losing the sweatpants.

We all make choices in life.

Like, when to eat a Wendy's Spicy Chicken Value Meal and when to drink spinach smoothies (I've done both this week).

 

When to cheer for South Carolina Gamecocks (tonight) and when to root against them (next Saturday-Go Dawgs).
 
When to stop being the best version of ourselves in a relationship and when to literally (and figuratively) start wearing sweatpants.

Unfortunately, for my night-owl, live music-loving significant other, I made that decision to "start wearing sweatpants" far earlier than he would've liked.  In fact, I've been making the choice to be lame for several months now.

I'm not sure when, or how, this happened, because I swore it never would.

I knew it would be easy to fall into the comfortableness of a relationship; I knew we'd probably end up going out less and staying in more.  I mean, we're not in our twenties anymore.  But I didn't plan on completely abandoning so many of the elements of my single-self personality - specifically, the fun-loving, up for anything ones that made him attracted to me in the first place.  

I made a choice Saturday night to step back into my "cool girlfriend" shoes - and accompany Jacob to a concert that started . . .wait for it . . . AFTER. MIDNIGHT.

As in, on Sunday morning. 

Admittedly, I had to dig deep.  I worked on Saturday, so I would have been happy to come home, curl up on the couch and watch an SNL rerun while drifting off to sleep.

But for the sake of relationship happiness, I chose to put aside my natural tendency to decline his invitation, or worse, accept his invitation and then complain about it later.  Instead, I put a smile on my face, brought a positive attitude and we went to see Lettuce at Terminal West. 

 

Lettuce, a highly entertaining funk band from Boston, put on a fabulous show and the venue is one of my favorites in Atlanta, but I confess, I was more excited about proving to myself and to the world that I'm still a vibrant, relatively young woman who can stay out late and go to concerts of bands I've never heard of. 

The next day, Jacob thanked me for accompanying him to the show - he actually sent me an email telling me how much he appreciated it - which I found to be both endearing and profoundly sad.  If my willingness to humor him and stay out late happens so infrequently that it warrants a thank you note, I think I'm doing this girlfriend thing wrong.

What's that phrase - "Love means never having to say you're sorry?"  Ok, first of all, that's a lie.  Love means you HAVE to say you're sorry when you're wrong.  Saying "I'm sorry," early and often is good relationship behavior.

I think love means making good choices that make your partner happy.  Love means never having to say "thank you for postponing putting on sweatpants to come to a concert with me."

Check out this party animal!

(Note: After proclaiming my hatred of "selfies," I didn't want you to think I'd fallen ill and actually taken one of myself.  I purposely cropped the other people in this picture out to ensure that we'll still be friends later.)