I think one of the reasons B and I have such a great relationship is because we don�t take it for granted. Speaking for myself, I am thankful every single day that I found such a wonderful man to fall in love with. And I feel lucky that he happened to fall in love with me too.

I suppose I probably haven�t experienced any more heartache than the next girl, but I�ve definitely had my share. I won�t assume that my heartache hurt any more than anyone else�s, but I do tend to throw myself � heart and soul � into my relationships and completely invest myself emotionally, and every time I got hurt I felt it deeply and took it personally and took a long time to recover. In some cases, I�m not sure I ever did recover completely.

So I thought that today I�d torture you � I mean � run through the list of men in my life for your reading entertainment. Lucky for you, the list isn�t very long. I was never a girl to have many boyfriends. That was always a sore spot too � I felt like there must be something wrong with me because everyone else seemed to have a boyfriend while I was all alone. At any rate, here are the few men that left their mark on my heart.

1. (in order of appearance) Kyle ~ Kyle transferred to my high school our sophomore year. The first time I laid eyes on him, I was in love. He was gorgeous. Even now, looking back at pictures of him, I think to myself, �Now that was a good-looking guy.� He was blondish, with green eyes, and hair that stuck up on top (that was the style in those days). He had these beautiful, straight teeth and he wore glasses. Man, I thought those glasses were sexy. I mooned over Kyle for months and months and finally worked up the nerve to ask him to our girl-ask-guy Winter Formal. He wasn�t into me and the evening was disappointing. He ended up dating various girls throughout our sophomore year, and I couldn�t stand it.

Then, during our junior year, we had several classes together and we became pretty good friends. I had pretty much come to accept that he was never going to think of me in a girlfriendly way, but on my birthday he surprised me. He gave me a single red rose and a card that read (I�ll never forget it), �I don�t often tell you how much you mean to me,� and on the inside, �But I think about it all the time.� I thought I was going to DIE, I was so ecstatic.

So we started dating and I was thrilled. I had been in love with him for almost two years, and I felt like all of my dreams were coming true. We�d �study� together and make out on the floor of his living room (we got caught by his dad once) and go to the movies. But then, a few weeks into it, he just stopped calling me out of the blue, and I found out that he�d been seen with a sophomore named Jannell (who had been a good friend of mine and knew how crazy I was about Kyle.) He called me and said he didn�t think we should see each other anymore, and I was crushed.

Looking back now, I don�t know if I can say that I was in love with Kyle. But at the time, I thought I was. I was over the moon for him. I loved him as much as any teenager can love another teenager. I would have done anything to keep him. (So maybe it�s best that it didn�t work out.) Our senior year, he dated one of my best friends, and even though I was in another �serious� relationship, it killed me to see them together. I would have taken him back in a second. Kyle broke my heart for the very first time.

2. J.J. ~ I actually dated J.J. before I dated Kyle, but J.J. didn�t enter my life until after Kyle. I met J.J. the night of my Homecoming dance, junior year. I�d gone to the dance with a timid, wimpy guy who I hardly knew, and he�d been a horrible date. After the dance, we went to a party, and J.J. was there. He was a senior and I�d never met him before. My date was being a drag, so I let him take me home and then I turned around and went back to the party. (Hee.) J.J. and I started talking, and we slept next to each other in sleeping bags on the floor that night (it was a strange sort of slumber party scenario). Anyway, J.J. held my hand all night and by the next day I guess we were an item.

I went along with it because I wanted a boyfriend, and after drooling over Kyle for a year, finally there was someone who was interested in me. The first time we kissed was on Halloween night � we�d gone trick-or-treating together, and we were walking through a park, and he picked me up and put me up on this � I don�t know � telephone equipment box or something and kissed me. I laughed. I was just so nervous, and I�d never really kissed a guy except in a game of truth-or-dare.

We dated for a few weeks, and he was crazy about me. He worked in a sporting goods store, and I worked at Baskin Robbins, and I�d bring milkshakes to him at work. We�d sit in the back and make out. His tongue was always cold and pineapple-y from the milkshake. Actually, I remember him being sort of a sloppy kisser. It kind of grossed me out sometimes. But we made out a lot. I let him feel me up but nothing else.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of this, I got sick of it. I hadn�t ever been all that crazy about J.J. from the beginning, and he was getting all serious on me. I was really immature and didn�t know how to break up with him. He ended up finding out through the grapevine that I didn�t really �like him anymore� and he was devastated. He came by Baskin Robbins the day he found out, and he made a scene there, begging and crying.

