I will (mostly) spare you another catalog of a blissful weekend with Ben. I promise I won't go into too many raptures. Ben wasn't even supposed to come down this weekend anyway, but it's getting harder and harder to not see each other. He'd had a pretty disturbing week on account of someone he's very close to completely falling apart, so he was glad to get away and take a breather. And we had a quiet little weekend for the most part. I'm finding I like to play the role of nurturer, a role that was called upon for this weekend since Ben was so upset about what was going on back in LA.

Saturday was an almost perfect day; the weather was gorgeous, as it always seems to be when we get together, and we went to the gym, then went down town to get engraved the beautiful Chinese stamp he'd bought for me. We did a little bit of shopping, buying me a pair of jeans, and some new bedsheets at Crate and Barrel (which Ben bought for me - are we getting domestic or what). I showed him the view from the 34th floor office near Union Square, and, overall, I delighted in every minute spent in his company.

Saturday night I finally introduced him to my best friend Brett. We drove over to Berkeley to meet Brett for dinner, and then to see the movie "I Robot". I was just a little bit nervous about the two of them meeting, though, as I'd predicted, they both really liked each other. Brett has known me for over eight years now, and he said he'd never seen me with such a glow, which was just what I wanted to hear.

Sunday was more of the same; we had a picnic on the top of Corona Heights, then walked around the neighborhood, with its beautiful houses and winding little alleys - my favorite part of San Francisco. We spent part of the afternoon sunbathing in Dolores Park, relishing the warm sun on our skin and finding it almost impossible to resist making out. Then we had another workout before heading downtown for my favorite monthly tea-dance, Fresh, where, as usual, we spent almost the entire evening dancing in each other's arms.

And then Monday morning, and the inevitable sadness at saying goodbye. It was the fourth weekend in a row we'd spent together, and it's getting harder and harder to say goodbye. Particularly since this time Ben would be going home to a crazy, unpredictable situation with his friend.

I'm starting to become aware of things that I now remember coming up in other relationships - issues that ended up being very destructive. I just hope I'm grown up enough now to manage these issues without letting them spoil the relationship. One of these is my apparent incapability of deeply believing that somebody loves me. I mean I have so much evidence of Ben's feelings for me. I have no intellectual doubts at all - nothing has ever felt so right. And Ben is very affectionate, and expressive - we talk and email each other every day now. Yet in some sense all that is never enough. I'm remembering now how I felt with other boyfriends if, for one reason or another, there passed a period - even just a few hours - where they didn't show their affection. And I'd get all bent out of shape over it. Perhaps the monologue in my unconscious mind would be going that they were losing interest, because I'm not worth loving anyway.

This came up for me Monday night. Ben had promised to call, but by 9.30 he hadn't called. Moreover he hadn't responded to my email messages. I knew intellectually that he was likely to have crashed on account of the little sleep we both got Sunday night. Either that, or the situation with his friend had gotten out of control. In the end, I called him, and sure enough, he'd fallen asleep not long after getting home from work. Despite this, I still felt a little hurt that he hadn't called. Obviously, somewhere in my childhood I had some sort of issue with abandonment that I'm not even aware of, and as a result, I take any slight diminution of attention very personally, as if it's an indication that I'm no longer loved. This feeling doesn't seem to be very threatening as yet. And if I sit down and just relive all that we did and said together over the weekend, I realize afresh the miracle that Ben loves me. But it's something to keep an eye on.

The other issue that came up is that Ben is working out very hard right now, and eating well, because he wants to get more muscular. When he told me this, I felt a visceral reaction of ... well ... some hard to place emotion. Maybe a mixture of fear, envy and jealousy. Whatever it was, it was a familiar feeling from other relationships. I wish I could just completely celebrate whatever achievments and goals my boyfriend has without feeling threatened.

Again, this feeling was not out of control. I genuinely feel I'm a lot more secure than I was at an earlier age, so hopefully I've the maturity to feel these feelings (which I acknowledge to some extent are perfectly understandable reactions) without letting them eat away both at my insides and at our relationship. After all, in the case of Ben's physique, I have no reason to feel envious. I'm in the best shape of my life, and maybe it's some aura people give of when they're in love, but recently I've been getting more attention at the gym than I've ever had.

This Saturday, I'm throwing caution to the winds and having a party - my first party in years. I'm simultaneously excited and nervous about it. Nervous that not enough people will come; excited at matching up my friends who've never met each other before, and, of course, introducing Ben to them (many of my best friends haven't met him yet). I'm way behind on preparation, but today I met for the second time with my party guru, Terry, to do the final planning, so I think things will be in order by Saturday. Hopefully my next journal entry will report a glittering success.

Tonight I had dinner with D, a guy from the gym with whom I've slowly been building a friendship. This was the first time we'd gone out for dinner, and we had great conversation about love, and relationships. He comes across as a very soulful, feeling kind of guy; he's a handsome, sexy, tan Asian man about a year older than me, and I think that if we'd had this kind of conversation a few months ago, I could well have ended up pursuing him. Hopefully a really good friendship will come out of this. It's always interesting to hear what other people's first impressions of you were. He told me that he was intimidated when I first spoke to him at Fresh several months ago; that he didn't think such a tall, goodlooking, hot man (his words, not mine, I hasten to add!) would speak to him. I had to laugh, because I don't see myself being at all intimidating on account of my looks, but it felt good that he felt that way about me. Who knows what would have happened if we'd gone out on a date months ago - I might never have fallen in love with Ben.