Obligatory Valentine's Day Post

Haha.... No, I'm not really cynical about Valentine's Day, c'mon :D  But I have to laugh at PhD Comics (Piled Higher and Deeper) because of this comic!!!!!! I was sort of bummed on Valentine's Days of years past during the years when I liked specific guys, but I enjoy how Summitview D-Teams still try and do stuff for the singles :) For instance, Symbio singles are taking over Coopersmith's tonight!!! WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) But yeah, I do tend to stop and think a bit about my life in the guy-girl relationships arena on Valentine's Day. I think it's only natural since - yeah. I am a girl. However, that doesn't necessarily obligate me to spend a lot of time pondering guy-girlness. Yet the Bible says that married women are helpmates of their husbands. We are equal in worth yet different in our roles. Because of this we long for being a helpmate to someone.


Last night D-Team went to the home of a family from church for dinner. Their four little people were there so of course we played with them for a bit!!! I have to say, Team Ninja guys have decent paternal instincts :) I enjoyed hanging out with the little people too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They say some pretty great things. What I like about little people is teaching them stuff. Especially since my diagnosis, I've been noticing how I seem to have a more intellectual style in interacting with kids. It's not to say I don't care about them. I just seem to express it differently. However, I can't say that because my interaction style is different, I would be incapable of raising children if God called me to. But one thing I realized is that I saw raising children as a developmental step that I had to somehow achieve to succeed in life.


When I liked certain guys, I would get all twitterpaited when I saw them playing with kids, especially if they had really positive interactions and I could see that the kids were responding well. I would think: "Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!! High paternal emotional availability potential here! Well, this increases my desire to marry said person because our potential children would have really great developmental outcomes because of this and also see God's love a lot more clearly in their father!!!!!!" I would evaluate guys on the basis of how well they would fulfill the role of servant-leader and father in a marriage. Of course, that's not a bad thing at all to evaluate men on, but I think for me, I had a goal:  marriage and I liked guys based on how well they would do in partnering with me in attaining said goal. It was mostly intellectual rather than the feeling of "fluffiness" that seems to happen in guy-girl movies. Sorry, can't think of a more precise word.... ;) 


In an earlier post on this blog, I go a bit more in depth into my thoughts on marriage and how they've changed post-ASD diagnosis. So what goes through my mind when I hang out with kids now or approach days like Valentine's day or other times when the focus is on marriage or guy-girl stuff? I think it comes down to just being in the moment. This comes from releasing myself from the expectation that I should get married to be 'normal.' Shoot! I'M NOT NORMAL, so essentially: who cares :D So I can focus on doing single-people stuff on Valentine's day like our Symbio thing tonight and when I'm around a family, I can just be me around the kids and enjoy teaching them things and hanging out with them. The pressure of wanting things is gone, so the angst of all these things is largely gone too :)