(I hold myself to these impossible standards, you know. I want my emotions to be neat and tidy and predictable and never messy and clean and cut and dried. I am so hard on myself when they don't fit into clean little categories, boxed and stacked and put away. I am so hard on myself, period.)

So anyway, this weekend was nice and cozy spent inside warm (or boiling, when my radiator would kick up the temperature to tropical) against the blizzard. (I don't like being out in the snow, necessarily, but oh how pretty!) Saturday I woke up late and straightened up and watched movies and Keith and Tim and I played Simpsons Clue and Scrabble (I got "equip" on a triple word score!) and then Ben came over late Saturday night and we slept in yesterday and watched movies and went out for coffee and made brunch and played Simpsons Monopoly and had a lovely time.

It was funny - I got a (yuck) yeast infection from starting the pill and so I was completely off limits from the waist down all weekend (and there was a part of me that thought that Ben might not have wanted to spend the weekend with me if we couldn't have sex, and isn't that awful, that I would think that about myself?) and it was suprisingly nice, sweet, like teenagers, to just kiss. It was unexpected.

So last night we finished playing Monopoly around midnight (when he got his first monopoly (I didn't get any!) I yelled out, "that's it, no sex for you tonight!" and he deadpanned "well, it's not like I was getting any anyway" and I was so tickled by our exchange) and as soon as the game was packed away and the bed cleared we started kissing again and something began to grow. It had started off light and casual and suddenly we were clutching each other so tight, like we couldn't press each other close enough, and our kisses were at a fever pitch and we were whispering each other's names and I was so overcome as I was kissing him I moaned "oh Ben, I love you so much, I do" and it freaked him out.

Goddamn it.

To tell you the truth, it freaked me out too, a little. It just came out, and with such raw, naked force, unexpectedly - I felt so exposed.

We gradually stopped kissing - it wasn't immediate - and I don't even remember what he said exactly, something like "I just feel a little weird about it" and I was just crushed. All out of proportion. I withdrew, pulled away, feeling absolutely mortified, and he held me still. He said "Aimee, Aimee, listen, you are so special to me, and I want to be with you for a long time." And yet I still held myself distant, for a while. I just felt so freakin' rejected.

And that's the crazy, I-don't-like-my-emotions, thing about it. I wasn't rejected. Hello, I did the same thing to Ben last month when he used the L word on me (hmm, does the preposition "in" make that much of a difference?) We still care for each other. I didn't send him running screaming from the room like it felt in my heart I might have done with my declaration. No harm, no foul, right?

I think what's bothering me is that I feel stupid for putting myself out there like that, making myself vulnerable. But isn't that what happens in human relationships? But I feel a little stung nonetheless. I feel pouty, like a little kid stomping her feet that she didn't get her way. And I hate to acknowledge that.

It does trouble me, though, that we don't seem to be all that good at talking about emotional stuff. At first, Ben's reserve was a welcome relief after the Louse's emotional shrapnel storm. But sometimes I find myself yearning for more passion - like I thought we were feeling last night. Maybe the intensity scared him. It scares me too. But oh, it tastes so good, too!

Maybe Ben and I are going to wind up in too different places, or have too different needs, and I don't like acknowledging that. Because he is growing to mean more and more to me, and I've been strangely spoiled by relationships not working out because the other person is an unredeemable asshole. Those are easy, because I'm glad to have them gone. But if we're gonna wind up incompatible, stalled, emotionally stunted, and I have to call things off, then I would be sad for it.

I think what's stressing me out is that I don't know how to work with someone. To say, "hey, this is what I need to feel good in a relationship. What do you need? Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and figure out how to make this work best for us both."