And what's new with you?

In the past two weeks, a friend died unexpectedly and two of my serious ex-boyfriends got engaged.

It's been a lot to process.

One of the engaged ex-boyfriends was from way back in high school, and I was happy they finally got engaged. Symbolically, it's a bit difficult because she's 7 years younger than him, the continuation of the trend.

The other was the guy who called me in September asking to get back together and raised the question again in November when we met up for an hour when I was in his city for a conference. At the time, he told me that his girlfriend had OCD with paranoid tendencies. Two examples he gave in November: she had contamination fears, but her apartment was a mess because she was incapable of doing basic household chores because she would spend 30 minutes washing one drinking glass; she lived alone, and if a tissue were in a place other than where she remembered it, she would think that someone had broken into her apartment and moved it. This time, he mentioned that she's a checker and hand-washer. He was grateful to her for tolerating his own mood issues, however, and keeping him sane at a difficult time in his first year of working/teaching. His facebook picture is still one that I took on a trip we took together --- he was posing in front of a body of water with a 1980 travel guide that my father had given us in case we found it useful, though he cut out the travel guide --- and while his job is the kind that he can't have anything too personal on his facebook profile, a devoted girlfriend/fiancee is certainly reasonable, but he has no more recent pictures, he's still listed as single, he doesn't have an engagement announcement on any other website, and there are no engagement congratulations on his facebook from his friends.

I asked if his family is happy about it, and he said that it's difficult for them that he's marrying before his 37 year old sister (who is attractive, but difficult), and his mother is worried about money and is complaining that she's afraid that she'll have to contribute towards the wedding. He started to complain about the issues related to the engagement and wedding, which have apparently multiplied in the 5 days since the engagement, but it's obviously the last time we'll talk for awhile and I didn't want to hear about his crazy family. I feel bad for him that he doesn't have a supportive intact family, but I spent 4 years being supportive (his remark about my extended family, "They're so nice to each other!") and I'm thankful that I don't have to do it anymore. No wonder he spent about an hour on the phone with me talking about various issues before raising the issue, and only after I asked him directly if he was going to get engaged. Having grown up in such a fractured family, he has a revulsion about divorce, so this is it for him. He's a wonderful guy, and I do think that he will be a good father; I hope his fiancee is not as consistently screwed up as he described.


Meanwhile, I had coffee yesterday with Stephen for the first time since mid-October. I'd been wondering why we hadn't ended up dating --- I know that it was my idea not to date, but I couldn't remember why --- so I suppose it was good timing that he contacted me on facebook around when I'd been realizing I didn't remember. It was uneventful. We caught up. I figure we can see whether we can be friends, and then see where to go from there. I'm not in the mood to pursue relationships in any kind of intense way, plus hopefully I'll be leaving.

I went to a party over the weekend at Mike's; Mike was the guy who looked like a J Crew model, was 10 years older, "technically divorced", gregarious, and not so educated (his email to me after my successful defense said, "Congradulations perfessor!"). His apartment was completely beautiful --- the only one belonging to a peer which could truly be in one of those "beautiful house" magazines --- and had remarkably many photographs of himself on the walls. I hadn't picked up on the vanity side of his personality that would induce him to have an 8 x 10 black and white artistic-ish shirtless picture of himself on his kitchen wall, where the other pictures are of nature, wildlife, and no other people. His fridge was covered in photos, half of which were the usual friends, children of friends, grandparents, and half were of him.

When I saw his apartment, it did cross my mind to think that he still clearly likes me, he's certainly attractive, and we have complementary genes and skills: I'm smart and have high earning potential, especially if I left academia, while he's tall, attractive, athletic, outgoing, confident, doesn't need glasses, and apparently fantastic at aesthetics. It almost seems silly to marry a short aesthetically-impaired myopic guy with an Ivy degree and good grammar and spelling. I have a friend, also a PhD, who is cute but overweight (perhaps obese), and married to a tall attractive guy who's again interesting to talk with and now a doting father, but not well-educated or well-employed. And I think my father was telling me about a graduate student of his who married a cop. It happens.

Genetically, it's so logical, except I find intelligence more of a turn-on than J Crew models, so my nerd fetish will produce another generation of aesthetically-challenged awkward children to be picked on by the children of the tall athletic guys.