"The Talk" with The Southern did not go as expected.
(Since you haven't met him, let me just tell you: The Southern is a rumpled button- down shirt, back porch, swig of bourbon kind of guy. He's charming but nerdy, he's witty, he makes me laugh.)
The Plan for The Talk was to either break things off completely. I prepared by buying myself roses to say they were from a secret admirer. Minutes before he arrived, I revised The Plan to be that I would be honest with him about how I was feeling (i.e. that I like him), and give him the chance to reciprocate the feelings; if he reciprocated, things would continue. Seconds before he arrived, I panicked. I got moody, I got grumpy, I pouted. Unfortunately, this is why I like him: he puts up with me.
We drank wine. He brought a greasy bag of french fries. I stopped pouting. Essentially, I told him that I couldn't be with him if I thought he was hooking up with other people. Of course he's not hooking up with other people, that's not the point, the point is that I wanted him to say that he wanted to be exclusive. Yes, I realize I'm insane, let's move on. Things went as planned. I told him that I was afraid to ask anything of him because of his previous girlfriend-ed situation. In the weirdest but yet most convincing argument ever, he told me that the fact that he had had feelings for me while he was with her meant that his feelings for me were strong. He said the Friend Situation made it such that our relationship now can only be about 60% of what it could be otherwise (i.e. I can never go over there, he can't go out with my friends, it is resigned to sneaking around). He said he wanted me to stop going on dates (my last one is in an hour, don't ask), but that I had to be patient with him, this takes time, he was with her for a while, etc. We had a really wonderful time, cuddled, laughed, kissed. (For the record, there has still been no reciprocity of the OS.)
Now I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I had totally resolved to stop seeing him because of the Friend Situation and now I feel like I would be an idiot to let him go altogether. He gets me. He gets that I love to go out to eat, at dives and fancy restaurants; he gets that when I say I'm totally stuffed, it means I want dessert; he gets that when I pout, I need to be told to use my words; he gets what it takes to make me giggle; he gets that I need to curl up last thing at night and first thing in the morning... okay, this will clearly take a whole post, but in the meantime I need to go prep for my date with Bowtie Man.
