Am I Single? PART II
I’m still having the “what are we?” conversation with myself.
Hello and happy Memorial Day. Part II of Am I Single is finally here! It took longer than I said it would because of who I am as a person. Also, this is coming out on a Monday because consistency is not my strong suit! These might just come out whenever I decide they do at this point. Anyway, if you haven’t read Am I Single? Part I, now would probably be a good time to do that! Or if you read it a while ago and don’t remember what it said (which, same), it may be worth refreshing your memory before diving into the below.
“Well, as long as you’re not looking for anything serious,” my hairstylist said during a recent root touch-up.
She’d asked how long Adam and I had been seeing each other and I’d told her the truth: that it had been a little over two years. Then I prepared myself to deliver an explanation that would inevitably derail the conversation and make us both uncomfortable.
“Oooh, is it getting serious?” she sing-songed to me in the mirror. Right on cue.
“Well…” I began, before proceeding to drop the minor detail that Adam is in an open relationship with a primary partner and also dating me. To the woman who was now raising her eyebrows at me in the mirror, this qualification amounted to: So you’re his side-piece? To me, it amounts to: Yes, it is serious. Just not in the way that you mean it.
It is not “serious” in the sense that we are ever going to get engaged, move in together, or become each other’s emergency contacts—we’re not. It is serious in that we are in love and we tell each other so. It is serious in that he’s one of the first three people I’m going to text about pretty much anything that happens to cross my mind. It is serious in that we’ve told our moms about each other. It is serious in that, yes, we even cuddle after sex now. It is serious in that we are in a relationship—the longest one I’ve ever been in.
And yet, I am single.
…I think.