Month: December 2017

LDR
Love and Courtship

The Awkward Meeting

First dates are alternately amazing and bewildering

Meeting your treasured one after a very long time of not having seen each other has got to be the best and most exciting part of trying to be in a long-distance relationship. You have to admit that the magical moment of finally being able to lay your eyes on her after a long time of communicating through Facetime feels as if a huge load of emotional stress has been lifted from your shoulders.

When that meeting finally happens, even with all the awkwardness, nervousness and bewilderment of actually being together after a long time, you’d both want to throw away caution to the wind and give each other the affection that you’ve both been longing for. The first intense hug, the peck on the cheek and that first passionate kiss sum up all the beautiful feelings that have been bottled inside. And, it is a huge relief to finally let your feelings flow.

Despite making plans to make the meeting as perfect as possible, what happens in real life is more of comedy of errors. There’s always a big gap between expectations and reality. Of course, you’d want everything to fall into place as perfect as possible, but there will always be curve balls. You learn to take what’s in front of you and just wing with it.

In my case, being able to finally lay my eyes on Lizzy after nearly a year of not having seen her was tempered by the fact that we went out on a group lunch. Hence, I had to behave accordingly. It was awkward not being able to say and do exactly what I had in mind, but seeing her right before my very eyes was simply amazing.

And being out on a first date with Lizzy was just as nerve-wracking. I would have wanted it to take place in a perfect romantic setting – at sunset while sipping wine and smoking cigars. And, I would have wanted to make a move on her under that setting. However, plans could fall through under a mixed confluence of imperfect weather, poor execution and awkward hesitation – as what happened that evening. The beach-side date was otherwise perfect except for the torrential rains that messed it all up.

That first meeting was not all blissful feeling. The awkwardness of not having seen each other was heightened by so much overthinking and self-imposed pressure that I totally missed the moment and clammed up. It’s is easy to flirt through SMS, but when it’s time to back up the talk with real action,sometimes even the best of us wither at the moment.

Yet, there’s always the great equalizer when it comes to nervous hesitation – imbibing alcohol. In my case, sharing with her a sip a vodka variant drowned out the overthinking and hesitation. And when it was time to make my move, I took what was best available and finally kiss her like I’ve always wanted to. Well, that first kiss with Lizzy was, let’s say, very memorable indeed. How could I forget. We nearly rammed another car while kissing.

[Note: This post was first published on November 8, 2016 at https://abelsantaanave.blogspot.com]

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Weird Stuff Happen in Long-distance Relationships

There are weird side effects to wooing someone via a long-distance relationship. It’s not only very taxing on your emotions, but you also start feeling a bit obsessive with the other person.

The problem is compounded if the other party is a popular object of attention from the opposite sex, as in the case with Lizzy, the woman that I adore. She is very pretty which goes without saying that men easily fall for her. In her case, I am not (yet) her poster boy for obsessing over her. She met this guy whom she calls The Millennial who became overly obsessed with her to the point of proposing to her – even if he had two other girlfriends.

The obsessive feeling starts with missing her. When that happens, you usually get the urge to scan her Facebook photos to fill in her physical absence. After a while, you just cannot seem to help yourself from checking Facebook just to see if she’s on-line – and if she is – you take note of her most recent activity logs and notifications. It does seem weird that you start feeling like a stalker and you feel the need to step back. The simple physical absence of a person you care about makes you do stuff that seem obsessive.

And it’s a fair warning that anyone could easily just become like The Millennial, who seem to have missed the boundary between caring and obsession. Not seeing the object of your affection on a regular basis heightens that feeling. Lizzy has already warned me not to be like The Millennial. It could really might just happen to the best of us – being obsessed.

Anyway, this is post is about the weird things that happen to you when woo someone long-distance. Shout out if you have experienced this.

[Note: This post was first published on October 21, 2016 at https://abelsantaanave.blogspot.com]

