Yesterday in NYC I was walking briskly along with a businessgal buddy when the oddest thing happened. I hooked a man — literally.

I was carrying a suit bag filled filled with clothes on hangers over my left arm as we yapped our way down the street.

An older gentleman and his wife were walking past us in the opposite direction. They obviously passed too close and somehow my hangars hooked on the husband, and yanked me backwards after him.

I was trying to unhook myself from him but his wife thought I was intentionally molesting him and was pulling him away from me yelling, "He's mine!"

She obviously didn't see the hanger.

Strangely, the same thing had happened just three minutes before with a construction guy as I was crossing the street. That one almost cost me a two by four to the head.

So here's what I discovered: You can literally hook a man on the street.

Now I just have to work on my aim.

When you start dating, you realize there are a number of things you don't necessarily want the other party to know about — at least, not at first. Habits, tendencies, things you're mildly embarrassed about, things you're not sure will go over well, things that didn't go over well with the last partner. They're small, yes — not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things — but you're not necessarily eager to share them.

I mean, you can love and trust someone and still not want to them to know you have a really, really hard time peeing when you think anyone can hear.

Since we're in a long distance relationship, when Mike and I see each other we stay in each other's apartments. This means we're together a lot of the time. This means he's figured a lot out already.

And no, I can't pee if I think anyone can hear. Or if I think someone's waiting for the bathroom. Obviously, this had to come out into the open early on. He hasn't stopped rolling his eyes, but he has let me pile pillows on his head before I head to the bathroom.

He's found out how I feel about jammies. In that I like them — a lot. In that I tend to come home from work, put them on, and stay in them the rest of the day. In that I avoid getting dressed as long as possible over the weekend.

He knows the house kind of revolves around the cats.

I've had to admit, recently, that I have a number of friends I only know through the Internet.

He knows I smoke sometimes.

These things have all come to light. None of them, of course, have been a big deal, but all of them were things I was reluctant to share. They are all things that may not have been learned as soon as they were if we hadn't been sharing a space.

In less than a month, we're taking a trip together. There's no hiding when you're traveling. What will come to light then?

Over the past year and a half or so, I've gotten very comfortable being alone, doing things alone. Some things, I've found, are better by myself. I've come to like my own company. I've found that I prefer the quiet, prefer solitude.

Traveling, for example. That first trip alone, to Wales, was very much a ‘well, no one can stop me from doing this, so I'm going to do it to prove I can' kind of trip. It turned out, a lot of that trip was marvelous because I was alone. I like traveling alone. I like not having to worry about other people's preferences, comfort, plans. I like eating when I want, stopping when I think something is pretty, sitting on as many strategically placed benches as I want. And I am a sucker for a strategically placed bench.

How, I've been wondering, will I do traveling with someone else?

In June, we'll find out. June marks one of those relationship milestones — going on a trip together. Mike and I are going to Greece for two weeks.

After having been in a relationship for so many years with someone who did not want to go places with me — too expensive, ‘just wanted to stay home', whatever really lay beneath that — it's startling, a little, to be with someone who wants to do this with me. Startling, but wonderful.

At the same time, I wonder — how will this be? I've learned how to do this alone, how do I learn to do it not alone?

I suppose it's the same as getting into a new relationship, in many ways. You get comfortable being alone, living alone. You start to really enjoy that feeling — the being surrounded by only your own stuff, your power over your surroundings, the never needing to compromise. Figuring out, little by little, how to let someone in.

Your gut instinct is there for a reason. It's a hardwired sixth sense in your brain that tells you exactly when something isn't right. It's survival in its most primitive form.

And boy, have we ever evolved. We've learned to ignore that gut instinct, going against everything it whispers to us (and sometimes even what it screams at us), and we've even managed to talk it down, telling ourselves we're being silly.

Or stupid. Or nonsensical. Or whiny. Or melodramatic ... yeah, we're pretty good at tripping our own brains up.

I've read a few posts where the women here have said they can pinpoint that exact moment when they knew something was wrong or when they knew it wasn't going to work out.

And yet, from the stories they've shared, it took everyone a very long time to really realize what our gut instinct already knew. I've had those moments, too.

I knew three months into my first relationship that it wasn't going to be a winner. I stayed for 10 years before calling it what it was: over.

