The Proposal

OK I'm writing down as much as I can here - for posterity as much as anything else - I want to look back here in the bad times - and go yeah - that's what brought us together ....

A bit of background ... Stephen and I have *always* had a connection with each other. We met through a mutual friend around seven years ago.  We hit it off immediately and started a long term relationship - that lasted a few months and then he went to a party and  basically met the love of his life - you know the whole eyes across the room, time stands still cliche?  Never happened to me, but he spoke to me about it and I bowed out and left them to it.

Over the intervening years the friendship dwindled down to a few mass emailing of jokes. He always txted me a rose on Valentine's and txted me on my birthday.  He never forgot.

Wind forward to 2008. Work is sending me to Melbourne for a week so I send out a general email to my friends in anyone who wants to catch up for dinner or coffee one night.  He responds. He's moved from Brisbane to Melbourne and is living on his own again.  And his work is coincidentally moving him to Perth the day before I arrive.

He gets his work to move his flying out date from the Saturday to the Tuesday and we spend the Sunday night and Monday night catching up.

Spring forward to Easter where he pays my airfare and provides the accommodation so we can spend Easter together in Melbourne.  I do pay him back half the airfare.  We have a fantastic time, most of which is detailed elsewhere in the blog. One night or should I say morning after a marathon conversation and sex session I'm just on the verge of sleep when I hear a voice say quietly "you know I made the wrong decision all those years ago"  Squee !!!!

Home after Easter and we decide to be practical - there's a real connection but its not practical.  I also don't want to get into a long distance relationship because well what if he finds a local girl like he did last time (OK paranoia - how often can one man find the "love of his life").  So we agreed to do the good friends thing and get together whenever possible and take it from there when we can actually move to the same city ....

Slowly between then and this week things change.  I'm not sticking to the just friends thing, I'm saying "I love you" and "I miss you" in the middle of other emails and he is not responding.  He'll respond to the rest of the info in the message but not that bit. Got me depressed.  Came to a head last Tuesday when I sent him a long email detailing exactly how I felt about us, about the just friends and about his not responding.  What happens - three days down the track and surprise, he hasn't responded.

Out with Alison on Saturday, we're having a good old whinge about men in general when I receive a phone call "I've just bought you a dragon plushy.  He's over five foot long  I thought you'd like him"  Huh ????  This is the guy who hasn't rung me on the telephone in weeks.

Anyway later that night after I'd been in bed for a couple of hours I receive a txt through.  I wake up and answer it.  The phone rings "Oh good you are awake - can I run something by you?"  Sure no worries....

We talk. And talk. And talk. In amongst that I got in a dig about him not responding to important emails.  His response was: Well I don't know how to find the words I'm looking for because I want to answer your email the right way.  Me in my usual tactful self says: Then *tell* me that - tell me you are thinking about it.  Don't just leave it there completely unanswered - I get paranoid I immediately think "oh he's seen it, shrugged yeah whatever and it doesn't affect him at all" And then we move back to the previous conversation.

A long while later we hang up.  I go to the bathroom and then send a txt - you *do* realise we just talked on the phone for over FOUR HOURS ???  At the same time I get a text back saying "I never did tell you *WHY* I bought your dragon.

A few more txts back and forth and then the phone rings.  This is the relevant portion of the conversation as best as I can recollect.

Me: Round 2 I presume
Him: Good morning, I think I have an answer to your question. I think I know how to say it now.
OK
If we were in the same city, at the same time I would ask you to marry me.
.........
Mel ???  Mel??? Should I hang up now?
No I'm just stunned.
What you weren't expecting that?
No, I'm stunned because I think my answer would be yes.
Oh good - so how do we arrange this?  I've been thinking, I can move back to Melbourne there are jobs I can do there so you can do your Uni course, or if you can do it at one of the Universities in Perth, then I can stay here at a better paying job, and I can be the breadwinner so to speak so you can go to Uni full time and get your Masters and oh now I'm babbling and you haven't said a word, Mel ???
I'm here - I'm ummm gibbering ... umm how what ??? (You can see I was at my most eloquent)
Well you said it yourself - we've talked for four hours!  And we hung up because we needed a break, not because we'd finished the conversations.  I could see us in forty years time in wheelchairs in a nursing home with our bodies and civilisation crumbling around us and we'd still be talking.  That's all you need - the ability to communicate - everything else flows from that.  Sex, money, success - it all comes from the ability to communicate.
Ah no what about respect - you need respect.
Yes you need respect, but its ancillary - no respect no communication.
Ancillary is not the right word - its important.
Its a ...
prerequisite (said in unison)

And so we went on from there for over another hour.  It turns out that he has always felt more than friends for me, but he knew me from the end of my marriage - he know how hurt I was.  He saw the raw me back then.  He didn't want to tell me the full extent of his feelings because I might run for the hills and never look back. He knew I planned on never getting married again.  When I proposed the "just friends" arrangement and then kept sending txts and emails that were more than just friends, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how best to respond. Should he respond as "just friends" or should he tell me his true feelings ... and being a guy he simply didn't send anything.  Hence why I thought I was being ignored and getting depressed over it.

So ummm yeah - I'm not sure if I'm actually engaged or just agreed to become so.  We're definitely getting together in July for a face-to-face to discuss practicalities and practical options and what we can and cannot compromise on and whether we can actually live together etc etc.

We've both been married before (him longer than me).  We've both been in long term relationships and we've both been burned.  We have a fair idea what we both want in a marriage and we're going to take things slowly to achieve a lasting happiness for both of us. And if takes a few years, then it takes a couple of years.

As mum said yesterday - "Isn't that what you've been grizzling about for years - you've wanted a companion. Not a lover. Not a husband. A companion.  Someone who thinks like you, who has the same goals as you and someone you can have a disagreement with without anyone getting angry.  He is offering you exactly what you've been wanting for all these years".