my husband went on another one of his semi-frequent business trips that everything solidified for me. Upon his return to work someone walking past my cubicle just happen to mention that he was back in the office. Completely innocent of course, but my heart skipped a beat and I instinctively stood up to go see him. Then I stopped. A rush of successive thoughts entered my head; what are you doing? why is my heart pounding? why am I suddenly so happy? did I miss him? why would I miss him? do I like him? OMG I like him!
I sat back down. When did this happen? I must be imagining this. I've got to see him.
So I decided to ask him if all the regular people from work could all get together for his birthday the following week. Go out to dinner or something. That would be a good excuse to go see him right away. When I walked into his office he was wearing a three piece suit and my heart jumped. (Any girl knows that guys always look their best in a suit and their most snugly in comfy clothes, so you can imagine the reaction I was having.) It must be noted that this is not standard attire for our place of work. Apparently he had just come back from a funeral service (sad) that he had played at (he plays organ and piano) and thus the suit (happy). Well, to shorten up the story a bit, with my heart all a flutter we made the birthday dinner plans.
The following week I showed up at his house after work only to find out that no one else was able to make it; they were either out of town on business or had children home sick. We sat and talked for a long time, during which I flat out told him how I felt. He responded later that evening on Facebook (I still make fun of him for this) and has claimed since that it was due to his shock that a girl would be so honest about her feelings up front. Since we did go out to dinner that night we decided to call that evening our first official date. On our second date I asked him what his "make or brake" list consisted of. We proceeded in an almost half business half date fashion discussing everything from pet peeves we could never live with to how many children we would want and when.
With all that hard core detail out of the way we finally addressed the issue of working together and dating. Our company policy was that HR must be informed to ensure there would be no conflict of interest. Given that we worked in different departments and neither of us had to answer to the other we were pretty safe, but decided to wait two weeks and then tell our boss. No need to stir the pot if nothing heated up and we decided to just be friends. Well, after two weeks we walked into our bosses office (a mutual close friend by the way) and broke the news. She was stunned and excited, but had no qualms. We asked to keep our relationship quiet in order that we would not draw attention from other staff, to which she agreed.
Three months later we decided to let the cat out of the bag subtly; I wore my engagement ring to work and waited to see who would notice and how fast the news would travel. That was actually kind of fun! Even though some people thought we were moving things rather quickly we knew that we had discussed all the important issues upfront, so there were no misunderstandings once our emotions really took hold. We truly built out relationship on a foundation of honesty and openness. One of the great things about my husband is that he truly loves me for who I am, and not who he wants me to be. Which makes me love him for who he is even more.
FBM
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