Burying the lede on August 17, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Ok…so I guess I have two questions. I was just reading your bit on long distance relationships so here goes. About two years ago I broke up with my boyfriend of almost three years. A year ago, I asked a complete stranger out. Completely random — I thought he was cute, he said yes — voila, lunch date, movie we hit it off quite well. I end up getting sick — as in having surgery sick. I move in with my parents — 3000 km away — to Washington state. He visits here twice, I visit there once. Each time he has been here, he has been very affectionate, very sweet — we’ve made travelling plans together etc. We both agreed before I moved, that a commitment, a formal relationship, would be ridiculous. Mainly due to the enormous distance and the fact that neither of us is ready. (I want to be single for a bit due to my tendency to merge with the other person and lose my personality — other story.)

Fine. Groovy. So, a few months ago, I went to visit him. At his house — he lives at home as he is getting into real-estate and has it easy. He behaved very, very differently. He was distant, not as affectionate. Didn’t talk about plans — wasn’t as nice even. Now, I had just come off of my period, so hey, I thought maybe it’s hormones right? All in my head? But, now that I’m home, and we talk on the phone every Sunday, I’m getting the same vibe. (He had email for awhile and in type, was his usual self before my visit self — and he was like that at the airport when I was leaving too! Grrr.) I know he hates the telephone, but prior to my visit, he didn’t let that stop him from being sweet. What is going on? A couple of my friends are convinced he is seeing someone else — and yet, we agreed on complete honesty. Is he seeing someone and is too uncomfortable to tell me? I would be fine and taking it one day at a time if there hadn’t been this strange shift in his behaviour towards me. Was it my being in his house? Here is this commitment-phobic person (he says he does not want to get hurt, bad things have happened in the past and he is just very nervous of getting close) and I’m in his bathroom brushing my teeth, talking to his mom and dad, chatting with his sister while he’s at work…did it scare him? freak him out? Any advice to stop this noise in my head would be wonderful!

(more…)

Though I generally loathe “Ladies! It’s still possible to get married after [X advanced age]!” stories — maybe we don’t want to get married at any age? Maybe, like George Clooney, we want to stay single for life? And that’s so sad and weird because? — I did, in fact, read this entire USA Today article and will now force it upon you, too.

What I was intrigued to find out was not that it is (“Ladies!”) still possible to get married for the first time after age 45 and that growing numbers of people are doing just that, but rather this: that the CDC tracks this information.

 As in: “A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.” Huh. I thought the CDC tracked (not to mention controlled and prevented), you know, diseases — where one might still find the plague, for example. I’m not sure what this means for marriage. Pox, anyone?