Rebounding?

I had someone tell me recently that "it's not fair" that I was single for only a short time before finding S. Well, life isn't fair. Sorry. I got up, and moved on, and started dating again. And I went out on a bunch of first dates (and one weird group event), and then met S, and so far, things are happily ever after. So yeah, life sucks for people who are still single and I'm not. But you're right, it's not even been 7 months since J6 and I broke up, and I'm planning my future with someone else. I'm lucky.

I had someone else ask me if S was just a rebound guy. The answer is not at all. I think that J6 was actually my rebound guy. J5 broke my heart, and it took me a few months before I was ready to start dating again (in all honesty, I probably should have waited a little while longer, but I was ready to not be alone anymore). So I met J6, and he seemed nice, and he was willing to offer me companionship. And I settled for a lot of things that I shouldn't have settled for, in retrospect. Well hindsight is 20/20 -- and all my friends and family members apparently could see what I couldn't all along -- but he wasn't very nice or respectful to me all the time. He also didn't appreciate my career, or my family, or my political or religious views. He wanted me to choose to live where and how he wanted to live. He wanted me to put up with his crazy mom (who hated me, and thought I was the worst kind of spoiled JAP -- which I'm really not). And a lot of other things. And I put up with all of this for over 2 years. The actual decision to break-up was his, officially, b/c I had picked a deadline for a commitment that he wasn't ready to make. But within a couple days, I was fully accepting of the break-up and ready to move on. And when he showed up, begging for me to take him back, I was flabbergasted -- and the tables were turned. While standing in my apartment, asking for me back, he started telling me all the things that I should do better and differently. THAT'S how you win someone back?! I asked him what he expected, and he said he was expecting me to welcome him back with open arms. Funny, since while he was realizing how incredible I was and how stupid he was to leave, I had been realizing how incredible I was and how stupid I was to have stayed with him all that time. So I told him off, and that I didn't even want to stay friends. THAT was my rebound guy, I just wish I hadn't rebounded for 2+ years.

I couldn't have been in a healthier place when I met S. Not just for a relationship, I don't think, although it certainly helps to be fully healed from all prior relationships. I had finished my residency -- and while the board-studying was hard, it was nowhere near what residency hours were like. And I had chosen a fellowship that should, hopefully, be pointing me in the direction of a career path that I'm going to love -- and so far, I love most of what I'm doing in the fellowship itself. In addition, in the few months since J6, I had also expanded my horizons and made a lot of new friends in my community. I finally had a social life, I was going out and doing things with people other than the 6 friends I knew when I moved to NYC and the people I spent 80 hours a week with in the hospital. (People kept asking if I had just moved to the UWS, and I sometimes would answer "yes," since I basically didn't exist in this community for the 3 previous years I had lived here.) I had moved to a fabulous new apartment, and it makes a difference to come home to a place where you can turn around without bumping into yourself, and see the sky and the skyline and the trees. And I physically felt good -- headaches that I didn't know had been bothering me for some time until they went away, had gone away, and I had lost some weight that I'd gained during residency and just felt good about myself.

So S isn't, by any means, a rebound guy. He's just the right guy. :-D