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"Oh, my Smitten loves. It&amp;#x27;s been nearly three months since I&amp;#x27;ve written anything about my dating life, which I know is a bit strange, since I&amp;#x27;ve proudly made a place for myself here as a compulsive over-sharer. Well, there&amp;#x27;s a reason why I haven&amp;#x27;t been blogging: things got kind of complicated with J, the guy I&amp;#x27;d been dating, and I figured for the sake of sanity, I&amp;#x27;d better leave stuff off the Internet. But now I&amp;#x27;m ready to share--are you ready to hear? When I last wrote about J, I was really conflicted about where we stood with our potential as a couple; because he was pursuing his Ph.D, and I&amp;#x27;ve been so out-of-my-mind busy with work, fiction writing, and general life stuff, we barely found more than once a week to make our paths cross. I didn&amp;#x27;t know if the best course of action was to just sort of accept that that was the nature of our relationship, and let things go from there, or to really try to see if we could be more than that, and push harder, which felt unnatural, but also seemed like the only way we could possibly grow. A few days later, to my surprise, J and I were hanging out at my house--at our once-a-week get together, naturally--and he brought up my blog post about timing. I was so surprised: I had no idea he read my blogs, let alone would want to talk about our &amp;quot;us&amp;quot; stuff. There I was, faced with the &amp;quot;what are we&amp;quot; talk, which was what I wanted, but also afraid of the answer. The result? He hedged at calling himself my boyfriend, saying that the second he did, he knew he&amp;#x27;d disappoint me--he said what he thought I wanted was someone who would be there all the time, who&amp;#x27;d be down the street, who&amp;#x27;d sleep next to me, who&amp;#x27;d be more available than he was. True, it was what I&amp;#x27;d had in all of my past relationships, but I felt so closed off, and really liked him, so I said I wanted to keep dating him, regardless, and I&amp;#x27;d be honest if I ever felt like I needed more than he could give me. And at the time, I really wasn&amp;#x27;t looking for more--I was OK with what we had. I was busy, he was busy, and what we had going on was OK. What I walked away with from the convo was we were sort of there for each other in a sort of &amp;quot;whatever it was&amp;quot; capacity--until either of us wanted more than the other could give, things were out on the table, and that was that. We dated consistently, and what I thought was pretty casually through the next three months. We were monogamous (neither of us were looking for anyone else online, or actively looking for anyone else at all, really), and were spending a night or two a week together, and having a lot of fun. We spent my birthday together, which was epic--without going into details, he went above and beyond, and it was the talk of my office for a few days. Then, a little more than six weeks ago, I was writing in a cafe, when I met eyes with a gorgeous guy (we&amp;#x27;ll call him Isaac) who&amp;#x27;d been curled up reading in a chair by the counter. He actually gathered the courage to get up, come over, and ask me out--blushing while doing it--and, though I warned him I was sort of in a precarious dating situation, agreed to get a drink with him later that week. Isaac and I had the best first date I&amp;#x27;d ever had...the one before that having been with J. (You can see where this is going, right?) Ugh. I felt out the situation with Isaac, and found out he was in a weird place: he wasn&amp;#x27;t looking for a relationship at all, but was so much on the same page with me, too, about what we felt, what we wanted, where we could see ourselves going. And after a few weeks of knowing each other, despite not aiming for a relationship, he made it clear that he wanted to be with me, and that he wanted to share all the things with me that J was clear he wasn&amp;#x27;t going to be able to offer me. After thinking hard about it, I didn&amp;#x27;t know if I was ready for another relationship, but the chance with Isaac was special enough that I couldn&amp;#x27;t lose the opportunity, and had to let J know that our Whatever had come to an end. When J and I went to dinner at a noodle restaurant in the East Village, he pointed out that I&amp;#x27;d been distant. I prolonged the conversation as long as I could, but finally told him that I&amp;#x27;d met someone else. Aaaaaand, well, he freaked. Making a long story short, we left the restaurant, and three weeks of crying from both sides later, we&amp;#x27;re still wrapping things up. The problem that&amp;#x27;s drawing out this whole thing? J never told me how he felt about me. He had five months of feelings he&amp;#x27;d never expressed, including those three big words, which he felt, but never said until I told him I was officially Isaac&amp;#x27;s girlfriend. He&amp;#x27;d put up tons of walls, kept himself from getting close to me, kept himself from telling me how he was feeling, and then everything just came out at once, which made him feel like I was leaving him for someone else, not breaking a chill, casual arrangement. But I never knew any of this! So, all of a sudden, in front of me was the man I&amp;#x27;d been dying to see, dying to fall in love with, dying to share my own life with, ready to love me back, but he&amp;#x27;d shown up five months too late. I&amp;#x27;d expected a disappointed guy who&amp;#x27;d shrug, and say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m bummed, but I understand.&amp;quot; Instead, I got five months of pent up emotion, the level of which was so overwhelming, so breathtaking, and so earth-shattering (he&amp;#x27;s the kind of guy who puts that kind of intensity into everything he does), I quite honestly cried myself to sleep a few nights. I&amp;#x27;d never been so confused. I felt like I was breaking up with someone I never got a chance to date: the J that I was dismissing--the one who didn&amp;#x27;t pay enough attention to me, and wasn&amp;#x27;t ever really boyfriend material was all of a sudden gone, replaced by a man with the potential to be a dream boyfriend, something more, even...and I was breaking up with someone I wasn&amp;#x27;t giving a chance? It all felt so perverse, and like there was no way to be OK with any decision I&amp;#x27;d made. Ultimately, I had to go with the choice I&amp;#x27;d already made: Isaac fell in love with me as instantly as I had with him, and that&amp;#x27;s why I stayed with that first instinct. His flight tracker is currently up in the tab next to this window: I&amp;#x27;m waiting for plane to land from his cross-country business trip so I can meet up with him and see him tonight. And I can&amp;#x27;t wait. I&amp;#x27;ve made the right choice, but it hasn&amp;#x27;t been without struggles, and it hasn&amp;#x27;t been without some of the most difficult nights I&amp;#x27;ve had maybe in my entire life. The past breakups I&amp;#x27;ve been through have been incredibly hard, but they&amp;#x27;ve been for reasons. Of course this was a reason, but it felt so abstract. Going with one&amp;#x27;s heart feels so nebulous at times, but...sometimes a girl&amp;#x27;s just guided by love, right? Phewf, that was a long one! Clearly, I&amp;#x27;m glad to be back sharing with you. xoxo! Photo: Thinkstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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