My second relationship was the same — three weeks to fall in love, three months to know it wouldn't last, 10 years to walk out the door.

I think three and 10 might be important numbers for me to keep in mind.

So why is it that we don't pay attention to that automatic gut instinct that is desperately trying to save us from ourselves? Why don't we listen more? Why don't we take a deep breath, look inwards and say, "Alright, buddy, shoot. What have you got to tell me?"

No, we distract ourselves from the reality. We shake it off, think of something else, tell ourselves we're just being silly.

Worse, we let our sixth sense whisper at us, wearing us down mentally while we smile and pretend on the outside. We do bugger-all to change anything about our situation.

When I started dating Mike, I was taking an acting class. The class was through one of the more prestigious theater companies in the city, the professor was a lovely and talented man, and the class was the most God-awful, boring thing ever.

For those of you not acquainted with the mechanics of a scene study class: You're assigned a scene with a partner, which you work over the week. In class, you present your scene, get some feedback, work a bit with the professor.

This takes maybe 20 minutes. The rest of the three hour class is spent watching the other partners present and work. About an hour in, I reach my breaking point. My attention span is short — that's one of the reasons I teach. Sixteen year olds and I have about the same capacity for focus.

What was funny about this class, though: About a month into the non-relationship Mike and I were having, about the time I was ready to cut and run, we were assigned scenes from a play called Table Settings.

I was given the part of a young woman, recently divorced, completely neurotic, and overly analytical about relationships, who's met someone she might really like and who can't just let herself enjoy it.

It was hard not to suspect conspiracy.

Then again, it made the character analysis part of the class pretty easy.

The monologue that spoke to me the most:

"You know when you meet someone and your heart starts to pound and your stomach turns to mush — Unfortunately, mush never sustains itself. It fades away and the mind goes back to running the show again. I am experiencing a mild case of mush right now.

But I'm so preoccupied with what's going to happen when the mush goes away that I'm not even enjoying the mush when it's here."

My ex and I spend a lot of time talking about other people's relationships and relationships in general. I've noticed that we tend to skim over issues on our own relationship.

He was mentioning that a couple we know tries to create a good impression. In public, they fawn over each other, make eyes, and touch often. In private, there's nothing happening there. It's a sham.

"I'm glad that we're working on us," I smiled into the phone receiver. Lately, things have been quite nice between us.

He gave a manly grunted. "Mmph."

"What? Don't you think so?" I explained how we'd been happy, that we were getting along well and we seemed to be a stronger couple (if we can be a couple without living together).

"Ach, let things be." I could almost feel the brush off through the phone lines.

I know why he's upset. We both want the same thing: we want to be closer. He's said as much and so have I. We want to touch more; we want to be affectionate with each other. We want a deeper relationship.

And yet, we're so damned scared of each other, so damned worried that we'll get hurt that we tend to be overly cautious. I'm scared of giving too much and getting hurt when he goes cold. He's scared of letting himself feel emotion.

I have a feeling that we'll end up dancing around the root of the matter for years to come. Living together for so long, having a child and then separating permanently shook us both up badly. Creating the relationship we have now took some savvy navigation, too.

Throw it all to the wind and fall in love again? We'd probably both like to do that. But we're too scared because we've been there, done that and gotten badly hurt.

Find someone new and start over? Neither of us have interest in that. Sure, we want to know that at middle-age, we're desirable, but we don't want a new person in the mix.

Sam didn't want me to go. He begged and cried and left a haiku stuck to the mirror on Post-It notes every morning.

He said marriage is forever and we promised to be in this together forever.

He said I said I was ruining the kids.

He asked if I could find it in my heart to give him one more chance.

The thing is, he was miserable in it, too. Was so unhappy, months before I left he went to a friend's house to ask if he could live there for a while. Until he figured things out. Got a place of his own.

But he didn't ask. Sam said he knew that night, in coming so close to leaving, that he wanted to stay, would stay in it forever trying to make it work.

I wonder why sometimes. Love or fear?

He wasn't getting what he needed from me any more that I was getting it from him.

I know it's true, because I wasn't giving it. He blames himself. Outsiders, when they look at our relationship, they blame him too. The things he "did" were tangible.

You could name them.

And some were just reactions. Ways of being in relation to the ways I was being.

