#and he went noooo i haven't asked you out for coffee first!

[spursthatjinglejanglejingle]

Godd why can't i just be friends with men they always end up trying to hit on me staaaaahhhppp it i am out of your league. Even if I'm not i just want to make FRIENDS. Can i make friends with men without them goign woaahhshhaiso. Oh my god you are girl 😳 that plays video games ⁉️ hummana hummana SHUT UUPPP.

[boyswanna-be-her]

Let me preface this by saying that I'm recounting all of this kind of mundane shit about BFR for myself because guaranteed I'm going to be trying to understand/recap this narrative while im lonely in colorado. And honestly I know it's gonna be easy for me to forget details and second-guess shit that feels so obvious to me in the moment. So if you don't want a blow by blow of this absolutely PG romantic relationship, just skip this one for now.

Today was really nice and the first day in a little while where I haven't had anything pressing to do. It was pouring at the clinic today--has been all week. Yesterday I sat in my front seat w BFR and we smoked a joint together and made fun of the one wet protester until the rain passed. Great morning.

We had lunch together at one of my favorite taco spots in my old neighborhood, and then we had to walk back to the thai place where we ate dinner the night before bc they'd left their sunglasses behind. We went to a coffee shop for a while where they patiently waited for me to be done with a working meeting on my laptop. Then we took a walk in the park in between rain. It was just seamless, idk. There's no question that we'll go do the next thing together. When the rain wouldn't let up at the park, I suggested we go to one of my fave places in the city, and I drove us to a giant used bookstore that was a few miles away.

I didn't realize until we got there that they'd never been before!! I try to take everyone I can there if they're from out of town, and it is ABSOLUTELY my favorite place to both take a new date and have a special date with an established partner. I don't feel guilty about taking basically everyone I've ever dated there--a good date is a good date. There's a lot of built-in conversation to be had and it's easier than a bar and free to wander around. We accidentally killed an enormous amount of time there, and we shot the shit about 20th century history which is my jam, so amazing to talk abt it w someone who can hang, READS, and doesn't have anything to prove in terms of static knowledge recall.

We hung out for a little while but they had yoga and I wanted to head home so we split up after that and it felt... weird? Like it always feels like there's this last step we are missing to our goodbyes. They forced a hug one time when we were saying goodbye from the clinic, but it was really early on and RIGHT when I was coming to terms with being attracted to them (like second time seeing them after having the realization) which means I was in ultra robot mode, and also assumed it was one-sided and they were just trying to be nice. Like I literally think I did a one arm side hug and they were so dejected they never tried again. Now we're weeks later and it feels weird that we're not kissing goodnight or something.

But I had the evening to myself and finally broke down and talked to someone from my real life about them. He was very affirming that I'm not insane, and just recapping the timeline to someone made it make more sense in my mind. I didn't even have to present half of my evidence for my friend to say yeah, that's going in A Direction. I just second guess it all for a variety of reasons, but for example when I screenshotted a text and sent it as evidence that I feel like they text me like a coworker sometimes, my friend pointed out that nobody in the history of neutral coworkers has ever crafted such a long and careful text. Which. Touche.

This morning we were back out at the clinic bright and early. My friend was supposed to join us but she couldn't at the last minute. Instead she dropped into the chat and asked if someone could fill in for her. If I didn't feel like we were already attracting attention (spoiler: we are), i would've REALLY preferred to jump in and say "noooo worries, no third wheel needed please." But we are getting a little visible. So I didn't. And BFR's friend jumped in to take my friend's place volunteering with us.

I ended up being really happy the friend was there though! The two of us are more like a couple when there IS a third person there, although the vibe can be a lot to navigate sometimes and I often have to shut down and take some time to myself. It wasn't unwelcome to have him there though. It makes the vibe between me & bfr more apparent, pronounced, whatever. We already have such a shorthand in common which 😍 wrow, communication fluency.

I invited his friend to lunch with us, and he accepted, and it was fun--I took them to my favorite Greek place which is legit like three blocks from the clinic.

Friend went on his way, the two of us moved to the next location: their favorite spot to work. I also love this location bc you can watch the afternoon rain and vape furiously on the porch without getting wet. Like I said, today was the first day in a while where neither of us had much to do in the way of work. They have been threatening to inflict their favorite board game on me for a while now, and it finally happened today. I am notoriously uninterested in board games (more like bored games amiright) but the combo of my biggest fan being excited to teach/compliment me on how AMAZING i am at it (rofl lying but ok) and the inherent fun of the game meant that I, uh, had a lot of fun, unfortunately.

