When you start dating, you realize there are a number of things you don't necessarily want the other party to know about — at least, not at first. Habits, tendencies, things you're mildly embarrassed about, things you're not sure will go over well, things that didn't go over well with the last partner. They're small, yes — not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things — but you're not necessarily eager to share them.

I mean, you can love and trust someone and still not want to them to know you have a really, really hard time peeing when you think anyone can hear.

Since we're in a long distance relationship, when Mike and I see each other we stay in each other's apartments. This means we're together a lot of the time. This means he's figured a lot out already.

And no, I can't pee if I think anyone can hear. Or if I think someone's waiting for the bathroom. Obviously, this had to come out into the open early on. He hasn't stopped rolling his eyes, but he has let me pile pillows on his head before I head to the bathroom.

He's found out how I feel about jammies. In that I like them — a lot. In that I tend to come home from work, put them on, and stay in them the rest of the day. In that I avoid getting dressed as long as possible over the weekend.

He knows the house kind of revolves around the cats.

I've had to admit, recently, that I have a number of friends I only know through the Internet.

He knows I smoke sometimes.

These things have all come to light. None of them, of course, have been a big deal, but all of them were things I was reluctant to share. They are all things that may not have been learned as soon as they were if we hadn't been sharing a space.

In less than a month, we're taking a trip together. There's no hiding when you're traveling. What will come to light then?

Over the past year and a half or so, I've gotten very comfortable being alone, doing things alone. Some things, I've found, are better by myself. I've come to like my own company. I've found that I prefer the quiet, prefer solitude.

Traveling, for example. That first trip alone, to Wales, was very much a ‘well, no one can stop me from doing this, so I'm going to do it to prove I can' kind of trip. It turned out, a lot of that trip was marvelous because I was alone. I like traveling alone. I like not having to worry about other people's preferences, comfort, plans. I like eating when I want, stopping when I think something is pretty, sitting on as many strategically placed benches as I want. And I am a sucker for a strategically placed bench.

How, I've been wondering, will I do traveling with someone else?

In June, we'll find out. June marks one of those relationship milestones — going on a trip together. Mike and I are going to Greece for two weeks.

After having been in a relationship for so many years with someone who did not want to go places with me — too expensive, ‘just wanted to stay home', whatever really lay beneath that — it's startling, a little, to be with someone who wants to do this with me. Startling, but wonderful.

At the same time, I wonder — how will this be? I've learned how to do this alone, how do I learn to do it not alone?

I suppose it's the same as getting into a new relationship, in many ways. You get comfortable being alone, living alone. You start to really enjoy that feeling — the being surrounded by only your own stuff, your power over your surroundings, the never needing to compromise. Figuring out, little by little, how to let someone in.

When I started dating Mike, I was taking an acting class. The class was through one of the more prestigious theater companies in the city, the professor was a lovely and talented man, and the class was the most God-awful, boring thing ever.

For those of you not acquainted with the mechanics of a scene study class: You're assigned a scene with a partner, which you work over the week. In class, you present your scene, get some feedback, work a bit with the professor.

This takes maybe 20 minutes. The rest of the three hour class is spent watching the other partners present and work. About an hour in, I reach my breaking point. My attention span is short — that's one of the reasons I teach. Sixteen year olds and I have about the same capacity for focus.

What was funny about this class, though: About a month into the non-relationship Mike and I were having, about the time I was ready to cut and run, we were assigned scenes from a play called Table Settings.

I was given the part of a young woman, recently divorced, completely neurotic, and overly analytical about relationships, who's met someone she might really like and who can't just let herself enjoy it.

It was hard not to suspect conspiracy.

Then again, it made the character analysis part of the class pretty easy.

The monologue that spoke to me the most:

"You know when you meet someone and your heart starts to pound and your stomach turns to mush — Unfortunately, mush never sustains itself. It fades away and the mind goes back to running the show again. I am experiencing a mild case of mush right now.

