The Old Ball and Chain Gang

The other day I found myself repeating just the kind of paranoid macho crap I’m always railing against. A friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while asked how things were going with Anja (my sweetie for a year this coming Thursday!, for those of you who haven’t been following As the M.A.I.D. Turns), and I found myself saying – or, rather I was shocked at the words coming out of my mouth) that we weren’t engaged yet, that I was still a “free man.” After parting from my friend I was grossed out by the fact that I’d said something that was so absolutely both contrary to what I believe, what I feel about relationships in general and what I feel about my relationship now in particular. Not only don’t I feel entrapped by my relationship, I’m much freer in this relationship, in relationships in general, than I am when I’m roaming “free” aka hopelessly, incessantly obsessing about how lonely I am and that I’ll never meet the woman for me and that I’ll die a solitary, bitter man – you know, the usual stuff. Attaching freedom to singledom isn’t just objectionable in that, among other things, it blames women for choices men willingly make to be with them, it’s just not true, at least not for this guy. This man needs a woman – and this Anja woman in particular – he needs to be wonderously trapped and freer than ever. This fish needs his bike – happy Anniversary, Panji!