March 28, 2024

I’m dating my job and I’m happy about it

Dating can be tough. Being a young, handsome, educated and somewhat successful guy in his twenties is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s very easy to have a lot of fun on the dating scene. On the other hand, finding that one person you can see yourself settling down with is a very difficult matter.

Before I moved here I was starting to get really serious with a girl, which to those closest to me was a jaw-dropping experience, (my last serious relationship was in 2009). My dad was like, “whoa,” my sisters were asking me who was this girl, one of my girl “besties,” Tisa, was ready to stab her the second things went wrong, and my notoriously over-protective female Rushing cousins (in particular Shiya, Kynisha and Monda) all wanted to meet her to give her the third degree.

After all, any girl that could lure me in had to pretty amazing, and she was.

We saw the “The Dark Knight Rises” at midnight in matching Batman T-Shirts (as a nerd and a person entirely too obsessed with Batman, that was great), we took a road trip to Six Flags St. Louis, attended the Trey Songz concert together, and just had fun doing simple things like walking around in public spaces all over in KC. We watched almost all six seasons of “Lost” on DVD, and on Sunday’s we would cuddle up on my couch watching Food Network and “Breaking Bad.”

Things were going great, especially considering that during most of this timeframe I was either working, going to school, or doing my internship at the American Jazz Museum and she was working one of her two jobs, taking online classes and raising the most adorable girl, who I affectionately call my “BFF.”

Falling for a single mom is hard, because in most cases you don’t just fall for the mom, you fall for the kid too. Pretty soon we also included my BFF into our excursions. We went to the circus, took her and my Godchildren to the Omaha Zoo, and wherever went to eat had to serve pancakes, my BFF’s favorite food.

There were times where the kiddo and I would just be watching “SpongeBob” while her mother would be sleep or getting ready. Winning over the kid took time. Most kids automatically love me, (which is probably why I do so well as the education reporter), except for my BFF who was extremely shy at first.

We had our ups and downs like most people do, but I have to say, for the most part, things were going well until about December. Without going into much detail, things seemed to kind of fall apart in that timeframe. At some points during that month it felt like my BFF and I got along better than her mother and I.

During this month, our status seemed to fluctuate about as much as the Iowa weather in spring. I think the incident that stuck a fork in us was my landing this job. Before her and I ever got serious, I let her know that once I graduated there was a very strong possibility of me moving away to look for a job. We both knew it was going to happen, but the fact that it happened so soon seemed to catch us both off guard.

After my graduation party, she and I only saw each other a handful of times— and most of them turned out to be unpleasant experiences for both parties. There was a lot of heartache on my part, I can testify to that. My theory is that she was subconsciously trying to push herself away from me, but who knows. Things got so bad that I didn’t see her after late December, and I was set to move to Iowa on January 12. This really sucked because I ended up getting stood up on my birthday due to a miscommunication.

These days we talk every so often, but not on a really consistent basis. My BFF is still crazy about me, which is awesome, but I’m quite certain that her mother has moved on with her life and so I have I (kind of sort of) with my new lady, the Daily News.

Staff Writer Ty Rushing may be contacted at (641)-792-3121 Ext. 426 or trushing@newtondailynews.com