PONY! You know, there are some people who are the best hosts: they buy you special groceries, they clean the guest bedroom, turn down the bed, give you matching towel/facecloth set, and even your own robe! Meals with them are like holiday feasts around the table with wine uncorked and lavish dessert. They leave you their numbers and their schedules. They cater to you with a exhausting thoroughness that starts to show cracks about day 2 when your host suddenly retreats upstairs with a migraine.
Me? I prefer to be handed a bunch of sheets, a beach towel and a set of keys with instructions to come and go as a please and to help myself to anything in the fridge. Maybe we will have a barbecue and drink beers in the back and talk until one or both of us wants to go to bed. Nothing too forced.
The reason I bring this up? I think my last relationship bore more resemblance to the former: contortions to be the best possible partner: to be impeccably thoughtful. So much trying that our efforts stirred up baffling feelings of guilt and gratefulness.
