Getting To Know Us

To get to know me you have to understand how my mind works sometimes. I have never been a social person. The opposite, really. I suffer from mild SAD. Social anxiety disorder. Some people don’t believe in this disorder, but I can tell you it is very real. My symptoms have changed over time. At this point in my life it basically means that I do not like to be in big social gatherings of people I am not absolutely 100% close to. This includes being around Thomas’ family, unfortunately. When I am in those type of situations (a party, large classroom setting, gathering, etc) I feel that everyone’s eyes are on me. They are all looking at me and making judgments about me. Logically I know it is not true. I know they aren’t doing that, but I still feel like they are and it makes me very anxious. I will write about my anxiety and how it affects me now in a future post, but I wanted to introduce myself with that information so you can understand how I came to meet Thomas.

Because of my anxiety I typically avoid parties and other social situations. This started when I was young and resulted in my not making very many friends. I was always a one friend type of person. This caused me great difficulty in finding potential dates. My first date and kiss was when I was 21. He and all the other boys (and men) that I dated until and including Thomas I met online. Some people think this is a unsafe thing to do, but I counter that it is not any less safe than going to a bar and talking to the guy on the stool next to me. Actually, it is safe. I can get their name, phone number and use the powerful tool of Google to discover more about them. I never had any trouble (and I did quite a bit of dating!).

Thomas says that he had responded to an I had placed online a year prior to when we started dating, but I turned him down. He says it was after he sent his pictures but, although I don’t remember this at all, I think it was because he told me he was living near Compton. Nevertheless he replied to a post the following year and after talking and texting over the course of a few weeks we finally went on our first date the night before my 27^th birthday. It was a nice evening at Black Angus. We had planned to go out the next night after I went to dinner with my dad (we share our birthday) and he went to a “game night”. Unfortunately he chose to stay at the game night. I forgave him (but I am not letting him forget) and here we are nearly 2 ½ years later just about to get married.

We are a stay at home type of couple, something that I think attracted us to each other to begin with. As I mentioned before I’m not a person that likes to be social so it was nice to meet someone who wasn’t into party’s or bars. Thomas likes video games and I can usually find him in front of his computer. When we met I started playing one with him which was an adventure that I will write about later on. When he isn’t playing video games we are usually watching Netflix on the couch. We also sometimes go to a “Game Night” hosted by someone through Meet Up which is typically a lot of fun. Once we have our own place we plan on hosting them ourselves. Once or twice a month his parents host a family and friend gathering at their home to watch the MMA fights. Although I wouldn’t say I enjoy watching the fights I think it is nice that his family is so close to each other. As you may have guessed, though, these parties cause me great anxiety.

That is basically our lives up to this point. I’m sure much will change in the coming months (after all we both live with our parents and will be living with each other within 2 months) and I’m sure I’ll be sharing it with you.