The Meet and Greets

In any new relationship, there are always those meet and greet moments.  Meeting friends for the first time, will we all get along?  Meeting co-workers for the first time, will he fit in with the happy hour crew?  Meeting the parents for the first time...  Oh, yeah. We're there.

In the last two weeks,  I've put my honey through several of these experiences.  I say I've "put him through" them because he likes to call them sneak attacks or traps.  This is not the case.  I can't help it if, after a day of pedicures, lunch, and shoe shopping, my best friend knew he was coming over later that afternoon and asked to meet him.  I texted him first to make sure it was okay.  It's not a trap if you know what you're walking into, right? In fact, I thought it was pretty great that she wanted to meet him because it was a sign that she could tell from talking to me that he was going to be around for a while.

Yay! We made it through Round One.

So he's met my best friend and she says she likes him.  Likes him so much, in fact, that she didn't even blame him for the boyfriend black-out.  Yup, she was one of those calls I forgot to make.  She settled my hash, but left him out of it.  Of course, she also threatened to harm him (with scalding hot barbecue sauce, no less) if he broke my heart, but what can I say?  The people in my life love me a lot and I have a feeling he's going to be hearing that threat quite a bit in later rounds, so probably better to hit him with it upfront, right?

Round two was a double whammy.  We had a busy week this week and didn't get to see each other as much as either of us would have liked.  So I tried to squeeze in some "us" time the other night before going to dinner with my mom.  It didn't quite work out as I'd planned.  I though he'd come over for an hour or so and then when my mom called to say she was on her way over, he'd leave.  He knew I was having dinner with my mom.  He knew we had a limited window for hanging out.  Either, he lost track of time (entirely possible since I was keeping his lips a little busy) or he decided he was ready to meet my mom because the call came that she was on her way over to get me for dinner and he stayed.  This cannot be called a trap!  He said he might as well meet her since he was already here.

It was like this,
only with Mom asking the questions.

It went pretty well, I thought.  Mom changed plans on the fly and ran out to bring dinner back to my place.  We ate and talked and laughed.  He was a little more toned-down than I had ever seen him, but then I'm sure he was nervous and trying to be on his best behavior.  Mom only grilled him a little bit.  She wanted answers to some of the questions she had already asked me for which I had nothing.  How long had he been at his job?  I didn't know the answer to that one and my best guess turned out to be way off.  Was he vested in the pension plan?  Why the hell she needed to know that straight off the bat, I'll never know.  It was a fairly painless grilling I thought, as far as being asked probing, personal questions by your girlfriend's mother goes.  Maybe he will comment on this blog and tell otherwise. I don't know.

But, wait!  Round two wasn't over yet, for riding in the car with my mom was my beloved dog, Roxy.  All 130 pounds of her.  She's half rottweiler, half bull mastiff .  So, half big dog, half bigger dog.  He still had to get the doggy seal of approval.  Mom left Roxy in the house with us, at my insistance, while she went to grab dinner.  Now, my honey is a cat person.  His family has had dogs. Still has one right now, I believe.  So, dogs in general are not a problem for him.  But, I don't think he was quite prepared for how large my puppy was going to be.  He joked that I hadn't told him I had a horse.  But, my honey rose to the challenge and proceeded to win over the dog. 

Forget about must love dogs,
you must be loved BY my dog

He gave her time to get used to him being there and to see that I was okay with him being around me . He used a gentle tone of voice to show that he wasn't a threat.  I had warned him that in the past she has nipped at people whom she didn't want around anymore.  She's protective.  If she thinks I feel threatened by you, she's going to do some threatening of her own.  Clearly, she read between the lines that I was okay with him being in the house and touching me because she settled down on the floor next to the couch and let him pet her.  She kept her eye on him the whole time mom was gone, but eventually he earned a lick on each hand, a lick on his forearm, and...wait for it, wait for it... kisses on his face.  He scratched her ears til she was completely won over by his charms! 



Next, it was my turn to meet his parents.  I had a nervous tummy ache at just the thought of meeting them.  You see, I am really tight with my mom (I was tight with my dad, too.  Unfortunately, he is no longer with us.).  If my honey had failed the Mom Test, I don't know if he would have been sticking around for long.  I spend a lot of time with my mom.  If you're going to be around me, you are going to be around her, so she had better like you and vice versa.  I've always assumed this is true for everyone else, but the older I get the more I realize how lucky I am to be so close with my parent. 

The butterflies in my tummy
weren't the good kind.

My honey came over early to pick me up and that was a good thing because it took him a good thirty minutes to get me calmed down enough to go meet his parents.  I wouldn't say it was a full-scale panic attack.  No paper bags were required because I wasn't hyperventilating.  I was just  nervous. Really, really nervous.  I even made an emergency call to my BFF for a little extra support right before he arrived, I was that nervous.  My stomach was tied in knots.  He assured me that his parents would like me, but that if they didn't that would be their loss. Say what? I'd assumed if they vetoed me, I'd be hitting the bricks. What do you mean their opinion doesn't really matter to you?  He held me and told me to stop worrying.  When that didn't work, he made me laugh and that finally got me to calm down.

We had dinner with his parents at a nice Italian restaurant.  His mother is very friendly and very funny, now I know where my honey gets his sense of humor from.  She immediately made me feel at ease, that and the fact that he was holding my hand under the table like a comforting life-line.  His dad was pretty quiet and I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.

The thing that surprised me the most was that his parents didn't really have much to ask me.  The only question his dad asked me was how many hockey games I'd been to so far.  For the record, I've been to four games.  Every home game since we started dating except for three.  He'd promised tickets to friends for two games and then today I had a prior commitment to take my nephew, Squirt, to the circus.  I'm guessing they figure if I'm good with his love of hockey, then everything else will work itself out?  I later found out that his mom and I have a mutual friend, whom his mom had pumped for information about me.  Since the friend in question has known me since I was about five years old, I'm guessing his mom found out pretty much everything she could have wanted to know about me.

He reported back to me this morning that his mom said that she liked me.  Yay! Round Three success!  Coming up next on the meet and greets, dinner with one of his best friends and possibly a lunch with his work friends.  After this week, those seem like a piece of cake.