That chapter in a romance novel

That chapter in a romance novel... maybe the second or third chapter - where everything is confusing, and seems hopeless. Where communications are misheard, misspoken, misunderstood and mistaken.

That's where I am.. right now.

Since I've started exploring my new life, I've found many friends. In fact, the word "friend" has morphed into completely new meanings... Lately, I've been spending my weekends with a lovely couple. And I've been falling in "like."

I'm too cynical and jaded to think that love is possible in the first 6 months of knowing someone. I realize there are alternate points of view. However, love to me is the deeper... more experienced version, not the giddy, coltish version. Admittedly, I am out of practice with finding someone to love. The beginning provides the foundation for later emotions, regrets, interactions.

I've been thinking of some of the early conversations with B. He liked to talk, and I was assigned to listen. But in retrospect, his stories were not insight into him or his life, but humorous quips and trolls. So I was entertained, but not educated about him.

That was a very emotionless relationship, more a business partnership. I learned early that I could have what he would give, but nothing more. And I accepted those terms. Decades later I learned what I had missed.

Now I look at this budding relationship. There are issues. I'm 15 years older. Does that matter? I don't drink. Does that matter? I've got different goals. That does matter.

Now back to the present, and how the past shapes it. Last weekend I caught a cold. N had caught the same cold. We were sick, separately. Then this weekend... we weren't well yet. Everything felt off. Questions received the wrong answer; Conversations were more pauses than words. I just felt disconnected.

We went to a party.. I had a good time, but at the end of the night, the three of us were overtired, and the night was snippish.

So this is the chapter... where everything seems hopeless... and it will work out before the end. Or this might be the false start that reveals the true objective in the next chapter...

I am in this without the expectations of a romance novel. I've enjoyed the heady emotions of New Relationship Energy (NRE). Now I just need to dig in and start the real relationship work-- Communication.

And I need to figure out what I want.