How to Stay Bitter through the Happiest Times of Your Life

Excerpt from Anita Liberty's Blog: Boyfriend and I are going away for the weekend. We're going to Vermont. To a cabin. In the woods. Away from everything. And everybody. Just the two of us. No distractions or interruptions. It was his idea. Me? I live for distractions and interruptions. Lizzy asked me if I thought Boyfriend had planned this romantic weekend because he's going to propose. I was like, "What? Propose? Are you crazy? We've only been together for a few months. I'm not going to get engaged after only a few months of knowing someone." Lizzy said that she knew that I wouldn't, but she didn't know about him. So it got me thinking. I mean, he does talk a lot about our future together. He talks about things very far into the future. He acts like it's a given. It does seem like he's ready to take the next step, even if it seems quick. I've heard stories of people who "just knew." I never thought I'd be one of those people, but maybe I'm about to go on a romantic weekend with one of those people. Advice from Anita Liberty: Be aware that sometimes well-meaning friends can unwittingly (or wittingly) plant a tiny thought in your brain that, finding your brain to be a fertile and hospitable environment, can germinate and sprout and take root and spread and grow and fluorish until you have no more room in your brain for any other thoughts. Especially rational ones. Excerpt from Anita Liberty's Blog: We're back. The first night we were there, we sat on the couch and drank red wine. We were staring deeply into each other's eyes. There was a fire blazing, crickets chirping, the promise of a hot night of sex in front of us. Everything was perfect. All of a sudden, Boyfriend gets this look, like something has occurred to him. Like this moment is a special moment and he has something he wants to ask me. I swear. That was the look he gave me. So he looks at me meaningfully and tells me to wait on the couch, that he has to "get something." He gets up and walks across the room to a trunk in the corner. My heart dropped into my stomach. My throat constricted. I'm thinking, "Oh my God, he's getting a ring. How'd he get a ring into that trunk in the corner? He hasn't been out of my sight since we got here. I even peed with the bathroom door open. Oh! I know. He Fedexed a ring to this place and had the owner hide it in this trunk so that he could retrieve it and propose. Now that I think about it, I'm quite certain that the owner gave Boyfriend a little conspiratorial wink when we checked in." I was a little drunk at this point, so I'm trying desperately to separate out my immediate panicked reaction from my actual feelings and I'm finding it extremely difficult. I'm like, "Okay, I now have about thirty seconds to figure out what I'm going to say when he asks me to marry him. Do I want to marry him? Can I tell him it's too soon and that we should get to know each other better? Will that hurt his feelings? Should I just say yes and see how that feels? Maybe it's not too soon. Maybe we are meant to be together. If he knows, maybe I should trust that. Maybe I should trust him. That would be a novel concept." Boyfriend closes the trunk. I'm shaking at this point, anticipating what's to come. He turns to me, smiling. And he's holding... a blanket. That's right. A blanket. He sits down beside me and puts it cozily around us. He says, "That's better. I knew there'd be one around here somewhere. Hey, you look really pale all of a sudden. Are you all right?Liberty, Anita is the author of 'How to Stay Bitter through the Happiest Times of Your Life', published 2006 under ISBN 9780812976199 and ISBN 0812976193.