My day with Mystery Man

This blog post has turned out to be very uncomfortable to write for two reasons:

1. My mother is going to read this
2. Mystery Man is going to read this

Anyway, here goes.

I want to keep my new found experiences and feelings mostly to myself. What we have at the moment is ours. It’s special and it is uncontaminated with opinions or advice. I love that. I cherish that.

However, since I am still single and vowed to write about my dating experiences I will share some details with you about the 24 hour period I got to spend with my Mystery Man. I will have to share some facts about Mystery Man in order to have this post make sense at all.

1. I’ve known Mystery Man for a few years now… and we dated for a brief period back in 2006/2007…
2. Mystery Man lives in Cape Town…

 So yes, if you know me and ever asked me for dating advice I would probably spurt some gems like “never EVER date an ex” and “long distance relationships never work”. Oh, life is cruel sometimes.

The heart has ideas of its own and so I’ve spent the past few weeks looking forward to the brief visit that he had planned to attend a family birthday. Our flirtationship started a few weeks back and he invited me to attend the family birthday with him. We flirted our little hearts out. I loved every second. This of course started off a bunch of expectations of the upcoming day…

What did I do? I spent the whole of the week before last religiously applying layer after layer of lip balm as to achieve the perfect kissable lips. What does one do when it has been nearly two and a half years since your last kiss? At one stage I considered practicing on my hand like when I was 15… Yes, I am a woman, this is normal. I’ve heard that expectation is the root of all misery but hey, I’m addicted to the thrill of the possibility and besides the butterflies had somehow escaped the confines of my stomach and had invaded my brain as well.

His flight only got in late on Friday evening so I was Saturday morning at 08:00 I arrived at the food market in Pretoria where we arranged to meet. For weeks I imagined us embracing in a cloud of smoke with Cupid scattering roses at our feet. Instead we shared a quick hug with his family standing a few metres behind where after I had to reintroduce myself to his parents, meet his sister for the first time and also meet an uncle and aunt as we strolled through the stalls and sat down for coffee, shawarma’s and Saturday morning chit chat. I won’t lie. I found it extremely awkward. I decided then and there that the rest of the day was to be spent without any expectations. I really wanted to enjoy every second and I didn't want to have to compete with my own thoughts.

This was a good thing as the evening entailed me meeting half of his family. I was completely out of my comfort zone. Thinking back, it probably counts as one of the gutsiest days of my life. However, and this is the part that counts – the day contained some moments of pure magic. We held hands in the car and we shared our first kiss as soon as we were alone. Holy moly, I get goose bumps just typing it at the moment. We shared more sweet kisses later that day as we lay on the grass, laughing and joking around. Later, during the evening we held hands in the dark, in secret under the table and on the back seat of the car. It was special. It was beautiful. And for me, it was completely new.

We had discussed me sleeping over at his parent’s house in the weeks ahead of time, so as we got home and I made my way to the garden cottage Mystery Man came to say goodnight…

Good grief! I can’t believe that I worried about whether or not I would still be able to kiss. I should have worried about whether or not I would have been able to control the raging hormones… Yup, sorry Mom! Thank goodness that Mystery Man is a true gentleman. Me on the other hand… I was called Delilah… Ha!

You’d think that in two and a half years I’d have ample time to sort through all of my baggage and issues. Well, I had some moments this week where I've been frozen in fear. What if I get hurt? What if I waste my time for a few years? How do I know this is right? Oh yes, you know you are in love when you start agonizing over ending things with someone before it’s even started.

After a lot of prayer, what feels like a thousand conversations and the most beautiful reassurance from Mystery Man who has such a kind and patient soul I realized that I really couldn’t blame my friends who fell in love in what seemed no time at all. I couldn't judge them for putting their emotions on the line and wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

To love and be loved, to lower your defences and loosen up personal boundaries to build trust and strengthen attachment can be scary. The fear I felt this week was palpable and my mind had a field day. At least I recognized this for the fear that it was. I stumbled upon this quote by C.S. Lewis from his book The Four Loves sums which gave me some much needed perspective:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

So now, it will be four weeks until we see each other in person again. I’ve been waiting for two and a half years – this is nothing!

I’ve been catching myself kissing pillows, jumping up and down from excitement, assigning the weirdest pet names to my Mystery Man and have been struggling to think of anything else. This can mean only one of two things: I’m either in love, or I’m 15 again!

I hope you all get to experience this amazing feeling soon… well, except for the kissing your pillows bit, that’s just weird, right!?

Cheers my friends, to being vulnerable, to falling in love and to risk it all because you suspect he might be worth it!