9 Things I Hate About Having A Boyfriend (After Years Of Never Really Having One)

1. I hate that he snores and takes up too much of the bed, and I wake throughout the night with an aching hipbone or stiff neck because the mattress dips with his bodyweight and I’m tense with sleep-worry because every time one of us wakes the other up I assume it’s my fault, and I’m ruining his life by depriving him of sleep, and so we’ll never make it as a couple, since I’m ruining his life. And yet, when I sleep alone now I feel like something is missing.  

2. I hate that on the nights we’re together I eat less to minimize digestive stuff, but I still synchronize my bathroom trips to his deepest snoring, desperately hoping he’ll hear nothing.

3. I hate that when we met 6 years ago he was cute, but only just. I was never ambushed by desire and insecurity the way I was when Marcos with his uber-hung silly-macho swagger came around. Nor did I ever short-circuit the way I did after a 70-second flirtation in an elevator with Morgan the actor/fitness model. It was never so with this guy. This one was cute and called at regular yet fairly wide intervals, so we fooled around at regular yet fairly wide intervals, and the whole time I felt only a quiet physical attraction. But even that carried no real weight, because when I called it off because I wanted “more,” the truth is I didn’t want “more” with him specifically. I just wanted “more.” But now it’s years later and he’s giving me more and, to my alarm, I find him definitively handsome. And uncannily familiar. Like I’ve known him all my life and possibly before.

4. I hate that he says things like, “I’m not going anywhere,” and, “I would never shut down on you,” and, “I’m glad you called and I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight,” but still: my endless insecurities, needs, and freakouts continue to surface, one by one, like deep sea monsters waking from long heavy slumbers.

5. I hate waiting for the phone to ring and all the stupid stuff like what happened a few weeks ago: I hadn’t heard from him for 2 days. Towards the end of the second day I began progressing from calm to confused, then depressed, then disillusioned. Disillusionment hardened into resentment. Resentment melted down into desperation, at which point I self-soothed by imagining asking the respectful but quietly flirtatious green-eyed guy in my Hatha yoga class to get a coffee. Instead, at the end of the second day I relented, called him (my boyfriend), and this happened: “Hello,” he said pleasantly. “Hello,” I said pleasantly. “I called you yesterday,” he said. “Did you leave a message?” I said. “I don’t remember,” he said, then invited me over, then called back. “Check your phone for a missed call at 12:25 PM yesterday.” It was there, but why the hell can’t he leave a voice mail?

6. I hate that even though we spent 44% of our days and nights together in the last 29 days – I did the math – there’s still a disoriented infant voice inside me that cries if I call and he doesn’t pick up, cries when he doesn’t intuit that I need him to call me now. That voice could care less about the 44%.

7. I hate things like what happened when I spilled a drop of olive oil on the cover of a book he’d just bought. (A first edition something something.) He mentioned calmly that, “for the future,” stains on books is a pet peeve. I said ok and then internally went through a series of passive aggressive retaliations, including one I tried out: “You have an issue with an oil stain on your book but you’ll eat a greasy, fatty cronut without any concern for your insides,” which went over well, so eventually I calmed myself by concluding that for the rest of his life when he sees that stain he’ll have to think of me, with affection, because it’s a healthy oil and because I left it there.

8. I hate that I keep a running list of things to remind myself to tell him that he has no idea he’s doing that are hurting my feelings or making me feel less than the center of his universe. For instance, he told me 5 hours before his friend arrived from out of town that his friend was arriving from out of town, and when I asked if the friend was staying with him through the weekend he said, “I think so.” I’m routinely weighing things like that with the deep, quiet contentment I feel lying next to him in bed reading while he studies his sheet music.

8. I hate that when he skillfully kills a fly on his bedroom wall or shows me, on an app on his phone, where the moon is – it’s hanging under the concrete under our feet, but we haven’t rotated enough yet to see it from the East Side– I hate that these things melt my heart bit by bit.

9. Bonus thing I hate: During the years we were just fooling around, he smelled like warm pleasant man flesh. Now he smells like opioid dreams and home.

10. Bonus clarification: Why him? Why, after so many years in the dark have I thrown the switch to shine a beam of hope and caring onto this one? Is it that I feel safe with him? Is it because he’s there, again and again and again, and doesn’t vanish? Is it because when I get the courage to corner him and ask for affirmation, he delivers? Is it that, of all the guys I tried dating in the last two years – neighbors, internet guys, high school classmates who resurfaced – he’s the only one I liked kissing? Is it that he’s a world class cuddler and clear communicator? Is it because he regularly tells me I’m beautiful and can’t keep his hands off me? Yes, and also, if I were to start a list of the tiny, powerful ways my heart has opened or softened recently, it’d take a bullet list 200,000 points long, and I don’t even have the words yet to describe those ways.