Friday, December 12, 2008

Cautionary Tale, or: Never move to a new city to be with a guy

I have this cautionary tale that I tell occasionally, usually when I'm talking to someone who's besottedly in love and making hasty decisions. (I used it several times when Scott and I were assigned to the singles ward in Pittsburgh.) It goes like this:

Once upon a time, about nine and a half years ago now, I was dating a guy who lived in Los Angeles. I'd known him since high school, when he was geeky-cool and funny, and we'd kept in touch as he took more and more interesting artistic jobs (ending up as a storyboard artist for Disney) and I'd floundered through my twenties trying to figure out what I wanted out of life. Somehow we ended up dating at the same point that I found myself between jobs and between roommates, and it was my mom who suggested that I move to L.A. to see if we could make things work romantically.

So I lined up a job (I thought) and an apartment, and moved myself down to Southern California, and then the job fell through and the boyfriend's endearing quirks started to really grate on my stressed-out self, and within a month I found myself jobless and boyfriendless.

The lessons are these:
  1. Never move anywhere for a guy. (And the corollaries: Never make drastic life changes based on body chemistry alone; Major life changes will usually result in too much stress on the relationship.)

  2. Your mother always wants to see you happy, and she's not going to be above pushing you into a romance if she thinks it's going to put a smile on your face or pictures of grandchildren in her brag book.

  3. Sometimes you end up doing something right for all the wrong reasons.
Anyway.

Here's what the guy in question is doing now. And I'm taking the kiddos to see the movie this afternoon. (If you're in the area, I'd love some company.)

7 comments:

Sara said...

Good advice. And I've always remembered the advice your husband gave a group of us once about not getting married until you've been through "all four seasons and a road trip" together.

Markie said...

Consider this post pre-commented (although I do love the lessons that are new since I last heard it). I wish we were there to go see it with you - that sounds like a blast!

Em Russ said...

ok. so was it weird hearing his voice in the movie....

Alan said...

I guess the real issue is hair (Scott) vs. no hair (Mark). Looks like hair won out!

Alan said...

Oh, and full beard vs. couldn't find two whiskers to shake a stick at...

Reggs said...

BRILLIANT! Oh I am so glad this advice is being dispensed. Please include it with,
-"Don't lose weight to get a guy's attention", and
-"Don't dye your hair blonde because you heard your crush say he's into blondes".
My roommates did ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Either way, I really like Scott. AAAAND, he added me as his buddy on Facebook! AAAAAND, you guys get to live in Boston and be awesome!

Margy said...

I came across your blog from a comment you left on Kazzy's blog. She's a friend of mine here in Springville, Utah. I started reading through your blog because I'm from Mass. (Acton). At the beginning of this post I thought wouldn't it be funny if this is the guy I met over Thanksgiving who did the voice of the hamster (he showed up at the Springville Museum of Art one morning while I was there)? And then it was! What a small, small world!