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This is an incredibly dramatic story of heartache, technology, violence, premarital sex, and drug use.  

Actually, its boring and may have happened to you….

Lindsay:  After about a month of dating, I didn’t hear from Jay for three days.  That is what this story is about.  As I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear, Jay and I had different opinions about what this meant.  At this point in our “relationship” (do you call it that after a month?) we’d been seeing a lot of each other but weren’t “official,” yet Jay had started calling me his girlfriend to his family and friends.  He liked the word and liked me.  I liked him but was scared of the word. 

Jay:  The word “girlfriend” sounds nice.  It implies so much, like, “I’m a winner” and “I get to see her naked.”  It just makes your heart feel good to say that word.  However, at no point does that word make me want to call/text small talk to a person I don’t really know that well yet.  Plus, I’m a rebel.  Isn’t there a rule about waiting 3 days to call anyway?  I’m almost positive of that.

Lindsay: So, the weekend began and I heard nothing.  Now, Jay works on the weekends and I work during the week, so I had figured that I might not see him.  However, once someone starts calling me their girlfriend I expect that 1. If I’m not going to hear from them I’ll know about it in advance and 2. If they’re on their couch with their dog playing video games they can take 30 seconds to text me and say they’re thinking about me.  I’m picky that way. 

Jay:  Now I know how picky Lindsay is.  However, at the time I was under the assumption that she was not picky(HA) and needed “Me Time” like I was enjoying.  Boy, have I learned a lesson! (Also, let the record show that I did call her.  However, it was when she and her sister were in a bar and it was loud and I got off the phone quickly because bar conversations are horrible to yell through a cell phone.)

Lindsay: After three days of radio/phone/text/Facebook silence, I begin to become mildly irate (to put it nicely).  WHY would Jay put me through the trauma of being called a girlfriend if he wasn’t prepared to act like a boyfriend?  He was the one that wanted to be “together,” and after feeling rushed into THAT I now felt uncared for and unimportant, like an afterthought that was handy to have around, but only when it was convenient for Jay.

I tend to get a little bit dramatic when things don’t go my way. 

My girlfriends said I should wait until he contacted me so he’d think I was having an amazingly fabulous weekend with so many fun things to do that I didn’t even have time to think about him.  This was the conclusion after hours of hashing and rehashing every single minute detail that had occurred between us since the day we met.  What had I done wrong?  Had I misunderstood?  Did he think he was a large black woman and wasn’t calling me his girlfriend, but merely “girlfriend?”  I was at a loss.  A sad loss. 

Men, don’t be alarmed that girls talk about you lots with their bffs.  In fact, be grateful, they’re doing you a huge favor.  I believe that for every “issue” a girl has, she has a required amount of discussion time for that issue.  What to wear on Friday night, for example, might require 30 minutes of discussion time.  What to do about the issue of whether or not to tell you that yes, she really does care that you still talk to all three of your Playboy-model-looking exes on a regular basis might take 5 or 6 hours to hash out.  Suppose she talks to her bff about this for 4 hours.  That only leaves you 1-2 hours of discussion time on the topic.  THANK YOU BEST FRIEND!  It’s math.  Be thankful. The end. 

Lindsay:  And, we’re back.  Thank you for learning word problems. On Monday morning, I emailed Jay to tell him that I think I’d misunderstood what he wanted for our relationship and I wanted out.  He wrote back to tell me that he agreed and that we should talk that night.

My heart sank.

Jay: I think guys look at this totally differently.  When transitioning from being single into dating someone, I like to decompress.  It’s like when you’re scuba diving (no, I’ve never gone but I know enough to use the activity as a metaphor) and you have to slowly come up, or else you’ll die from “the bends”.  And after being SO couply and spending SO much time together, I felt like I was getting nitrogen in my blood and that my heart and lungs could burst at any moment.  All I was thinking about was having a little retreat/get-a-way back in SingleLand.  I had friends that I wanted to drink with and brag about my recent sexual encounters to.  I had a recreational drug habit that was being severely neglected and sometimes you just want to hole up all by yourself in a motel room and party.  At the time I thought, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”  Now I think, “absence makes the heart a little crazy and turns people into a standard Oprah audience member.   RIP, Oprah.

