This guy, Mike — you probably haven't met him. But you've heard of him; I've been going on about him for a while now. I'm sorry that there aren't more of him, that there aren't dozens and dozens, so I could dole him out everywhere he might be needed. Because, it turns out, Mike is pretty much perfect for a divorced girl. At least, this one.

He has never tried to move any faster than I am comfortable with.

He has never said anything negative about Jake, no matter what I've told him, no matter how I've felt, no matter how he might feel. He knows how to be supportive and understanding without being derogatory.

I've had hysterical breakdowns, panic attacks, periods of unexplained misery. He's happily (well, maybe not happily, but certainly willingly and patiently) weathered these, as little sense as they made to either of us at the time.

Most notably, most importantly:

He accepts that this marriage was part of my life, that it is now and will always be part of who I am. He never pretends it didn't happen. At the same time, he knows he doesn't have to feel threatened or compared. He doesn't mind that there was someone else important before him.

I don't know if he has any idea how much of a worry it was that, if I ever got into a relationship again, I would somehow have to ignore or negate or erase those years that were with someone else. But with him, if I'm still sad over this marriage sometimes, if I have a story that involves me as I was before — it's a non-issue. He's enough of a friend that all those parts are just a part of me, and I don't have to pretend they're not there.

So, I'm thanking him.

I wish everyone were as lucky as I am.

Monday, September 29th was a big day. It marked one year since Mike and I started dating.

So you'll have to forgive me if this week is a little Mike-heavy — but this one-year point is somewhat startling, and really, really marvelous.

I would never have guessed, a year ago, that this is where I'd be. The curled-up-in-a-ball-on-my-couch stage of getting divorced was truly over. I loved living alone. I loved being single. I loved casual dating and nothing serious and doing everything on my own terms.

I liked this person I had turned out to be: She had fun. She didn't need anyone. She was free to do anything she wanted.

I had no interest in getting into a relationship. As soon as someone said the R-word, or mentioned their mothers, or planned ahead, I dropped them.

My Third Date Rule wasn't about sex — it was the last time I'd see someone.

Then this person showed up. He didn't want a relationship either. We rejoiced in our No Strings Mindsets. Then we realized that we liked each other a lot, and rejoiced that we lived so far away, since neither of us were in any place to date "for real." Then we realized we really, really liked each other a lot. And — well, you've pretty much been here for the rest.

I realize that we didn't call it a relationship until well after September, but seeing as both of us stopped dating other people, and both of us spent all our time being alternately delighted by and terrified of the unnamed something we were in from that point on, we may as well just count it from there.

So now, here we are. Long distance, yes. Terrifying, sometimes, still. But more happy-making and supportive and wonderful than I knew relationships could be. It astonishes me that this is where I am now.

And how nice to have an anniversary that marks the beginning, rather than the end.

This summer, Mike and I tried a Cohabitation Experiment: sharing an apartment for the month and a half I was in New York.

Said experiment was an epic failure.

Why was it a failure? Well, really, we just weren't ready for it.

But that's the easy answer. Plus, who didn't see that coming?

The girl: not-so-long split from a long term marriage, terrified of relationships in general, overly-analytical and prone to panic. 

The guy: has never lived with anyone before, equally skittish of a Relationship-with-a-Capital-R and all that might entail.

Obviously this was going to end badly. But just leaving it at that wouldn't give us much to discuss, would it? And who wouldn't rather pick apart all the little nuances?

Plus, in all seriousness, this "failure" was, in many ways, really good for this relationship — at least, from my end. In trying to figure out just why I had such a hard time, I think I'm in a much better position to move forward.

Having all your neuroses jump up and down on your head all at once does wonders for figuring out how to deal with them. At least, once you're done panicking.

You fall into a pattern, in a long distance thing. It's not real life, so much, when it's only a week, two weeks at a time. Real life is on hold. So when, suddenly, you're in the relationship and in real life, and sharing an unfamiliar space, and not on your regular schedule...well. Things get confusing.

