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So, I was on the phone with M. last night, listening to her outline the difficulties with yet another ridiculous boy who doesn`t understand what he has, and I was struck by the fact that I had no counter complaint. You know when you`re on the phone and you trade crappy boyfriend or girlfriend stories and conclude the phone conversation with something like `god, men eh?` Well, I had nothing. This is not to say that l-dog is perfect – that would be creepy. But I have nothing to bitch and moan about.

More fascinating was the fact that, while I could relate to M.`s difficulties and could provide the right words of sympathy, I felt disconnected. There`s no other word for it. It`s as though I`ve developed a serious pair of rose-coloured glasses when it comes to personal relationships. I cannot firmly remember what it was like to be unhappy with my significant other. I can, if I think about it, graze over the moss in my head and stir up old memories of ickyness. The feelings of despair when you realize that you`re out on the limb by yourself. The feeling of helplessness when someone leaves you for someone else. Etc. I can read old blogs (I`m thinking of you, 2006) and remember the frustration I felt in my dating life – how there were just no good men or women out there. But more and more it feels as though all of that nonsense happened to someone else and I just have her memories in my head.

This is refreshing for a number of reasons. First, it means that contrary to popular belief, it is possible to move on relatively unscathed from previous crap relationships to a not crap relationship. The thought that this wasn’t possible had been troubling me for quite some time. When l-dog and I first got together, I held my breath for the first year, worrying that it was all just a dream…a mocking dream that would end abruptly with l-dog suddenly turning around one morning and saying `why are you still here?` I don`t worry about that anymore. Second, it means that I can tell my cousin Fialonia and her sister, both in their late teens-early twenties and both sifting through the muck that is the 20-25 year old dating pool, that it will in fact get better. That they should settle for nothing less than this kind of happiness. And that it`s worth the wait.

I have, in short, become one of those disgusting people that I used to mock incessantly in my early 20s. One of those disgusting happy people. Some days, I am so overcome with happiness that I grin for no reason. I`m going insane. This post oozes the vegan cheesiness of someone in love. I apologize. But then again, not really. I`m too happy to care about what the blogosphere thinks.