We did two REALLY close rounds, and in the second game they almost fully missed a work call they had at 7:00 (I remembered bc i am insane but I also didn't mention it until 6:50 bc I thought maybe they were goofing on me and pretending like they'd lost track of time). Turns out they had been planning on muting and barely looking at the meeting anyway bc they didn't wanna stop playing--which is flattering but I'm also like "[Redacted], i already very much want the best for you, INCLUDING not becoming completely codependent and risking your living bc im so charming and fun" so there was a lot of me pausing the play and asking about the meeting.

By the time that was over, we were already butting up against the time we were supposed to meet their friends to lift tonight. We hadn't eaten dinner but they offered to feed me at their place which was perfect. We went straight back and holy shit their homemade leftovers were delicious.

Their friends came on time to lift and the first thing out of the mouth of the one who knows me better was "you and [redacted] have really been spending a lot of time together huh?" The two of us made eye contact and kinda laughed and BFR said "yep" and both made the 😬 face and the friend wouldn't let it go and repeated "you guys spend all day together now..." and my 😬 face couldn't get any more intense and he said "all day... today..." i said "yep we're pretty codependent." (I'd made the same not-joke yesterday when I was very truly pointing out that I don't remember what to do with my alone time anymore, and they not-jokingly replied "yeah we've ruined each other." Which like. At least we're aware.) Only later did I realize that BFR mustve been talking to the friend about it bc I definitely wasn't and there was no public talk about it in our shared discord so 👀 bitch i see u chatting in private abt me.

Lifting was incredible as always. Their friends who are a decade younger than us and sometimes join us, sometimes don't, really crack me up and I have such a good rapport with one of the guys that I think I lift better with him around (the one who was giving us a hard time tonight). He dishes out the abuse I give him while lifting, which I love. Between him and bfr, I feel like a fucking all-star lifter in that little garage gym. They talk positively about my form when they don't even realize I can hear them. Even so, BFR will not hesitate to call me out when a lift looks bad or I need a cue.

So yeah. It's nice. Hanging out at their place, being fed, getting let in on a LOT more inner details than I got in the first months of knowing them. That's all lovely. I always try to text them and let them know when I've had a lot of fun with them, and that's just basically turned into a nightly check-in. On Sunday, I got a very coworkery (imo) message from them about enjoying our time together, thanking me for my "wonderful company," thanking me for spending so much time together, thanking me for attending so many events with them, and saying that they are "definitely down to keep hanging out in the future." At the time I felt like "that's a weirdly formal way to put all this" but getting home to tonight's much more neurotic message made it make more sense (along w the feedback from a trusted friend who makes good points). Like it was a careful message because they are being exceedingly careful with me. They know some of my more obvious damage (all the psychic sucking chest wounds are hard to ignore after a few weeks of learning about me, and i've been going out of my way to be quite "warts and all" with them). They value our time together A LOT. And the more that I understand our similarities, the more I know that they're also likely really fucking scared to endanger the chemistry of this friendship by introducing ANY other dynamic.

Im finally getting to the end here. Tumblr will probably eat this entry. I'm posting it before a full edit--RIP anyone parsing this.

But the message that I came home to tonight was FINALLY a little more vulnerable, and essentially said that if I want to spend LESS time with them, I'm going to have to tell them that straight up, and that that'll be ok, but if so they need to lnow because this is the amount of time they want to spend with me (all of it), and they don't anticipate that changing.

So! Guess I'll puke and die now! Literally spent five minutes last night considering how I could smuggle them to Colorado with me. Also I haven't had anywhere to put this but since this is an all-bfr all the time blog now, we are going to go on a trip together to chicago in August! There's an actual reason to go other than lovefest vacation (pretty much a work trip for them that I've been asked to tag along for) but as we are actually finalizing the trip plans, it definitely feels more than a little bit like we are going on a lovefest vacation. Which is all the more reason why it would be great to not be hella conspicuous (even though it's a little fun being hella conspicuous).

Like I didn't need another human to come validate my existence, but I *did* need to meet someone who could threaten the idea that I'm ready to die alone. It's nice. It's all nice!! I'm definitely not crying and throwing up!!!