Regarding the “DNA of a relationship” it brings another thing to mind. If you read here a lot, you may have noticed I tend to stay in at least intermittent contact with some ex-loves. And frequently it’s significant. It is more than “Hi, you how are you”. Like with Scott. I am sitting there with him listening to him talk to his dead grandmother via a recording made decades earlier. That’s a big deal. But this isn’t about Scott. It’s about another old love who I never name.

I don’t name him because he’s ex Special Forces. I also don’t name him because he has a Scorpio Moon! But in whatever case he asked me to marry him many years ago, when I was seventeen years old, to be exact. And I would have liked to marry him, that’s for sure. But I had the unfortunate problem of having lied to him about my age. He thought I was 21, I guess. I don’t really remember specifically how old I said I was. But I vividly recall being completely enamored with him and terrified of losing his respect when and if he found out my true age and more succinctly, that I had LIED about it.

So anyway, wanting to marry me he bought me an airline ticket so I could fly home with him and meet his parents. He spent something ridiculous on it, like two months salary (military) but I would not go! For one thing, I had never been on a plane, and was scared to death and intimidated, but mostly I thought meeting his parents would be the kiss of death.

Because by all accounts they were genius as was he. So I figured I had him fooled! He was in love with me. But his parents? I was sure they’d take one look at me and know in an instant I was a teenager! You know. The emperor has no clothes! And I just could not take this chance.

See, he and his entire family were integrity personified and I just couldn’t bear the idea of being found out a liar and losing face like that. So what I did was refuse to make the trip. And ultimately I refused to marry him, but on this, I had some help.

He wasn’t in Special Forces when I met him, but he aspired to be. And being from the desert, I had no idea what Special Forces was. At all!! I just knew I had this dreamy boyfriend who played me love songs on his guitar, see. I have Venus Neptune, so that’s all I knew.

But anyway as destiny would have it one night I went out. I was underage of course and almost no one knew it. But I was friendly with this dark haired wiry guy in one of the bars I frequented. He was inordinately bright, a sci fi freak actually and he knew how old I was. He knew because he had guessed and anytime anyone asked if I were lying about my age, I always copped right away, “Why, yes!” I’d say. I was relieved, see. It was a relief.

But anyway we really liked each other. I was 17 and he was in his 30′s but that didn’t matter. The whole thing was above board. We just liked each other and he was very supportive of me. He used to recommend books for me to read for example, good books and this was our relationship.

He also tracked my boyfriend. He’s never met him, but he knew of him, knew his name and so forth. He knew he was a good man. See, this guy would ask all these probing questions and true to form, I would answer then candidly so he had a pretty good fix on me and my life.

And he approved of my relationship which meant a lot to me. He was sort of a father figure, actually. I respected him so when he voted thumbs up on my boyfriend, well this felt really good.

Skip to part two.