Baggage

We all have it. Some have formalized baggage to claim & others discover it as they go along.

A divorced person has obvious baggage. The focus of their split is their ex partner & the time they spent together, a big heafty piece of luggage. As a single person, a few boyfriends, flatmates & bottles of champagne are my baggage focus, not a matching set, but they all belong to me.

When you first get to know someone, the obvious baggage is brought out and discussed, not in a formalised sense, but you get a quick overview of someone's romantic life & start from there.

Because I'm interested in a divorced person, MrTypeA-SuperFit, his way of describing his needs is similar to other recent divorced friends. After the initial split, it's the regaining of freedom, the coming into self that is exhilarating, the discovery of possibilities...life opens up. There is all this time for yourself.

So I've watched them be freedom loving, trying all sorts of things & people. Without being a dampener they eventually come to the same conclusions that long term singles discover - it's not all that much fun being single & it's hard to meet someone you really like. It's not that easy in the end. There are very few people who flow from one sucessful relationship to another.

Over dinner with TASF on Friday night, he repeated he is not good boyfriend material (broken record!) and should I rethink the 'affair' proposal. ' Look at you, you're gorgeous, you should find someone!. he said. The desire is there, the energy is there, the bloody 'connection' is there (like some dating program...'we have this deep connection' they all say)

I got cross with him. Just sick of controlling myself, being good and following dating rules. TASF is a genuinly enjoyable person, I've just meet him at this time of his life. He's a bit messed up about what relationships can do to people. As Holly said to me yesterday, "Love now equals pain: you get the messages mixed up. As you spend time with someone different parts of your emotions are rediscovered. It can be scary feeling things again & you think towards the negative, even though it's enjoyable."

In the throws of a new relationship it's likely you will discover more new baggage. To extend that metaphor, you have to claim it, open it & deal with it. But it's the only way.

Interestingly TASF and I have discovered a another set of friends we have in common. The number of times we've been invited to the same functions over the last 4 years, but never quite met, is amazing.