get married

I’ll become Mrs. Colon!

I’ve been dating “B” for a few months now. He told me that his mentors from church encourage young couples to get things out in the open, so there’s not an eventual list of things you resent about your partner. Fair enough. But in the past few weeks, B has criticized:

—My hair. He even pays for me to get it done at his friend’s salon… which is across town and extremely inconvenient for me. I either have to go at the crack of dawn on a weekday or spend half my Saturday in the salon.

—My nails. Not exactly criticized, but he prefers me to have a French manicure. I’m saving to buy a house; why would I waste money at the nail salon? And sometimes I do my own French manicure, but that takes much longer than just painting them pink, which is how I prefer them.

—My clothes. I recently spent $300 at Express to buy clothes we’d both appreciate. I didn’t mind, because I was long overdue for new clothes anyway, but I let him talk me into pants that are too long because he says they’ll be the perfect length when I put on heels. I’m not big on heels.

So my question is for the happily married folks out there. How much of your outward appearance have you changed to meet your partner’s preference? ‘Cause yeah, I can change my looks, but B can just as easily change his attitude. Am I overreacting? He likes me for who I am, but it bothers me that he puts so much emphasis on superficial stuff. He said, “If I got a mohawk, wouldn’t that bother you?” Actually, it wouldn’t! I just want him to feel comfortable in his own skin. So married folks, I know relationships take compromise. Should I compromise on this?

Back in October, I put an ad on match.com for an article I was writing about online dating. After that, I didn’t think anything of it. I never even paid the subscriber’s fee.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from some guy who saw my profile. Turns out he used to work at my newspaper, and we have all kinds of stuff in common. I’m going to get the 4-1-1 on him from the editor, and if he checks out, then I might meet him sometime. We both like riding bikes.

I wasn’t looking for a husband anytime soon, but when a nice guy shows up in my inbox, I’m smart enough to write him back.

Everything on this list would be twice as fun if I had someone to share it with…