But with some thought on this, with some distance — I'm less likely to make the same mistakes again.

Next Post: Specifically, balancing. 

This past summer will henceforth be known as "Cohabitation Experiment Summer." Yes. Just a few short months ago, Mike and I tried living together — in strictly controlled, scientific circumstances, of course.

The Initial Plan: I am used to spending the summers in New York. Since I am now dating someone who lives there, living in the NYU dorms no longer seems like a good plan. Mike, unfortunately, lives in an apartment the size of a shoebox. There is no possible way two people can spend an entire summer in a place this size and not tear each other's faces off.  We both like being alone too much. We both want the option of getting away.  We need a door to close.

We decide that he will sublet his shoebox, I will take the money I normally spend on the dorms, and, together, we will sublet a larger apartment for the summer.

This will be a living together experiment. We will see how we do when it's longer than a week or two. We are pretty sure we're not ready to live together For Real — at least, I am, but this will not be For Real. There is a time limit. It is temporary. It is safer. We will discover new and exciting things about our relationship.

Delightful Possibilities: The luxury of spending time together without anticipating its end in a few short days. Seeing what "real life" with each other is like. Waking up together every morning.

Scary Possibilities: That we won't get enough alone time. That I will somehow freak out and mess everything up.

All these things, as it turns out, came to pass.

Next post: Alice examines just why this experiment was such an epic failure.

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.

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."

There's a lot to be said for lust.

Jake and I were never that sexual a couple. Sex was good, sometimes great. There's definitely something to be said about having one long-term partner, everything being the first for both of you. Learning about sex was never uncomfortable or awkward, there were no early experiences that would need hashing out in therapy later. But we never really had a can't-keep-my-hands-off-you stage.

I thought that this was because we knew each other so well. I thought it was because we had been together so long, that we had just shifted into that comfy, everyday kind of relationship. I thought maybe I just wasn't that interested in sex in general.

Hindsight, of course, says a lot. Ultimately, I just don't think we were that attracted to each other. But we fell in love way, way too young to know that.

Even when our marriage was pretty solid, there was a part of me that would see movies, read books, see other people, and feel cheated. I'd console myself with the things I did have — I had trust, and friendship, and humor, and safety. Surely one can't expect it all, I thought.

Well, why not?

There's a lot to be said for passion. There's a lot to be said for being thrown against a wall, for barely being able to make it through the apartment door, for leaving a party early. It's kind of terrifying that I could very well have lived out my adult life without having experienced that.

It's hard to imagine this stage can possibly last, but then I look at Lindsay and Jesse, who have been married four years and still feel that way. I think back to just a year ago, when I thought the love bit and the lust bit were mutually exclusive. I've been wrong before. And am determined to figure out a way to keep this part.

"She thought about him when she was not with him. Sometimes too much, she worried. What if he turned away from her greed for his love?"

It's comforting to know that's common enough, universal enough, to pop up in a novel.

It's funny how you can be secure, for all intents and purposes, in a relationship but still monitor your own behavior. When you feel so much for someone, you constantly worry: Is it too much? Will this frighten him away? Will this bother him?

When you've spent years in a relationship in which the other party is weary of your affection, you learn to hide it. You learn to hold back. You become reluctant to show things. At the same time, you live in constant anticipation, constant wanting.

The worst feeling in the world is knowing you love someone more than they love you. Feeling you're always trailing after them, hoping for a word, a hug, a gesture. Hating your need, hating the kind of woman you're turning into.

When you're with someone who gives affection freely, that greed doesn't stop.

Adopted feral cats and strays can't be left to monitor their own food intake. Apparently, if you keep their bowl full, they'll eat themselves to death. Since, out on their own, they never knew when they might eat again, when they're presented with food they'll eat it all - never confident they'll eat again any time soon.

I feel like that, a lot of the time.

Mike says my relationship-expectation bar is absurdly low, that I should start taking him more for granted.

I wonder how long that will take?

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.