Girl Talk // Finding My Prince Charming

Warning:  This is the girl talk where I get mushy and stuff.  But then I'm going to try to wisdom-juke you at the end (like a Jesus Juke...Jon Acuff...Stuff Christians Like....no?) which will be hard to do since I'm neither wise nor experienced at life.  Here we go.

I've never shared the story of "us" (i.e. me & AJ) on my blog.  Honestly, there's not much of a story to it.  (I'm pretty sure he'd agree, so I'm not worried about offending him when I say that).

Truth be told, we ended up together as the result of being the "friends" that were drug along on outings and hang outs of two of our friends who were interested in one another.  We had known the other existed for quite some time, and only began becoming friends in the fall of 2011.

I started managing the band that he and my brother were both in, and so that led to texting about booking emails and account information, which led to texting about common interests like How I Met Your Mother, which led to easier conversation during those third and fourth wheel meet ups.

I wasn't expecting it to go anywhere...I had been hurt pretty badly by a guy just a few months before, and so our friendship began as just that...a friendship.  AJ would probably say it was more than just a friendship for him, and really, it wasn't long before he did mean more to me than just a casual guy friend typically would.  Like any giddy girl, I looked forward to his texts or to seeing him at church and at concerts.  One night, he asked me to hold onto his phone for him.  I ended up dropping it.  It was brand new.  Consequently, that was also the night his grandmother told his aunt that she could tell he liked me.

Sometime in early February, he invited me to a Super Bowl party at his aunt & uncle's house.  I accepted, went, and then spent most of the party upstairs hanging out with a friend who was not AJ.  He left without saying goodbye.

Soon after, he asked if he could take me to lunch.  That turned into making me lunch, and a short trip to Starbucks after which he declared that he had "a major crush" on me.  Then, we walked into a meeting together and didn't talk about it for another week.  Yes, awkward, but brilliant on his part.  He figured if I didn't share his feelings, then we couldn't talk about it for long.  And if I did, well that was great and we'd figure it out eventually.

"Eventually" turned out to be Valentine's Day, which is the most awkward holiday when you like a boy and he likes you back but you're not dating yet.  I cooked us dinner and he made chocolate covered strawberries that we never ate.  Over that dinner, we had a conversation that went something like "I don't want to act like we're dating but not actually be dating."  "Ok, then I guess we should just be dating then." "Sounds good."  Yep.  Romantic.  We spent the rest of the evening watching youtube videos of Jeremy Larson recordings and talking about music.

A year and a half later, I'm more in love with this man than I thought possible.  He's absolutely my Prince Charming.

But he didn't show up like I imagined.  Or like TV taught me to expect.  

It wasn't a drama-filled, one day I'm on cloud nine, the next I'm at the bottom of a pit emotional roller coaster that liking a guy can so often be.  We didn't lock eyes across a room and know at first sight that we belonged together.  If we went on a game show and were asked how we met or what our first date was, our answers might not even be the same.

I wouldn't say that our relationship is glamorous or even necessarily extraordinary. Most of our time spent together is spent at one of our houses, with family, cooking dinner, going for runs, watching Friends and doing work.  While we do go on little day trips and fun dates, it's not necessarily our norm.  AJ is my best friend, and I love life when we're together, no matter what we're doing.

Sometimes, I watch shows like the Bachelorette or movies about girls finding the guy and falling in love, and I get sad that my life, my relationship, isn't full of those extravagant dates or even the little bit of drama that I see on TV.  And then I have to slap myself because I realize just how dumb that sounds.

It's so easy to let your idea of a relationship get tainted and influenced by what movies tell us is the way it should be.  The truth is, Prince Charming rarely shows up on a white horse and rescues the girl from the evil witch or searches for her with just a glass slipper as a clue.

Real life relationship aren't like TV.  They're full of normal, sometimes awkward, real life.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.