SLEEP TEXTING
This happens to the best of us. Not as embarrassing as drunk texting, but, yes, it is still pretty embarrassing to wake up in the morning and see you sent incoherent messages while you were sleeping or drunk. Obviously, this happens because we tend to sleep with out mobile phones on our bedside. You intermittently wake up in the wee hours in the morning to check your phone because you thought you felt it vibrate or sound off and then send out gibberish messages while half asleep. You try to make it up in the morning by explaining that you don't know what happened. In my case, it's the constant lack of sleep because I keep thinking about her that makes me do weird stuff like trying to chat with her - at 3 a.m. I try to explain it by saying that it was meant to be sent earlier but got delayed due to system problems.
ADDICTED TO FACETIME
Thanks goodness for mobile apps like Facetime, we cut back the geographic distance a bit making the world sort of smaller. This has got to be a priority in any long-distance relationship because you're never physically together. However, this is extremely addictive too. You also tend to do cavalier acts like: busily doing Facetime while walking in the rain even if you are half-sick; cause a commotion in a coffee shop because either you are talking too loud or you want to yank away the phone chargers of other people so you could charge your own phone; and crossing dangerous corners not giving a fuck because you are live on Facetime with the one you love. And Imagine the trouble if you are not able to talk to her as planned! Then you put yourself on an emotional roller-coaster ride or not sleep at all to troll other people. There is nothing else you do because when you care for someone, you want to see her face as much as possible.
YOU ALWAYS THINK ABOUT THEM
You could be doing any mundane stuff on a daily basis and you begin to miss that special person. It's like when you have a doctors appointment and the doctor had to restrain you from using your phone because you were busy texting her while doing the procedure. It's like those days when you get out for dinner or lunch with friends but is actually not paying any close attention because you're flirting with her on the phone. It's like when you are supposed to attend a Mental Health Wellness Seminar prescribed by your office but never really got to learn anything because you were busily chatting with her. You just can't seem to stop thinking about her all the time. How do you know you have this problem? It's when you constantly hum to the tune of NSYNC's Thinking of You on your car stereo. Well, there's always hot yoga to achieve inner peace.
GREEN-MINDED COERCION
First of all, when this happens in a long-distance relationship, it's a huge red flag. That means you are close to getting out of your mind. If you have done something like asking her to send you a sexy selfie or show you her body tattoo while doing video chat, then you dangerously crossing over the obsessive red flag. Lizzy needs to spank me on the head if I ever do this to her again. I think this happens because of you are looking for intimacy with someone who is geographically miles away from you. Digital abuse is never okay. And if I ever crossed that line, I ought to be ashamed. On the other hand, if it's voluntary, the pictures should be delightful. Or just go and buy that ticket now to see her.
JEALOUS BEHAVIOR
It certainly doesn't feel right when you constantly comment every time she reaches for her phone. Clingy and emotionally needy behavior is a sign that you are getting jealous and you shouldn't be. You need to get spanked again to get back to your senses if you do this. It's embarrassing but it does happen. All you could just do at this point is promise her to do better.
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Long-distance Relations Could Work

Long-distance relationships never get a fair shake. People always dwell on the negative, like how it’s hard to maintain the passion when you don’t see each other often. I, however, don’t see it that way. They can shovel whatever statistics they want to discredit it, but there is a reason why so many couples still engage in long-distance relationships.

I think the reason is: loving or having feelings for someone is hard enough that when you feel it, you grab at the opportunity even if the other person is afar, because you just don’t know when you’re going to be able to feel the same way again. Unless, you’re a serial “faller-in-lover,” if that word even exists.

If I was to convince Lizzy, the woman I adore, who happens to believe otherwise, that long-distance relationships could work, I’d tell her that:

One of the reasons why long-distance relationships fail is that it’s hard to make a meaningful connection when you’re still at the getting-to-know-each-other stage and you’re doing it from afar. That’s not gonna work. Not so when so started as friends or have known each other for a time. Being friends and then upgrading your relationship to a higher plane makes it more likely to work.
Finding commonalities is a vital step in developing a nurturing relationship. It doesn’t have to be a perfect fit as nothing is perfect in this world. It’s being able to appreciate your commonalities and being able to recognize and respect your differences as well. Personally, I don’t need a perfect relationship. I just need someone who won’t give up on me when times get rough. This is where knowing each other helps.
Communication is the fuel that fire of your relationship burning. While it is hard not to have physical, face-to-face communications in a long-distance relationship, we do have at our disposal modern means of technology, even old-fashioned letter-writing, to mitigate the geographic distance. Distance should no longer be a big factor in maintaining relationships. Commitment, compromise and trust should be.
I’ve got to remind Lizzy that while there’s no pressure to do this at the soonest, being able to see each other once in a while is key towards developing intimacy in a long-distance relationship. Having said that, being able to come and visit once in a while on a mutually acceptable pattern and frequency would greatly help. And when you do see each other, the time you spend together would even be more meaningful and magical. 
An important factor in any relationship is being able to give the other party enough personal time to grow on her own. This is something that you can be able to give while on a long-distance relationship. You give her more than enough individual freedom to grow as a person because you aren’t there to micromanage her schedule. It reinforces the need to build trust with each other. 
 