But I'm so preoccupied with what's going to happen when the mush goes away that I'm not even enjoying the mush when it's here."

There's a lot to be said for lust.

Jake and I were never that sexual a couple. Sex was good, sometimes great. There's definitely something to be said about having one long-term partner, everything being the first for both of you. Learning about sex was never uncomfortable or awkward, there were no early experiences that would need hashing out in therapy later. But we never really had a can't-keep-my-hands-off-you stage.

I thought that this was because we knew each other so well. I thought it was because we had been together so long, that we had just shifted into that comfy, everyday kind of relationship. I thought maybe I just wasn't that interested in sex in general.

Hindsight, of course, says a lot. Ultimately, I just don't think we were that attracted to each other. But we fell in love way, way too young to know that.

Even when our marriage was pretty solid, there was a part of me that would see movies, read books, see other people, and feel cheated. I'd console myself with the things I did have — I had trust, and friendship, and humor, and safety. Surely one can't expect it all, I thought.

Well, why not?

There's a lot to be said for passion. There's a lot to be said for being thrown against a wall, for barely being able to make it through the apartment door, for leaving a party early. It's kind of terrifying that I could very well have lived out my adult life without having experienced that.

It's hard to imagine this stage can possibly last, but then I look at Lindsay and Jesse, who have been married four years and still feel that way. I think back to just a year ago, when I thought the love bit and the lust bit were mutually exclusive. I've been wrong before. And am determined to figure out a way to keep this part.

"She thought about him when she was not with him. Sometimes too much, she worried. What if he turned away from her greed for his love?"

It's comforting to know that's common enough, universal enough, to pop up in a novel.

It's funny how you can be secure, for all intents and purposes, in a relationship but still monitor your own behavior. When you feel so much for someone, you constantly worry: Is it too much? Will this frighten him away? Will this bother him?

When you've spent years in a relationship in which the other party is weary of your affection, you learn to hide it. You learn to hold back. You become reluctant to show things. At the same time, you live in constant anticipation, constant wanting.

The worst feeling in the world is knowing you love someone more than they love you. Feeling you're always trailing after them, hoping for a word, a hug, a gesture. Hating your need, hating the kind of woman you're turning into.

When you're with someone who gives affection freely, that greed doesn't stop.

Adopted feral cats and strays can't be left to monitor their own food intake. Apparently, if you keep their bowl full, they'll eat themselves to death. Since, out on their own, they never knew when they might eat again, when they're presented with food they'll eat it all - never confident they'll eat again any time soon.

I feel like that, a lot of the time.

Mike says my relationship-expectation bar is absurdly low, that I should start taking him more for granted.

I wonder how long that will take?

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.

Like me, Mike doesn't sleep well. When he's in town, he tends to wake up around four. He works for a while, then comes back to bed just before my alarm goes off.

We were parking the car when he said, "How much does it bother you that I get up in the middle of the night?" My loft doesn't have any walls, but putting a pillow over my head takes care of any noise. "No," he said, "not just the noise. I can tell you don't like it."

And it's true, I don't, although I hadn't really thought about it. Jake used to work all night, and he rarely went to bed or woke up with me. The fact that Mike almost always comes back up makes all the difference, though.

"Well," he said, "I want you to tell me the stuff that you don't like, even if you don't think it's big. Like this, if it turns out to matter, I can, I don't know, try to work on changing my sleep patterns."

This is where I, always impressive and graceful, bolted from the car and took off down the street, saying I was running to the corner store. Instead, I crossed the street to the park, sat on a bench, lit a cigarette, and tried not to cry, completely overwhelmed by this person.

I had always assumed that you learned about a partner's habits as you went, found out about the stuff that bothered you, and decided if you could live with it or not. It never once occurred to me that there were people out there willing to adjust.

In my marriage, those little things that bothered me were scoffed at and called petty often enough to make me shut up about them. I thought that was just how it was. You got over it. You lived with it.

