While love is a new thing for me, I can truly say I am in love. Now I realize the timing of all of this is short, so some might say I am still in the infatuation stage and only think I am in love. But I would hope that all of you know me well enough to know that I am not the type to just jump into things. I am a cautious and rational person and so is Tom. Despite that, I know what I have with him is real and it is amazing. I am incredibly happy and feel in the depths of my heart that I have found my soul mate. Tom is such an open book and I really feel like I know him inside and out. He is who he says he is so I know there are not going to be any crazy sides to his personality that are going to suddenly surface. He treats me like gold and tells me daily how much he loves and adores me. I know I will never find someone better than Tom and I really, really mean that.
Last night I had a long conversation with my dad. This transition of me having another man in my life has been an adjustment for us both. I always felt my relationship with my dad got blurred after my mom passed away. We became this mix of father/daughter and husband/wife out of necessity. We share household responsibilities and rely on each other a lot. So when Tom came into my life, I think it was hard for my dad to see me so much less and watch me rely on someone other than him. So last night we spoke a lot about my relationship. My dad repeatedly emphasized that while he misses having me around, he is genuinely happy for me. He said he hasn’t seen me this happy since before my mom passed away and I could not agree more. I honestly never thought I would never allow myself to be this happy again after losing my mom. I was not planning on telling my dad that I love Tom until some more time had passed but for some reason last night I really felt compelled to tell him. He was honestly so much more receptive to it than I ever could have imagined. I told him I not going to come home from Vegas married to Tom tomorrow or anything. However, I truly believe that I will have a future with him. I told him how Tom and I have discussed a “three-year plan” to get engaged and married. Not only is that socially acceptable, but that gives us time to get everything in order. Again, my dad was so understanding of this. My parents were married after dating for two and a half years. They were originally supposed to get married a year earlier, but my dad had cold feet. So technically us being together for three years was fine with him. Honestly, my dad’s reaction to my announcing that I love Tom and want to spend my life with him only reinforced what I already know. His support and lack of resistance only showed me even clearer that Tom is the one for me. Having Tom in my life has only enhanced my relationship with my dad because it has deepened it and increased our ability to be completely honest with one another.
Now I will tell you some reasons why I love Tom since most of you have not really gotten to know him yet. But you will as we work towards our three year plan.
1. He has an incredible work-ethic. Even though he is not positive which direction to take with his engineering aspirations, I am so confident that he will figure it out. He truly wants to be successful in a field that he loves.
2. He makes me feel like the most amazing and beautiful woman he has ever known. He tells me this constantly and makes me feel like he is honored to be with me. While this is flattering, it is so much more than that. He truly loves the person that I am completely so I feel like I can totally be myself.
3. I really feel like we get one another. We are so compatible and have had so many similar experiences that we truly get where the other person is coming from.
4. I can tell him anything. He knows all my secrets and everything about me. There is nothing that I am afraid to tell him. Even though I may seem to be an open-book to a lot of people, there are things I have told Tom that I have never told anyone else.
5. He is really supportive of my career. He helped me in my classroom and he takes the passion that I have for my job seriously. He built me a bookshelf, helps me laminate, and basically would do anything he could to make my job easier.
6. He loves the domestic side of me which is a big part of who I am. He loves how I cook and clean, and he actually enjoys watching me crochet. Overall, he loves all the “girly” things that I can do.
7. I miss him anytime he is not around, even if I am just waiting for him to get out of work and come see me. When I went to Providence with Stevi to visit Kate, I really missed him. Even though I was with my two best girls, I thought about him a lot. This is not to say that I want him to be the only person in my life, and forget about everybody else. Absolutely not, but I never had that “I miss my other half” feeling before.
8. He lets me re-create the memory of my mom for him. We talk about my mom all the time, we looked at my parents wedding album, and we visit places my parents use to go. We even slowed danced by Belmont Lake which was a special place for my parents.
9. He treats his family so well. He respects and honors his dad so much and I can see how much his dad has shaped the man that he is. He is also amazingly supportive of his sister. He talks to her daily and I can tell he is genuinely interested in her life. I can tell by how he treats them how much he values family.
10. We have had some really deep conversations about our faiths. We were both raised Catholic and our faiths deepened for both of us after we went through some tough times. I love how he has been coming to church with me and I see us being very supportive of one another’s faith development.
Overall, I am incredibly happy as you can probably tell. Please do not advise me to take things slow because again nothing is happening immediately. Sometimes it takes people years before they know if they have found the one and others know almost immediately. The timing really is not all that important as long as you find someone who enhances your life and makes you the best you can be. Someone who you can share all of life’s ups and downs with and make it through together. Overall, I just wanted to share with the world that I am happy and in love. So please trust me and share in my happiness. If my dad is able to accept me being in love, I trust that the rest of my world can to. Look forward to future blog entries on the Tom and Jamie story to be continued…
2 comments:
I am so truly happy for you, Jamie. I can't wait to meet Tom. You guys seem to have such an amazing connection and look great together!
This was so wonderful to read! I am so happy for both of you. Having someone you can be honest with and rely on is essential.
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