Seriously, that email was long folks.  It was like “Ulysses” long.  And after I read her email, I decided to call her bluff and go for big air…

Lindsay: I knew the conversation in the evening wouldn’t be great, but I didn’t expect Jay to say that yes, our religious differences and my expectations of him (you know, wanting to talk to someone who called me his girlfriend at least once during the weekend) might be too much for us to handle.  The conversation was a short one, and ended with us taking “some time.”  Also, it was awkward because he forgot his dog’s leash and had to come back after we’d already had one awkward goodbye, and it kind of wrecked the drama of it all for me. 

Jay:  Being single for so long, you forget how to be in a relationship, and you also forget how to break-up with people.  I’m glad I forgot how to do that.  Actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever broken up with anyone.  They always seem to leave me.  Like Lenny from “Of Mice and Men”, I just tend to pet things too roughly sometimes (That’s a horrible image.  Picture me aggressively petting Lindsay and yelling, “You’re so soft and pretty, yay!”).  In addition to rough petting skills (not to be confused with heavy petting), I’m also an a-hole and can be incredibly mean.  My years as a comedian and bombing on stage have hardened my heart and I’m very quick to tell someone, “Go f**k yourself,” after they hurt my feelings.  This was no different.  I don’t remember much about it besides heavy sweating and a very awkward hug.  And just in case you’re getting bored reading about other people’s problems…let me spice the story up for you.  Then…I HIT HER IN THE FACE!!!  No, I’m kidding.  That didn’t happen. 

Lindsay: A few days later, we talked again.  I had managed to calm down to a level of only mild hysteria.  We agreed that yes, we did like each other.  We also agreed that yes, I’d jumped to some conclusions and that Jay had overreacted with a cut-and-run instinct.  I explained that I had felt pressure to be more serious than I was ready for, but then felt that Jay wasn’t acting on the level of seriousness that he talked about.  I apologized for being a crazy girl and assuming that he was in the mountains in a drug-induced weekend-long coma with many naked women and delicious food.  To be fair, that’s probably EXACTLY what he was doing, but I should have asked first.  Also, we weren’t exclusive at that point, so he was well within his rights.  He’s not allowed to do those things anymore; the women have to be clothed. 

Jay: Seriously, I didn’t hit her.  I just feel like I needed to say that again.  So, we agreed that we did like each other very much, but that we apparently suck at reading each other’s “signals” or “signs” or whatever buzz word you use for mind reading.  We walked away saying that we wanted to take it slower and “get to know each other better” before we “took it to the next level”.  I think this blog is an indicator that things have gone to the “next level”. 

Lindsay:  Jay has gone to the next level, I’m still a commitment-phobe.  We learned a lot from this fight.  First, we each make assumptions about others that aren’t true:  Jay had been single for a while and wasn’t used to talking to someone all the time.  He loved talking to me, but didn’t realize that the amount of communication we’d been having was something I’d come to expect.  I didn’t realize that he was actually listening when I told him that I didn’t want to move too quickly and that maybe, just maybe, he thought I’d like a weekend with my friends to not be texting someone 24/7 that I wasn’t ready to call my girlfriend.

Jay: Lindsay she still thinks I’m in the mountains on a drug binge when she can’t find me.  I’m not going to justify that with a response, because I don’t like being a liar.  The other thing I learned from this is to be more open.  If you don’t express your thoughts and opinions, then most people won’t have a clue what you are thinking.  We do a better job of talking and listening.  In relationships, you have to ask for things in order to get them.  Like this, “Hey, Lindsay, is it cool if I make a domestic violence joke in the blog about me hitting you?”  Relationships are give and take…and a lot of ignoring.

Learn from us:  we wasted a reasonable amount of time being pissy about things that weren’t really issues instead of talking about them FIRST.  We do that now, and it saves our friends a lot of irritation and allows us more time to sleep and laugh and cook and teach you about relationships. 

Don’t listen to us though, we know nothing.

Love,

The Wife-beater-wannabee and the Commitment-phobe