The Grown Up Boyfriends

STEVE
My first real grown up boyfriend is the second Steve. I have to blog sensitively on this topic......because I still feel bad about the ways things fell apart between S2 and me. They were mostly my fault, or perhaps they were both of our faults but I didn't really act very nicely at the end. Steve and I were friends as part of a group that all hung out together and had gone to highschool together. Sometime I think we just started dating because we were the odd two out. But despite the "convenience" factor of us dating........Steve was nice. He was well read, had interest in art, movies, music etc. He didn't like to do all of the things I did - he preferred quiet things, more cultured things sometimes, but sometimes just more geeky intellectual things. But regardless he was fun to hang out with. And I think I loved him a lot. I'm not sure that I was ever IN love with him, though - which was a distinction I wasn't mature enough to make at the time. We dated for what seemed like a long time.......it was in fact probably a couple of years. Maybe as many as three. At one point we decided we were engaged.....that it only made sense to get married. No formal proposition took place, we just decided it was what we'd do after he graduated from Ball State. I started buying Brides magazines, picking out patterns and bridesmaid dresses secure in the knowledge that at some point in the future Steve and I would get married.
Things began to fall apart between us when I moved into an appt with Laura. My own independence began to be important to me. It didn't seem important to Steve - this independence I was craving. There were probably a lot more things wrong between us, but I still like him enough not to air them publicly. I think a lot can be said to the fact that I was just a jerk to him at the end. I broke up with him once......I don't remember why or how. But he launched a campaign to win me back, playing the "let's be friends" cards and I went with it for a while. Probably because I liked him and I DO like him. We went out one night to the SLIPPERY NOODLE and I had a couple of drinks and sobbed that I missed him and that I had planned my life with him ("Well I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I've built my life around you").......and we were back together, whammo.
We broke up again about 6 months later........maybe less. Because by that time I realized I wasn't in love with him and I wasn't going to meet anyone, and neither was he, if we kept on like this. I wasn't very nice to him and while I'll laugh about it and act like I'm "just that mean" in reality I've always felt quite bad. Steve is a good guy he deserves someone who is not a jerk like me. I was the wrong girl for him, and I still am. I hope he has found someone and just hasn't bothered to tell me, because he still hates me - which I deserve.
Kayo -
Kayo was only a boyfriend in the loosest of terms.......but one of my litmus for whether or not you fall under the "boyfriend" or "hook up" category is whether or not we actually had dates, which we did. Also - he used the L word on me, a lot. And I used it back. Kayo is his own entity and if you would like to meet him I will introduce you and then you will know why I'm still amused by him. I consider him a friend and always will, even if he's like the horniest boy I know. He's a good guy despite his faults, which are legion, but he has heart a big heart, and a good heart, even if he's running on a set of social morales that aren't quite the same as society's.
I won't even go into why we are friends and not anything else, I suppose it's because one of us wasn't nearly as in love as the other one thought. Or perhaps it's because we define love differently. But that's okay - I don't regret any of it, because if there had been no Kayo, I would have never met Scott.

And if I had never met Scott, my house would not be populated by three monkeys named Louis, Miles and Charlie. And I wouldn't trade those little toads for anything in the entire world.