Saturday night was a perfect New York City date night for the BF and me.  I had booked us a reservation at one of the restaurants on our bucket list, Quality Meats in midtown. But that was the prequel to the event I was really excited about: the ballet.  I figured that if I could start out the night with something he was excited about, then the something he was not excited about wouldn’t seem so bad. I even stopped by Buttercup Bakery after work (second time this week) and got us a couple of chocolate-focused desserts for after the show.  So good foods were the bookends to an experience that, were it not for me, the BF would skip at all costs.

But a bit of background on this choice of event.  When I was in eighth grade, I decided to take dance in school so that I could avoid P.E. and the purple shirts and smelly locker rooms.  After a few weeks, I learned to love the graceful movements of ballet.  I tried out for and became an apprentice with a dance company in town.  I performed as a Ginger Snap in the Nutcracker.  I bruised and bloodied my feet in pointe shoes.  I loved it.

And I was only okay at it.

Most of the girls I danced with were younger than I was; they had been taking classes since they were three.  But my extracurricular activities had been limited to studying for the state spelling bee and watching Saved by the Bell.  Now my world opened up and I had to work at something where natural talent failed me.  I felt the effort in my sore muscles and blistered toes.  Once, in a rehearsal, I fell. And what followed were weeks of some serious balance and faith training.  Unlike school, ballet did not come easy to me.  But because of the room there was for improvement, I constantly grew.  In discipline and ability.

Then high school came and I had to get serious about grades and scholarship potential.  And, let’s face it, I wasn’t going to be a professional dancer.  So I stopped taking classes, but I continued to love the art of ballet.  And when I moved to New York City, home of the New York City Ballet, one of my favorite solo activities was to take the subway (get on the 6 at 28th Street, transfer to the shuttle at Grand Central, hop on the 1 and get out at 66th Street) to Lincoln Center and catch a performance. Sometimes I would meet my eighty-three-year-old colleague from NYU, Dr. L, there. (He’s from North Carolina so we hit it off immediately as fellow Southerners when I began teaching.)  But mostly, it was a night I treated just myself to.

As we walked to the theater Saturday night, I thought about this pre-BF period in my life.  There was an aspect of loneliness to it.  But there was also a measure of proud independence–the kind of independence that only a trip to a world-class ballet performance and a walk home across New York City can  provide.  And there was the expectation, the hope, that life would not always consist of these solo Saturday nights.  That one day I’d have someone to share them with.

And how.

Now here we are a few years later.  I sit next to the love of my life in the nosebleeds watching dudes twirl below us with their parts on display (fitting that this performance was entitled Jewels), and can barely contain my joy at getting to be with this man, who loves me so much he will endure people frolicking around in frills set to old music with no talking or plot!!! And then another feeling creeps in…and with it, a realization.  The feeling being a mild anxiety at putting the BF through such a twisted form of entertainment.  And the realization being that there are aspects of being with my perfect match/best friend/soul mate/gag me I’m throwing up-happy times partner that will be…well, challenging.

When we’re praying/hoping/consulting crystal balls for our Special Someone, all we feel is their absence.  Now that mine has shown up (and how), I’m beginning to understand the complications that come with melding two lives into one.  Here is one such complication, experienced by me in the nosebleeds: It turns out I’m not completely happy if he isn’t completely happy.  He experiences discomfort, so do I. How inconvenient.  And though he did a truly admirable job of hiding it (refusing to leave when I offered, making me cry with laughter when the dancers kept came out for repeated curtain calls as he looked at me with shocked eyes, open mouth, and furrowed brow, all expressing the thought, “Seriously?”), I knew there were other things he’d rather be doing.  Like, for example, anything.  And just like that, the ballet lost its luster a bit as I compared it side-by-side in my mind with desserts on the couch in front of an episode of Dexter with my man.

When I prayed Isaiah 54:2 pre-BF, in hopes of a BF, to the only other One I fully share my heart with, I thought of all the benefits of coupledom:  security, like-mindedness, love.  More stuff.  And now I get to see how love changes my likes.  How some things get bumped after compromise.  How our lives together include not just enlarging our tents and making space for our love, but for our individual preferences, our families, our traditions, our stuff.  How we are not always like-minded, and what happens when we face that.

In this particular situation, when faced with a third act to the ballet or the option of missing the Diamonds segment and heading to that couch, there really was no choice.  It took a bit of a fight to get my way, but the BF finally caved and let us leave.  (Seriously.  He wouldn’t believe that this was what I really wanted.  He was totally prepared to endure more man parts for me.  This, my friends, is a keeper.)

We walked the whole way home, covering a route similar to the one I took a few years ago that ended with a Tiffany ad on my corner staring me in the face.  A huge diamond engagement ring, mocking my lonely left-hand finger.  I felt my heart sink, and then a voice whisper to it beyond words.  And I started laughing.  At the fact that there was Someone who would endure, had endured, everything for me, and here I was, sad that he hadn’t yet thrown in a diamond with all that.

Cut to me a few years later with space on my hand for that jewel, and room in my life for love.  And a few years after that, a Saturday night with diamonds already covered and room on the couch for two.