Family Night @ Venetian Shores

Karen and I did our running around my Lindenhurst neighborhood but finished off the evening going to Venetian Shores for a nice outdoor family dinner, featuring southern rock, and a nice breeze coming off the South shore bay. My kids really like Karen. Not sure if it’s because how sweet she is with them, or because of my perma-smile, but they really dig her.




As each week passes by there is a new list of priorities to analyze and disseminate with my personal life. There are a great many upheavals in one’s own life. Some expected, others not. I never knew that I would climb* in love so hard ever again, or so quickly since my last relationship. Climb* - as opposed to fall, because like, who likes to fall anyway?

By the way, I never had any ill-will towards my last relationship either, and that’s because I’ve become more reflective and forgiving to both myself as well as my past partners. Mistakes made from failed relationships were not all the other person’s doing. Not by a longshot. I’ve made mistakes in judgement. Haven’t we all? It’s the blessed lesson known as "life".

I have already learned to realize that the mistakes of my past were largely due to a lack of experience. I am not perfect, I make mistakes all the time like you. I run better than most people, yet I still injure myself over stupid reasons that I knew better to avoid. I know about relationships, yet I still make some stupid mistakes even 34 years after my first crush from the 5th grade. Experience then, is the difference between then and now. Experience gives us the opportunity to reflect on past events, providing us with broader options on how to handle our “now” and our “tomorrows” better. It does not guarantee that we will not make mistakes, but it guarantees that we can make better choices if we’ve done our homework a little better the next time around.

I would like to think that after all my bouts with being injured, that I am a better runner, and I am. I have slowly, and surely, been transferring my experience into instinct. I do this by tapping into my consciousness and realizing things to do and not do, to avoid injury.

The same can be said of my love life.

Here I am, in love with a woman that by all accounts, I should have never met given the situation. An unexplainable series of circumstances and coincidences that led us both to this union.

And now, I can’t be without her. Every week since Saturday, June 6th, I have been spending more and more time with her, both vertically and horizontally.

It got my brain to raise a red flag and do some deep and thorough analyzation and dissemination between facts, fiction, perception and reality. Comparisons to previous relationships, and potential outcomes to this current relationship. Differences, similarities, personalities, you name it. My little “mini-Cray” computer above my eyeballs, have been hyperthreading and overclocking with interpretations regarding the current events of my so-called-life.

For the first time in my life, I may have (notice I will never speak in absolutes and say ‘definitely have’) seen a relationship through clear eyes. No longer am I the young boy, blinded by love and assuming all is perfect, but no longer am I the jaded man, for whom by 2005 had had such disappointments over relationships, that in addition to a vasectomy
That I swore I would never have a serious relationship with a woman ever again.

Yeah. You read correctly. I said vasectomy. So what? Millions of men in this country have one. Except, I think I did mine for all the wrong reasons.

Most guys internalize and never share. We’re too macho to even write a blog, let alone share a personal experience with anyone other than their own bathroom mirror (if that, even). I am odd, then. I relish communicating my self-reflections to this virtual repository of information. A diary of sorts. Better still, a box-score-recap of my life. And best of all, a guideline to fall back on, when needing advice on handling future events.

The secret to a happy relationship is the ability to cherish all that your mate is, that is wonderful to you, while at the same time being able to cope with what isn’t perfect, and if the line gets crossed between being able to cope and being downright wrong, then bring it up, but move on. Life isn’t perfect or fair, and neither will a relationship ever be. After 44 years of living, I think I finally have learned that (I hope). Meeting Karen after these epiphanies then, is probably the best present I could ever hope to give to her.