Happy “Anniversary” Lisa

Because I’m your nephew of which you almost consider as your son, I want to be able to tell you exactly what I think about your current situation, without any lying or sugar coating, in this open forum of feelings in which friends can give you support and relate.

I find it surprising to know that you’ve always been in a long-term relationship since junior high school. Well, not really. I know that you’re my Lisa (one hot bitch), but I do find it a bit odd that there have not been any large gaps in between them. Sort of. I don’t know.

I may not be an expert in relationships, as a 19-going-on-20 college student, but I have been in three of them. My first two relationships didn’t go as well as I planned. They were both long distance relationships and there wasn’t much of a gap between the two. Now I’m with Stephen and he’s the closest person, distance wise, I’ve been with yet (about the same time it would take to drive from North to South Austin). And things are going very well. I don’t want to speculate, but this is probably the best relationship I’ve ever been in. But it took me quite awhile, two years, to find him. Or actually, he found me.

And I think it is this difference that makes our relationship so great. This time around, I wasn’t desperately checking the gay personals every day, sometimes twice a day, just to see if I could find a potential match. This time I wasn’t [stalking] people’s personals, myspaces, journals or what have you just to make sure this person I was interested in was exactly what I was looking for. He found me. It wasn’t until after I met him did I do these things. Haha. I’m not lying (I told him about it later).

You’re right to say in your later entry that the Internet has changed the way friendships and relationships are kept and made, for better or for worse. It sucks sometimes. Sometimes, it can make us overly abuse it’s power to interconnect almost everyone on earth to everyone else, and all the information and culture along with it. But it can also be a useful tool.

It can be an outlet to show people all of our favorite things and oddities. It enables us to share pictures of ourselves so that everyone can see how beautiful (or not so beautiful) we really are without even having to visit one another in person. It allows us to put our thoughts into words, like this very blog, and let anyone and everyone understand the inner workings of our brains. It gives people the opportunity to take a peek into our very lives with pictures and words (and now even video) so that one day when the right person comes along and looks at your myspace, reads your blog, sees the wonderful person you truly are and thinks, “Hmm… I really like this person. I think I should try to talk to her,” it’ll happen. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The way of the game is to change roles. Instead of being the pursuer, and persistently try to find people for yourself, be the pursuee, and wait for Mr. Right to find you, even though you want to find him first (and ASAP). Put yourself out there. Make the world know that you’re available nonchalantly and also make sure that what you have to offer is enticing. One of the greatest personal examples I can give is my mini-epiphany I had when I was in high school, when I was finally coming to terms with my sexuality, what I wanted and what that meant to me.

To me, being gay meant I liked men who are men that liked men who are men (a little confusing, I know). So, since I found this masculine, nonflamboyant breed of men attractive, shouldn’t I, too, try to be whom I wanted to date? And if I wasn’t reciprocally mirrored to my ideal love, perhaps I should try to shape myself, my identity, to better attract a mate (exercise more, [control] to an extent my inner affections of feminized stereotypes and mannerisms, work towards goals of greater education, careers and wealth)?

To digress a bit, I would like to make a few comments about the antithesis of who you are and make known my worst fears about your possible self-image. Debbie, your sister and my aunt, is sad and alone right now not because she can’t find anyone but because no one wants to be with her. You are not with anyone right now not because you can’t find anyone and not because no one wants to be with you, but because he hasn’t found you yet. And I want to make sure that you never make a misconstrued comparison of yourself to her, mental or otherwise. If you ever think that people are staring at you thinking, “Oh, look, there’s that woman in her mid-thirties who isn’t married,” that’s not the case. Not at all.

You are single, fun and beautiful. And if it takes awhile for fate to work it’s magic, instead of you forcing fate to work in your favor, then so be it. If I had to make a choice between being unhappily married or being alone, I’d rather be alone and, if anything, my father is a perfect example of why. I could never be comfortable with just any warm body sleeping next to me in bed every night just because I don’t want to be alone. I am not and will never be that desperate. And, also, there’s nothing wrong with being single.

I am confident that you have the wisdom, experience and judgment to make good decisions for yourself; you’ve handled plenty more responsibilities by yourself for a greater amount of time than I ever have. If you wanted to divorce someone, or not, I’d totally support you. If you want to make improvements to your home, or not, I totally support you. If you want to get a roommate, or not, I totally support you. And if you want to lose weight or not, I totally support you. I will always love you Lisa, whoever you are and whatever you do, and I just want you to know that.

Love,

Robby

P.S. – I totally had to rewrite this post because it didn’t go through the first time and I didn’t save it in Word or anything. But I care about you so much and wanted you to read what I had to say, so I tried to rewrite this entry as best, if not better, than I remembered it. Oh well.

~ by thisguyukno on April 22, 2007.