I do this thing whenever I have a crush on someone. I envision our future together. I don’t just jump a couple moments ahead or imagine our first kiss or what our first date would be like. I jump to wild conclusions in a choose your own disaster sort of way. It starts out normal enough. There’s my crush on the couch watching a movie and I come into the living room with two glasses of wine, placing them on the coffee table so I can cuddle up next to her. She kisses me, just because. I watch her laugh at the movie, her beauty has me more captivated than any movie plot line. I always choose comedies for us to watch because I love her laugh. She pats my thigh to let me know to move so she can use my lap as a pillow.

The imagined future switches. I create our life through the mundane moments, like doing laundry or washing dishes. In another scene I see me reading in my rocking chair while she giggles on the sofa as she receives a funny text from a friend. She reads it out loud to me, and we laugh together. A few moments later she tries to get my attention but I am too engrossed in my book to see or hear her. We begin fighting. Something about me never listening and her expecting too much of me. We always fight like this. She’s yelling that my voice is condescending and to stop social working her. I yell back that I don’t know what she wants from me. Then, as quickly as the fighting began, we’re apologizing.

Now, I see us walking our dog in our suburban neighborhood –no wait—we’re walking in the woods because we live in the country. I scoop up leaves and throw them at her. She rolls her eyes as she playfully pushes me. I wrap my arms around her (I’m like 6 ft tall in my mind) and we kiss. Until I throw more leaves at her, which elicits a harsh “Stop it, Jay. God, why do you ruin every sweet moment? Can’t you ever just be serious and romantic for 5 minutes?” I mumble under my breath, “Here we go again.” And we’re fighting as we stomp back to our house.

This fight makes me think of all the ways I would disappoint her. She doesn’t expect much from me, but I still manage to let her down. It’s a super power of mine. I’d come home late from work and she’d accuse me of never making her a priority. In response I would get defensive, explaining that she knew what she was signing up for when we started dating. I did of course have the job first. This would lead to me leaving the room and her following me, yelling that I always shut down and avoid talking about the hard stuff. Eventually I play out our entire break up.

My over active imagination finds the flaws and the reason for the break up before I have even mustered the courage to ask a woman out. Some might call this a defense mechanism. I call it psychic abilities.

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