He didn�t give up easily. He kind of became a bit of a stalker for a while. And then, later that year after I�d been so coldly dumped by Kyle just a few weeks before the Prom, J.J. asked me to go with him. At first I said no, but he actually asked me again and, at my mom�s insistence, I accepted. I was the worst date in the world because I was still heartbroken over Kyle, didn�t want to be at the dance with J.J., and spent most of the night depressed as I watched Kyle and Jannell on the dance floor together. J.J. ended up writing me several poems and making me a tape of songs. I think he felt for me what I felt for Kyle.

3. J ~ I�ve already written about J a lot. You can read about it here and here and here and here. J noticed me our junior year in high school, but I was nuts for Kyle. He asked me to the Winter Formal on my birthday, which was, unfortunately for him, the same day that Kyle finally expressed an interest in me. So J�s timing was bad at first. I guess he was pretty bummed when I started dating Kyle right after he and I went to the dance together.

But J was persistent and asked me to the Homecoming dance our senior year, and we started dating after that. Long story short, we dated all through senior year and went to college together. We had a dramatic on-again, off-again relationship that had a horrible, painful ending. He hurt me more deeply than anyone ever has. (Oh yeah, I also talked about him here.

4. Ryan ~ One of my best friends introduced me to Ryan during my sophomore year in college. He lived in my hometown and went to junior college there. He delivered pizzas. He was a baseball player. He was the tallest guy I ever dated, and he had wavy blondish hair and blue eyes. He was a sweetheart.

We ended up dating for several months, long-distance. If we�d been in the same town, it probably would have only lasted for a couple of weeks. We just really had nothing in common. I was away at school, living my life and taking things seriously, and he was still living at home, hanging out with his old high school friends and delivering pizzas. It got to a point where if I had to hear one more pizza-delivery story on the phone, I was going to shoot myself.

We were dating when I tore my ACL and had to have surgery. He�d come over and just hang around and hang around while I was doped up on Vicoden, and my mom would have to literally drag him out of the house so he�d go home. He came to visit me in Davis for a few days. We had fun, but it was a little awkward. Strangely enough, he really never tried to get physical with me. At the time, I think that was a bit of a relief, but looking back on it now, it makes me wonder. Anyway, he was a sweetheart, and he actually made what was a difficult sophomore year a teensy bit easier. Still, it needed to end. I had a hard time breaking up with him.

5. Mike ~ I met Mike toward the end of my sophomore year in college, and I fell for him hard and fast. I wrote about him here. He broke my heart too.

Someone once told me that you fall in love three times in your life. After Kyle, J, and Mike, at the time I believed I�d used up my chances at love.

6. Mike T. ~ I really don�t even count this Mike as a boyfriend, but we spent time together during the summer between my junior and senior year of college. There�s a funny story about him here.

7. Kirk ~ I met Kirk at a young adults Bible study group after I had graduated from college. Things had kind of fallen apart for me after college, and I was lost and trying to figure out what came next in life. I was getting back to my roots, spiritually, and I was at the age when dating meant more � I wasn�t just dating for fun anymore � I was looking for my future husband.

When I met Kirk, I thought that�s what he was. He was cute. He had these piercing blue eyes, and the first time I saw him, I knew I wanted to date him. It didn�t take long for us to become an item. On paper, Kirk was perfect. He was brilliant, had a real job, and he was a very strong Christian. Which was what I was looking for in a husband-to-be.

But in truth, Kirk�s strong religious beliefs were hurtful to me and to our relationship. I wasn�t where he was, spiritually. I�d partied and been with guys and done all the things 20-somethings do. He hadn�t. He was so good. I always felt like I wasn�t �good� enough for him, �Christian� enough for him. He had these very, very traditional views, and I felt like I should have them too, but I didn�t, not quite, and I struggled to be the person I thought he would love. I struggled to be someone I wasn�t.

Kirk was also the most stoic person I think I�ve ever met. Maybe it stemmed from trying to be so darn good his whole life, I don�t know. I was this feeling person, just brimming with emotions, and he had this cool, dispassionate personality. It took me a while to realize it, but his disposition was making me insane. I wanted so desperately for him to love me and to show me that he loved me, and he just wouldn�t, or couldn�t.

He was also so good that our physical relationship was very limited. I shared his beliefs that you should wait until you�re married to have sex. (Call me a hypocrite it you want, since I hadn�t waited, but I was trying to turn my life around and live the way I really did believe was best.) So of course sex was out of the question, and that was OK with me. But he would barely touch me! We kissed, and that�s it. One time I ran my hand up the back of his shirt, and he kind of freaked out about it. Another time we were making out on the couch and he told me we needed to be careful not to let our relationship become reduced to just physical attraction. Geez.

