It's my party, I'll cry if I want to

Sean asked when we could meet up, he had a surprise for me. Not gonna lie… that made me nervous. “Well, we (my daughter & I) are headed to the park if you want to come?”

This is something we do quite frequently now. Sean has a remote job with flexible hours so he can easily meet up with us in the middle of the day. It’s nice. He likes my daughter. Apparently enough to remember her birthday.

He brought her a gift, which was sweet, but I didn’t think too much about it. I post monthly pictures so he obviously knew her birthday was within a month since the last pics. And it wasn’t like he gave it to me on her birthday. So he could’ve just known it was coming up soon.

But last week I texted him if he’d be free last night or maybe tonight.

“What are the birthday plans?”

Oh. He remembered my birthday.

“Nothing, Dakota will be out of town on a business trip and I don’t like to be in my house alone overnight.” I knew Ryan wouldn’t be able to make it. So last night Sean spent the night. And when we woke up he told me happy birthday.

A quick aside, I forgot to post literally anything for my birthday on any platform. I’m an adult, I don’t really care about my birthday that much. But if anyone reading this wants to give me a nice tip on OF or cashapp or whatever that’d be super dope!

Anyway, I don’t care about my birthday that much, but apparently I care about people remembering it. Or maybe it was just the realization that the man I like the least of the ones I’m seeing is actually the most thoughtful.

Dakota purposely did not tell me happy birthday the first year we were together. This was the stage where I said I didn’t want to see him anymore because he didn’t want to be official, but then quickly backtracked because I hated not hanging out with him. At this point things were kind of awkward and tense with us. And I guess he was proving some point by not saying it. But I know he knew because I’d complained that it was on the day we had a calc II exam and…whatever, doesn’t matter. Skip forward two years because we weren’t together for the one in between and he remembered the day… but not the month. He thought it was March, not April. Finally, on my fourth birthday since he met me, he remembered it correctly.

Ryan also forgot my birthday last year. Which like… I get he had some other stuff going on, but we’d been seeing each other since September. I know I’d talked about how my daughter was supposed to be born on my birthday (she came a little early) so I feel like perhaps that would stick out a bit? It wasn’t that big of a deal to me. Until Sean remembered.

Because Sean and I had also been talking since September. Almost exactly a year after I met Ryan. And quite frankly I saw Sean much less, texted him much less, hadn’t slept with him at all… and yet he remembered my birthday. And it brought up a lot of feelings I wasn’t really prepared to process when I got that text. Sure, Dakota has grown to love me over the years. I’m not denying he’s a great husband now. But maybe, back then, my bar was too low. And perhaps it still is.

It made me question my relationships. I’ve always said the main thing I want is a man that’s nice to me. But maybe the men I’ve dated aren’t actually all that nice. They say nice things to me. But one cheated on me. One hacked into my social media to read my messages. One lied to me about who he was voting for and then when I confronted him and we got into a political debate he told me my life saving medication should actually cost two grand a month and if I can’t afford it that’s my own fault… yeah. That one was a low point.

They tell me I’m pretty. I’m smart. I make them happy. That they love me… but actions speak louder than words. And apparently 13 years into my dating life I still haven’t figured out that a man telling me he loves me doesn’t mean he actually does. It means he loves that I love him. He doesn’t love the little details about me, he loves that I remember the details about him. Like when his birthday is.

I could do more introspection. Or I could just stop dating men. The latter seems easier.