Having said all of that, I wish that Lizzy would take a good look at the benefits rather than dwell on the negatives. Yes, it’s hard for average people to make long-distance relationships work. But I do believe that Lizzy and I aren’t average people. We are exceptional people and we can make this one work. 
 
You have enough time to think about this, Lizzy. There’s no pressure. No expectations.
 
[Note: This post was first published on October 7, 2016 at https://abelsantaanave.blogspot.com]
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I Love Lizzy
Love and Courtship

That Beautiful Feeeling

That Beautiful Feeling

AN ODE TO MY BEAUTIFUL LIZZY

By ABEL SANTA ANA

They say there will always be someone who will come into our life and disrupt it completely. In my own story, let’s call her by the name of Lizzy. I’ve always liked this girl from the first time I saw her. She’s a looker and smart too. She’s got a mean streak, but all her positive attributes help disregard any negatives. None of us is perfect anyway, although she claims that she is perfect in every way. 

We were, for a period of time, office colleagues. At that time, my feelings for her weren’t exactly that pronounced, but it has always been there. Our office was a tough working environment for the two of us since our bosses then weren’t particularly fond of both of us. One thing that kept me going despite the difficult times was the realization that I could get to see her everyday. That was enough motivation for me to keep going back to a very stressful workplace.
 
I also cannot obscure the fact that when we were working together, I made many offensive remarks and awkward advances which might be rightly characterized as harassment. I think those awkward annoying remarks were the first manifestations of my growing feelings for her. Weird as it was, I think it was my way of telling her that I really liked her, although I could very well have been cited for improper behavior.
 
I cannot exactly pinpoint the exact time when I started missing her, but our parting gave me more than enough time to think about her. It is said that one manifestation of the fact that one thinks a lot of someone is if they started dreaming about them. Sure, it’s awkward to admit it now, but she would intermittently appear in my dreams at night. It was probably was based on latent feelings in my subconscious that I purposely kept guarded, knowing for a fact that workplace romance wasn’t really in the cards for me. 
 
When she left, I thought I wasn’t probably ever going to see her again. Then, I made that poignant decision to reopen my long-dormant Facebook (FB) account. I had cut-off my FB account one time when I was on withdrawal mode from an older relationship debacle a few years back. 
 
I had no clue that on that day when I accepted Lizzy’s invite, my life would be upended. I accepted it probably thinking: “where’s the harm in doing that?” I was mistaken because communicating with her opened up a can of worms – those I have patiently stashed in my subconscious hoping they won’t ever bother me again. It’s both a wonderful feeling and a conflicting one, because I know very well that this girl could very well just break my heart. 
 
Communicating with Lizzy is addictive because I really do have genuine feelings for her; feelings which, at that onset, were relatively tame and controllable. Then, I began to communicate with her on a more personal level. I began to realize that I really do love communicating with her. I always look forward to chatting with her at the risk of being annoying. She checks all the boxes for me, so-to-speak. A beautiful person inside and out, she really gets me emotionally and mentally.
 
I don’t know if Lizzy was or will ever be into me, because I’m just really bad at reading other people’s cues. Perhaps, she thought all the while that these were just benign exchanges between two former colleagues. Yet, I have decided that it is worth a try to risk getting a heartbreak to be able to experience again that fleeting feeling of caring for another person. It’s now time for me to try to reach out again to another person even if this means having my heart getting broken all over again.
 
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert, her namesake, says that having a broken heart is a good sign because it means you have tried something. When I look into all these things that are happening to me, I feel the weight of the possibility of failing, but, at the same time, I feel happy to begin experiencing again these long dormant feelings. I have not mentioned what I feel for Lizzy yet. There is, however, a part of me that wishes she would pick up the cues herself. 
 
The last thing I want to happen is for our friendship to end because of these stupid feelings. Lizzy serves a purpose for me which is to remind me of what I am missing in life. I need her to be there to remind me that the best things in our lives are still ahead of us. She’s my shining city on the hill, although it may turn out to be just a mirage. She is teaching me how to start feeling for someone again. I may very well lose the battle for her affections,  but this experience will help me become a better person.
 
[Note: This post was first published on September 25, 2016 at https://abelsantaanave.blogspot.com]

“They say there will always be someone who will come into our life and disrupt it completely.”

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