Growing Old And Signing Treaties

This past weekend, Alpa Chino and I had a serious, mostly, conversation about maturity. We both reached the conclusion that we are adults now (it may surprise some of you that we had not already established this) and that it is time we began acting like adults in a relationship.

I'll share some examples of the ways, I think, our relationship was/is lacking in "maturity".

I sometimes pinch his cheeks for no reason, and I mean the cheeks on his face mind you. We'll be sitting on the couch, watching TV or something, and then all of a sudden I'll reach over and pinch! I know that this annoys him but he lets me get away with it--sometimes. Other times he attempts to tickle me to death in retribution and I am very ticklish so this usually leaves me gasping for breath. Also, he frequently refers to me as "dingbat" while I use terms like "barawo" or "ode". Sometimes ALL these things happen in the order that I have just described.

For reasons still unknown to me, this weekend I decided--and he agreed--that we should exclude certain words, actions, and phrases (such as the infamous "You'll be just fine" which has begun to irritate even Mogaji) from our vocabulary.

We talked about it the way some couples might discuss a prenuptial agreement. I agreed to cease and desist any and all cheek pinching. He agreed to allow me to continue to call him "pookie"--at least I think he agreed. Before you say "aww", I would never call him "pookie" in public lest he lose some "manliness points". Although by writing this I guess I have called him "pookie" in public. But its all good since most of you don't know who he is. Also, there will be no more use of the terms "dingbat", "ode", or "barawo" by either party.

There are other points to the "treaty" but there's no need to go into all of it.

This got me thinking about Chuck and Blair's "treaty" a few weeks ago on the Gossip Girl episode War At The Roses

I'm glad we reached an agreement. Most of the "immaturity" that needs weeding out from our relationship is because we were friends long before any of the "serious stuff" cropped up. Its mostly residual "friend play" from our pre-relationship days when we were younger and it was okay to do certain things.

When this relationship moved past the "friend" stage and we became "official", nothing really changed. Well...a few things changed, but the core of our relationship remained the same based on a very tight friendship. However, that core has since been upgraded with all the things involved with being in a "serious relationship" and we just need to reflect that.

I don't know if I'm explaining this properly.

The fact is, we are old and we are way past that "friends" stage in our relationship. Planning to move in together, attending family events, relocating for each other, those are not the acts of people who still jokingly call each other "barawo".

Of course this does not mean that we are going to lose all of the fun in the relationship, its just going to change a bit.