As most of you know, my boyfriend is nearly a decade older than me. Although our maturity levels are about equal, there is a noticeable difference between who we are and how we look at life. The biggest difference is how we relate to our parents. I am very close with my mom. I talk with her almost every day, sometimes twice a day. Stephen talks to his parents about once a month, and never reveals anything about his life to them. He told them he was dating me, the day before they actually met me (7 months after we've been together). This is neither good or bad, it's just the way it happens to be once you've been out of your parents house for 17 years.
Another age related difference is the stories. OH man, Steve has some great stories. He has lived like 5 lives, and I have lived one, single, dull, boring, pathetic life! He grew up in a small mountain town, graduated highschool and joined the army, lived in Texas, Alabama, and Korea while in the army, finished the army and moved home and went to junior college, moved to Santa Barbara to go to UCSB to pursue dentistry, changed majors to chemistry, double majored in chemistry and biochemistry, got his masters in chemistry, and now he is a super smart senior process research scientist. WOW! What a freaking amazing life! Let's see, I grew up in your average suburban town, went to college, got a job. I am so lame! We've discussed this difference and I told him I am afraid he will soon get bored with me because I don't have as many cool stories as he has...but he tells me how awesome I am for going straight to college and starting a career at age 24...so our perspectives are slightly skewed...and that's exactly why I love him! He tells me he is worried that since I am so young, I haven't done everything I need to do before settling down. I see his point, I am only 24, but most of you know me pretty well, and you'd probably tell Steve, "Jaime is ready! She's had like 405,394 lame boyfriends so PLEASE be the ONE good one for her. She is the most loyal girl on earth - she isn't going anywhere!" So, Steve....I am done. I do not need to go be crazy and wild and skanky...been there, done that.
A huge change from all my other boyfriends is the fact that Steve is an ADULT. He is responsible. He saves money. He cleans. He flosses every day! And we do adult things like go out for wine on Sunday nights, run errands together on the weekend, pot plants, cook dinner, take vacations and weekend road-trips, we TALK and LAUGH, and sometimes we just lay for hours just listening to music! And we don't just babble about stupid stuff - we talk about exciting, interesting things like family, work, investments, what types of cool things we want in our first house, places we want to travel to, music, and of course we're constantly telling each other how wonderful and hot the other person is. I wish all of you could sit and hear our personal conversations...you'd absolutely understand why I am so dang smitten! Oh, and my favorite conversations go like, "wow, when you were 21, I was 11. Pedophile!"
Side Note: We work together, but no one at work knows we are together, so occasionally as Steve walks by the stairwell leading to my office, he yells random things for me to hear like "Cawcaw!" or a gross burp, and sometimes he just grunts really loud. As I am writing this, he just yelled, "OVER IT! I am OVER IT!" Ha, I bet everyone else thinks he is such a freak.