I thought I was taking my time in this separation to see if there was changes in Sam that could make us better together. That's not what I'm doing.

What I really doing, I know now, is taking my time to see if there are changes in me.

My uncle and his girlfriend were married yesterday. They've been together for 16 plus years. I've already taken to calling his girlfriend my aunt. It's just easier that way.

I used to ask them years and years ago when they were going to get married. My uncle would always say something like, "Who needs to get married?" When the Levi disaster happened, I must admit that I started to feel the same way.

So you can only imagine my surprise when I opened up my e-mail yesterday, yes, my e-mail, to find a message from my uncle that said the following:

Faith,

Janice and I are getting married at 5 today at the house. We need you to come over and be a witness.

I thought that he was kidding so I called him. Nope, he was serious.

They were married at 5:00 p.m., in front of their house, underneath their cheery tree. It was only the two of them, the Justice of The Peace, Adrian, and me. Still, it was beautiful. It was perfect.

I realized yesterday how absolutely jaded I am now. How whenever someone tells me that they're getting married or I hear of someone getting married, my instant reaction is "Why!?" I think to myself, Why would you want to screw up a perfectly good relationship by going and getting married?

I also realize how silly that sounds.

Marriage is not the enemy, nor is it something to fear. Marriage is hard work, but can also be filled with happiness, love, and security.

These two are perfect for one another. The amount of time they've spent together thus far proves that. I don't know if it's possible but I hope that somehow in marriage, there bond can grow even stronger.

Congratulations, guys!

My ex and I went to see a show together recently. We do that. We date, we see each other, and then we each go to our respective homes. We had a great time, too.

While we were at the show, we met a friend of ours — and he had a new girlfriend with him. She couldn't have been more than 20, and he was in his late 30s. More power to him, I say.

The next day, though, my ex and I were discussing how young the girl was and how we felt about people who date younger people. I expressed a little bit of surprise at the difference in ages between our friend and his girlfriend. My ex pointed out there was 10 years' difference between us. Nothing wrong with that.

Then he said, "The problem isn't that people date younger people. The problem is that no one seems to be able to keep a girlfriend. Why is that?"

He was right. Men in our area who divorce do try to find new relationships. None of them stick. They find a woman and a few months later, they're with someone new. They can't seem to find a stable relationship that lasts.

"I admire us, you know," he went on thoughtfully. He said that despite our history, our breakup, and the fact that we don't live together any more, we're mature enough to work at keeping our relationship alive because we love each other.

We talk. We find ways around our differences. We're learning what works and what doesn't. We're each trying to find a way to be a couple, no matter how hard it is sometimes.

Being a couple is work. A relationship isn't a discardable commodity when people have differences. They find solutions if they want to be together. They work out their issues. They talk. They resolve the problems.

There's nothing wrong with playing the field, either. But to me, that just shows someone isn't serious about commitment or hasn't figured out what's important to them.

Sometimes I wonder if I still have feelings for Levi. There, I said it. I suppose this makes me even more human.

Intellectually, I'm sure that I don't. I know that I literally despise what he's done to my son, and I know that I do not have any respect for him, whatsoever, anymore.

But there are moments that I'll reminisce about things he and I did together, and I'll smile. But there are moments where I still miss him. But there are moments when we are SCREAMING at each other, where I'm like, wow. You can't scream at an ex you don't care about, right? You can't scream because you're indifferent, right?

I've had breakups in the past — one big one — and I recall going through these same motions; the pain and devastation, the crying, the name calling and yelling, and then the indifference, which carries you to where you can see each other on the street and stop to say hello.

I recall going through those motions, and I extract comfort from that from time to time in a this-to-shall-pass kind of way. Problem is, these motions went much faster the first time around.

And truthfully, it's really not even me. I mean, I get it that it takes two to tango, but I don't scream at Levi. I try not to engage in arguments with him. I try not to stoop to childish name calling. He, on the other hand, can not control himself. He is incapable of a civil conversation. I cannot understand it.

I have done nothing to warrant this behavior. I have done nothing to deserve his constant verbal abuse. Yet, it happens. Yet, he acts like he hates me.

I am reminded of the boy in grade school that used to pull my hair and make me cry. Later, he told me that he had a crush on me.

No, I don't have feelings for Levi. But maybe he still has them for me?