She Said

Not that S. didn't do a wonderful job of telling the story of our engagement, but I thought that it would be fun to give my perspective- if not just for entertainment value, then also for (our) posterity.

Background

As S. noted, he had not once, not even a single time, told me, in the course of our five-hundred-forty-seven day courtship (not that I was counting), that he loved me. While I understood his perspective and appreciated the seriousness he placed on the concept and the meaning of love, it did make for some stressful conversations and the occasional dark-humor moment (One time, when we were mid-flight on our way home to Houston, we hit some serious turbulence and, thinking that this could be the end and taking advantage of our possible last moment on earth, I tried to squeeze it out of him. It didn't work.).

I agree that everyone conceives of love in their own way and the word and concept are diminished when used without reflection. But at the same time, without that touchstone in a relationship, that easy way to affirm the health and happiness of a partnership, conversations analyzing feelings, emotions and the blah blah blah that most guys avoid at all costs become necessary about every 2 months or so, judging from our experience. We relied on analogies to convey our feelings for one another- forget being on the same page - are we in the same chapter? same book? same series? We were forced to deconstruct our ideas of love, identifying aspects of feelings and actions associated with our conceptions of love and figuring out whether they applied to our relationship in its then-current state. I needed progress reports to figure out whether we were getting closer to what had become the holy grail of our relationship or whether this absence of the “l” word was a serious red flag that my thirty-six-year-old, never-been-married, salsa-dancing, game-loving, free-spirit, live-in-the-present boyfriend was waving in my face, signaling unresolved and unresolvable commitment issues.

The flip side of the coin was that, since about a year ago, I had been telling S. fairly regularly that I love him. Not only when I was a little drunk, but pretty much on a daily or bi-daily basis. Occasionally I would try to hold out, rationalizing that telling him applied unnecessary pressure or that I wasn't telling him for him but for me, which is kind of antithetical to my concept of love, etc., but I rarely was able to enforce the moratorium for more than a week. Once tipsy, the dam would break and S. would be deluged in a proverbial love flood. 

My professions of love were usually met with a warm hug or squeeze or an occasional expression of lesser affection (though those usually didn't go over so well, just underscoring our different feelings for each other). Other times, I would try and get creative, expressing my feelings for S. sans the “l” word. I would try to put it in his lingo- “you mean so much to me”, “you are my very best friend and favorite person in the whole world”, “I respect you immensely”, and these were met in kind and were reassuring, but it still didn't disguise the fact that I was further out on the love limb than S. I would play mind games with myself, arguing that he really did feel the same way about me that I felt about him, but that he just called it something else. That carried me through some hard moments, but I don't know if that was always the case, especially earlier in our relationship. I would similarly take heart in casual, toss-away remarks he would make, like referring to me as “Mama” in relation to his dog Luke or the “Mrs.” when talking to his friends, but I learned that that did not necessarily equate with the assurance of a lifelong commitment.

Aside from this complication, our relationship was (and is) the healthiest, happiest and most fulfilling that not only I have been in but, in all honesty, than I could have ever dreamed of. I am flabbergasted that I got so lucky as to find someone that I think is the cat's pajamas. Other than a lack of faith in people in general and this refusal to tell me he loved me, I had no reason to think that we were anything less than wonderful.

I tell you all this to underscore the significance and magnitude of hearing those words from S. the first time, when he just happened to be putting a ring on my finger.

The Proposal.

As S. noted, my actual birthday is on June 30^th and S. planned a getaway vacation to Portugal to top off the month-long celebration. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the birth-month concept, it is not a means to load up on gifts, but rather a way to spread the fun and offer an opportunity to reflect on the year you are closing out and identify goals for the upcoming  year of your life. Also, it entitles the celebrant to extra kisses.) He was overly generous this year- opening strong with a jamonera (a device to hold a cured pig leg) and a cured pig leg, following up throughout the month with extra professions of strong affection, a thing to put my laptop on so that it doesn't overheat and some earphones. I had been forewarned to stay away from all packages but couldn't help but noting their arrival and one day in particular when S. disappeared for an entire afternoon. Immediately before we left for Portugal, I calculated that there was one outstanding gift, and I assumed that S. was planning on giving it to me in Portugal.

My friend Cathy and I evaluated whether the missing gift was likely to be a ring, but this was a futile exercise we had been engaging in for all major holidays for the last 6 months. I had gotten my hopes up now multiple times (Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, the random romantic weekend escape) and I wasn't going to be holding my breathe. Besides, S. loves giving surprises and I thought it more his M.O. to pop the question on some otherwise insignificant day when we were out on a run or doing something equally mundane during which I would never expect one of the most significant events of my life to occur. For these reasons, I did not necessarily think that the MIA gift was a ring.

S. did all the legwork for the trip to Portugal, taking a random comment I made about wanting to visit a Portuguese fishing village (I had pictured a town similar to the setting for that scene in Love Actually when Colin Firth goes to Portugal to propose to his cleaning lady after knowing ridiculously little about her) and turned it into a reality. He booked a room with a balcony overlooking this wonderful little Atlantic-facing cove in the town of Sesimbra and handled all the logistics on getting us there. It was wonderful- picturesque, relaxing, intimate- and to top it off, S. had done his research and identified a great restaurant for dinner on my birthday. We left for dinner but before we could get far from the hotel, S. ran back upstairs to drop something off. After a fabulous dinner followed by some spontaneous street salsa dancing, we made our way back to the hotel. As we were going up in the elevator, I remembered that, last year for my birthday, S. had taken me out to dinner (The Rainbow Lodge, another amazing meal) and had arranged for his brother to leave several gifts on the table for our return. I deduced that his return to the hotel room had been a ruse and raced off to the room to see. When I got there, it did not immediately appear that a gift had been lovingly laid out, so I began rooting around in drawers, luggage, dirty laundry for my surprise, thoroughly convinced at this point that I had figured it out. Only after S. readily agreed to let me go through his backpack did I realize that I had miscalculated. Embarrassed and not wanting to seem ungrateful for all that he done for my birth month, I quickly dropped it.

So when we got home on Saturday, July 2nd, I had all but forgotten about the missing package and was focused on getting into some comfy clothes and doing some work for a charity auction that I had organized and which was to take place the next day. Freshly showered and ready to log on to the computer, S. called to me from the couch, looking very serious. The look on his face was so foreign to me- worried, serious, nervous- that I too immediately began feeling those same feelings. I ran to the couch and asked him if something was wrong, afraid of the answer but also faintly hoping but not quite believing that this could be what I had hoped for for so long. He said that I had been right in my math- there was a missing package- and then silently handed me a small black-velvet wrapped package. I pulled back the piece of velvet and saw the ring- the same ring I had first seen in December of 2009 when I was visiting my girlfriend Megan in Durham and S. and I had just begun seriously talking and the same ring that, a little over a year later, S. and I looked at together as we made our way up the East coast before flying out of NY to Spain. The thing is, we looked at a fair number of rings (actually, if truth be told, I stopped at every sparkly bauble and told S. at every opportunity that any ring would do- it was about what it symbolized, not its street value) and this one, while my first choice, doesn't look like your typical engagement ring, which is what I love about it, but which is what added to the confusion. 

 Just to clarify, I asked him whether this was a present or something more, at which point he told me for the first time that he loved me. The ring all but forgotten, I asked him for the next 5 minutes to please repeat those wonderful 3 words that I had so longed to hear for so long. The engagement is icing on the cake- for me, the fact that S. loves me, and knowing what that means to him, is everything.