awkward_people_in_love epitome of incomprehensibility After all the stressful stuff, I feel like posting some good news. I am dating someone! From my creative writing class! And if I have any capacity to get along well with a person, I think he's my best shot. I mean, the stars are in alignment here. Countries of origin of people I have more-or-less dated: A - Austria B - Burundi C - Canada You see? Alphabets! Myers-Briggs - INTJ & INTP. Apparently a good match... We were walking and talking about this. He guessed mine; for his, I was off a couple of letters. We laughed a little about doing this - it was like the snooty-ish version of comparing horoscopes. But there was some accuracy. He does tend to judge more - not in the moral-high-ground sense, in an aesthetic way. And he does seem more intuitive about people than I am - the N (intuition) and F (feeling) combo is supposed to be good for insight. Anyway, forget Myers-Briggs. This whole conversation came about when he walked me to the metro stop after we had supper together. I was sort of thinking of the supper as a date but I didn't call it that in case, in case...but he stood there, snow swirling around him. Kind of awkwardly, he said something like, I'd like to be more than friends, if you feel the same way. So then the e_o_i is shy and looks at her gloves. They continue to be gloves. And she stammers out something like a yes. So that's when we walked around more, in the snow (this was Dec. 17 and the stuff didn't stay on the ground long). But before that yes, before admitting I'd thought of this too but was wary of making the first move, I told him I was anxious about Terrible Secrets from My Past. I didn't say it like that, and it couldn't have been so terrible-sounding since we went on walking around talking about Myers-Briggs and etc. Perhaps he thought I was worried about my anxiety and ADHD somehow holding him back and he was like no, no. At the metro again I thought of kissing him but again, shyness at making the first move. That came later, on New Years' Eve, when we were having supper at his place. Actually, he was planning a fancy meal, but I wasn't much help. Instead of helping him cook like a normal person, I sat down on the couch and freaked out about our perceived class differences (he's richer in background but he's doing a graduate degree, so not terribly personally rich) and what was actually uppermost on my mind, the Terrible Secrets from My Past (hitting my parents and brother as a child and teenager; hitting the friend in my MA program with a wineglass, which could have injured her worse than it did; I described it here a week or so ago). And he said the fact that I regretted those things showed I was compassionate. With B, a few years ago, things were different. I was talking about the wineglass incident, for some reason he was thinking I'd been date-raped so he was actually relieved when I described nearly blinding someone during a stupid argument for no reason. But then when I admitted to not being good with deadlines, he seemed to withdraw. And after that date he didn't contact me again (except a somewhat awkward Hello on LinkedIn aka Business Facebook). I remember ranting about it on blather, "At least he has standards! OK to hit people with breakable glass but not OK to miss academic deadlines!" Of course, that's not all that was going on there. The problem was communication. I might say sex but that wouldn't be the whole story either. See, he was hinting at sleeping with me and when I said not then he got the impression that I was against sex before marriage (I'd talked about my religious background before). The problem was that it was before he'd had any physical contact with me except him taking my arm and sort of steering me around in a way I didn't particularly like. Better to just hold hands, I thought. I kind of knew if we'd touched more than I'd less shy about other things, but I was bad at communicating that. But it couldn't have just been that, because he still went out with me after I said no to coming to his place after an event. It was after my "I'm bad with deadlines" admission that he stopped contacting me. But no need to go on about B. He's a good person; we just weren't right for each other. It's not like I really believe in soulmates - I mean, you'd kind of expect CD (I'll call him that) and I to get together, since we were the only single people of similar ages in the creative writing class and we had similar interests. Proximity IS a thing. But if it's luck, it's good luck. He's nice, fair, practical - despite doing academic work in something rather impractical (and he's good at teaching and writing so it's not as if he has no opportunities in the world) - and funny, and sometimes awkward. I like how he looks, talks, thinks. Well, you can't know how anyone thinks, exactly, but I'm just glad things are working out right now. 200113 ... e_o_i Gah. He's INFJ, not INTJ. Not that it's a fixed thing or particularly important to impart, but I CLEARLY SAID "F" FOR "FEELING" LATER ON AND WHY DON'T I PROOFREAD!!! 200113 ... nr hmm... i'm very curious as to your insights into INTPs, e_o_i. i'm gonna start another page for it, since this one is about awkward people in love. my well-wishes to you both :) 200130 ... e_o_i I_believe_in_love (but math is my religion). We were talking last night and he gave me an idea - two actually - that fixed some of my stuck-ness as to the story arc of the novel I'm writing. I felt like worshipping something. He didn't literally give me the ideas (I can't be that indebted), but I wouldn't have thought of it if not for our conversation. But still. I don't deserve this, do I? Do I have to sacrifice my firstborn son to the partial_differential_equations? ...That's another thing. We both don't want children. At least of our own. We did get into an argument over the age of our (as yet entirely fictional) adoptive/foster child. 200704 what's it to you? who go blather from