I didn't know that you could be with someone who wanted to know. I didn't know that a relationship could be like this.

Maybe it's all going to turn out okay.

I tend to think that sex is pretty crucial in a relationship. I mean, there has to be a reason sex is one of the first things to go when a relationship is falling apart. When Jake and I were at our lowest points we couldn't even get it together enough to kiss.

The idea that communication happens through sex — there's validity to that. A lot can be expressed physically, there are connections that can be built.

But there's also communication about sex. A couple that can talk about their physical relationship — and a surprising number of couples can't, if the friends I've talked about this with are a fair indicator — is going to have better sex, right?

You don't know what someone likes and doesn't, not for sure, unless you ask, unless they tell. This current relationship is absolutely, hands-down, the best sex I have ever had — and it's also the one in which I've done the most talking. There's got to be a correlation.

To cite the failing marriage again, Jake, at the end, didn't want to say a word about adjustments or changes or "I don't like that" when we were having sex. "Don't give me directions," he'd say, "I'm not one of your students." I found this appalling, even then. Not only because we hadn't used to be like that, but because a partner who doesn't want to know what you like is just not a good partner.

It's hard for me to talk about things, specifically. I get embarrassed. No doubt some of that is carry over. But I'm working on it, and one of the reasons I know this current relationship is working is because this is someone I don't feel awkward around, and because this is someone who wants to know.

I feel as though many women have issues with their "number" — worrying it's too high, feeling that they're not "allowed" to sleep around. While there's a very real need for caution, in light of health and safety risks (and, please, just insert "Safe! Safe! Use condoms!" before the word "sex" in this post from here on out, okay?), I hate that this kind of thinking is out there.

Whether I've slept with 2, 5, or 40 men doesn't compromise anything about me, as long as each encounter was what I wanted.

I'm troubled when I read that women regret their number. Not being proud of particular choices or individuals, that's one thing, but merely the number — a number is just a number. It's not something to be proud or ashamed of.

And, of course, I have to ask — despite the fact that it's been said so many times before — why is ok for men and not for women? As long as it's what we wanted, why do we care that some of us are well into double digits and some of us can count on one hand?

If you've only slept with one person, or with no one, because that's your choice — morally, personally, whatever — I applaud you. If you've slept with dozens, because that's your choice — as long as you're safe about it — I applaud you.

The man in the longest lasting casual relationship after I got divorced didn't care that he was way more experienced that I was. My current guy doesn't care that I did some sleeping around over the past year. Anyone who would care, really care, about my number being too high or too low isn't the kind of person I'd want to be in a relationship with.

It's just a number. It has as much to do with situation and circumstance as it does anything else. In terms of morality, in terms of being a decent person, in terms of your potential to kick ass in bed, it doesn't mean anything.

Several of February's "Sex With the Bloggers" posts got me thinking. I started to leave comments on several of them, but found I was going on and on, like this one in response to "What's With All the Emphasis on Sex?" by Akillah Wali.

Like Randie, I wasn't having a lot of sex the last several years of my marriage. Having no-commitment, no-baggage, nothing-but-casual sex during that first year of being single was fantastic. I don't think there's a thing wrong with casual encounters and largely sex-based relationships, even after (maybe especially after) a divorce. If that's what you want. I think the key word Akillah uses that we should focus on is "prematurely." We all have to figure out what we're ready for and when. For me, it was a "real" relationship that I wasn't ready for. Sex, on the other hand, I was ready for pretty soon.

There are women for whom casual sex is disappointing, not worth it, not for them. However, there are women for whom casual sex is just that - and there's no reason to not go ahead and have it. Sex for the wrong reasons is going to lead to disappointment and regret. But sex because you want to — I don't see a problem there.

Akillah also talks about self-knowledge. She wrote in a previous post about sex being something that she knows will distract her from where she is now. I so admire that self-awareness, and I absolutely, again, agree with the idea that we need to do what's right for us.