I didn�t realize it at the time, but Kirk was slowly destroying my self-esteem. He didn�t mean to � he would never do anything to hurt someone intentionally � but his inability to reciprocate any emotion made me nuts. I thought it was my fault, and that if I could just be a better person, he�d love me.

There was a time I thought I was in love with Kirk, but I realized later that I was only in love with the idea of him. The possibility of him. We dated for six months, and I finally broke it off. We both knew we were at a dead end. I was amazed at how easily I recovered from that breakup. I think maybe it was a relief in the end.

8. Lance ~ Lance was in my graduate program, and we worked in the Writing Center together. To tell you the absolute truth, I suspected that he was gay at first. He just had those mannerisms, and a certain way of speaking, you know? But after getting to know him, I found out that he wasn�t gay (at least according to him) and that he was Christian, and so he became more attractive to me.

He actually wasn�t all that attractive. He had all of the features I usually liked in a guy � blondish hair, blue eyes, glasses � but not put together in a particularly handsome package. And he didn�t fit the bill in lots of other ways � he wasn�t athletic AT ALL and he was just generally a little wimpy. But he was nice and we had other things in common and we were spending a lot of time together and I guess I found him cute in some sense and he was Christian and that was really hard to find. So we started dating.

Lance must have gone to the same school of Christian dating as Kirk, because we went on like five dates and the guy still hadn�t kissed me. There are few things that will make a girl feel more insecure than that. After he walked me to my car one night and we stood there awkwardly looking at each other, I finally said to him, �Are you ever going to kiss me or what?� That was completely out of character for me to be so direct, but I felt like I had no choice. He was taken aback too, but I think he was pleasantly surprised by my directness, and he finally kissed me.

So we hung out and went out and kissed for the next six weeks or so. I liked the very intellectual conversations we had, and his spiritual attitudes and beliefs were more in line with mine � that is, he was a guy trying to live a good, Christian life as best as he could, but he was more �normal,� more human somehow, about it than Kirk had been.

I thought things were moving along fine and I�d gotten to a point where I felt like I could start opening up to him more (I�d become very cautious due to past experiences), and then he told me we needed �to talk.� Of course, I knew this couldn�t be good news, and it wasn�t. We broke up, and the specifics that I can remember aren�t very interesting. But I remember feeling like he hadn�t given us enough of a chance. Like things would have gotten better if he�d just given us more time.

I walked away from our �talk� together that day and made my way across campus, telling myself that this wasn�t a big deal, that I hadn�t really lost anything, that I hadn�t been in love with him, and that I wouldn�t cry. I think I made it all the way home believing that. And then I lost it. I called my parents in Florida and my counselor here (I�d been seeing a counselor for a while, dealing mostly with insecurities and self-loathing brought on by J) and there were moments that I almost felt suicidal. Now, looking back on it, I can�t believe that I worked myself into such a state over Lance. But it wasn�t really about him. It was about yet another relationship that hadn�t worked out, another guy who didn�t love me, and the thought of having to keep looking for Mr. Right.

Lance and I remained good friends, and even a year later I still thought there was a chance the two of us might get back together. In fact, when I first started dating B I still wasn�t convinced that Lance and I were completely through. But it didn�t take long for me to fall for B, and I didn�t give Lance a second thought.

If you�d asked me years ago to describe my future husband, the picture I created wouldn�t look a thing like B. I never believed I�d find a good old country boy from Texas. B is fair-haired and fair-skinned and blue-eyed like I�d always been attracted to, but he�s not blond and he doesn�t wear glasses (he had lasek surgery). He�s not an intellectual, and his spiritual beliefs weren�t all that strong when we met.

But one thing about him is that he let me be myself. I didn�t feel like I had to put on an act or try to be someone that I wasn�t. He loved me the way I was, and I even liked the person I was with him. Looking back on the guys I dated, I see a pattern of me trying to mold myself into the person I thought they would love. I was always trying to stay a step ahead of them, guessing at what they would want me to say or do. I�m so glad now that I didn�t end up with one of them � what an exhausting life that would be.

For a girl who always considered herself very unlucky in love, things have turned out pretty well.

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Working at home - Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004

Toronto - Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004

On the way to Toronto... - Tuesday, Nov. 09, 2004

A Good Day - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004

Another letter - Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004