Opposites Don’t Attach

So I Went To California.

Oh man. Where to start? A list of course!

1. Old friends know different things about you than you know yourself.
2. Airports/Airplanes are awesome. (So is leaving notes for your friends to find behind vending machines months later). This trip I got to meet a friend of mine at her gate because my flight landed just a few minutes before hers, and I had serious butterflies as I watched the people emerge from the gate to see their new world for the first time. It had been about two years since we’d last met in person and that hug at the gate is now in my top ten hugs of all time.
3. Always buy cupcakes from kids’ bake sales.
4. Relationships are hard. I finally met the long-term boyfriends of my two good friends from high school and found myself feeling afraid to ever become like them. Don’t get me wrong, they were mostly happy and we all had a great time, but how do you know if the good outweighs the bad? How do you start over once you’re that attached? How do you know you’re happy enough? To be honest I saw more reasons for their guys to break up with my friends than the other way around, how do get out of a relationship if you might feel like you’re the one making it difficult? I’m going to be alone forever.
5.  Germaphobes must hate beaches.
6. Never say no to a free hug at a gay pride parade.
7. We went to an art museum in LA (the Getty-SO GOOD) and joined a tour to get a feel for the place before we wandered on our own. Our guide was a young, normal looking girl, about 25 or so, and after only 20 minutes of listening to her talk about art I’d found myself a new role model. She knew everything about the museum but it was so much more than being able to answer every question we threw at her. You could tell she loved it, that she’d found her passion and had thrown herself into it. Even if she didn’t want to be a tour guide forever, I knew she was where she was supposed to be, gaining experience and learning all she could about a field she loved.   want that, a field I love, a place I know I’ll enjoy no matter the level of experience I’m in. How do people choose that? How do you decide to be happy in one area and not be afraid to take the time you need to work up to the position you want? I want it all, and I’m afraid I’m going to end up with nothing.
8. Sea Lions are cute ugly not ugly cute.
9. Sleep is so important. But it’s also important to be able to put it on hold.
10. I used to love talking to people on planes. But in the last few years I’ve become shy, reserved, I don’t know, somehow afraid to break the barrier. I take a deep breath to calm my anxiety every time someone sits down next to me, secretly hoping they’ll force conversation, though I always make sure to look the opposite of engaging. I love talking once we start, but it’s that jumping in part that freaks me the freak out. So I was pretty closed off on the plane back from Cali when a woman asked to switch seats with me so she could sit next to her son (who was at least 15 btw… I probably should have paid more attention to his body language for signs of kidnapping), and I ended up next to an attractive male close to my age.

This rarely happens on planes so I smiled to myself at the opportunity, fully planning to squander it by shyly absorbing myself in my book(which I hadn’t found a spare second to read all week) but as luck would have it this male peer was less apathetic than myself and put it upon himself to speak to me. Like many people, I tend to make jokes when I get nervous, so what could have been a short. “Hey, how are you. You’re nice for switching seats,” conversation turned into a full on flirt fest. (Also, who decided that feeling uncomfortable should be a sign of attraction anyway?).

Did I mention he was attractive? Nothing as perfect as the bus guy, but still and he was outgoing enough to make me bold. Before long we were really talking; he’d only flown once before and is the middle child of 5 boys, likes dirt bike racing and is on his way to becoming an EMT. I told him about my trip and my current lack of direction, why I fly on planes so much and what I miss about Seattle. It was nice and he was interesting; it had been a while since I’d held eye contact a few seconds too long. But as the flight continued and we got to know each other it became apparent that even if we lived close enough to date, I wasn’t interested.

He told me his family never vacationed together, that they’d never had the time or money to spend on things like that. He hadn’t gone to college and just quit his job of managing a Subway restaurant to join a year long church program that would eventually place him as an intern in his home church. He said he’d never really connected with his brothers. He said he knew exactly how his life would look from here on out. I liked him, I really did, but I travel all the time with my well –off family. I’m close with my brother and expect my children to get college degrees. I’m not religious and I have no idea what my future will bring. I found myself shocked as I realized these things mattered, even though they seem so secondary.

It’s terrible really, that a few external things can make such a difference, but as I’ve gotten older the more value I place on background and outlook in my relationships.

So why is it that a person’s background is such a turn on or off? Is it biological in that my ovaries aren’t willing to take the risk that he might turn out like his drunken brothers? Is it emotional in that I I’ll never be able to fully understand him? Or is it more about my privilege, wanting to find someone similar so I don’t have to feel guilty for being born into a happy home?When it comes to friendships, I feel like I gravitate toward people different than me; I crave adventure and new experiences. But I hold the people I date to a different standard, one that may well be impossible to meet. I want to be challenged, but apparently not by someone with less wealthy, outdoorsy and educated parents than myself. I want to choose my favorite passions, but I don’t want to fall in love with someone who thinks he has it figured out. I want to have children with a person who believes in magic, but not to raise them in a church.

I don’t know what it is, and part of me still hopes I’ll meet someone worth ‘overcoming’ our initial differences, but when I look at every happy couple in my life, they have most of those fundamental things in common. I used to believe opposites attract, but lately I feel more like the saying is opposites don’t attach.

We talked the rest of the flight, learning about each other and discussing philosophy and emotions. I got him to admit to feeling lonely and left out by his brothers and he got me to talk about what I want in the future. I learned a lot and had a wonderful time. I even got to debate religion with him. But I stopped worrying what he thought. We were different, and no matter what else we found in common, we’d always be platonic.