Changes in Policy

I was never really looking for a husband. Any ideas I had about marriage centered around retro housewife fantasies where I did not have to go to work during the day and instead would pop Valium and come up with elaborate meals to have ready for my hard working man when he got home. I would eagerly await his return from the office in pearls and heels with a perfectly mixed Manhattan at the ready. And maybe a drink for him too.

I was never one of those girls who "dreamed about her wedding day" and in all honesty never thought it was something that would happen to me. In fact, I was happily looking forward to a life full of cats and old issues of National Geographic piled clear to the ceiling, punctuated with visits from concerned acquaintances who would check in to make sure I was not pinned underneath a toppled stack of periodicals with my face half eaten away by hungry felines.

I was, however, looking for a climbing partner.

I've always had a very strict policy against dating people I climb with. I'd seen many unhappy couples fighting at the crags and I just couldn't imagine mixing relationship drama with one of the things that usually made me happy. At this point in my dating life, I couldn't imagine a relationship that wasn't fraught with drama and hysteria, so I made a conscious effort to keep them separate.

So, Dave and I started off climbing and then progressed to yoga and bourbon. We were friends. Good friends. Friends who had whole conversations about being friends. And that's a pretty sure sign that we both wanted to be more than friends. Of course it was more complicated than that. He had a girlfriend and I had a non-climber-dating policy and no desire to start filling out the required paperwork in triplicate in order to make a change.

I mean, obviously I thought he was about the cutest boy I'd ever met and enjoyed spending time with him and marveling about how well we got along, but climbing! I was convinced that dating and climbing could not coexist. Oh, and when someone tells me that they are off the market, that's pretty much all I need to scratch them off the "Potential Boyfriend List."

Therefore, I didn't think anything about it when my "Non-boyfriend potential climbing partner" asked if I wanted to go out for a beer one Saturday night. And there we were, things rolling along like normal, contented conversation over beer (IPA for me, Stout for him) until, in a natural break in the conversation, I noticed that my BFF was giving me a decidedly BF look.

That, as they say, is history. Once we established that neither of us had anything holding us back, girlfriends or outdated policies, we stayed up all night talking and smiling and rewriting the rules. I have since realized that something I love, whether bourbon or climbing, is that much better when shared with someone who loves it as much as I do. Especially if he's the man I'm going to marry.