The New Love Birds

Well, it looks like Brad and I can officially claim the title of "Matchmaker."

If you remember from our post a few days ago, we invited two of our friends to spend Thanksgiving Day with us. My friend, Mark, and Brad's friend, John, are now what my brother would call, "a hot ticket."

They had never met before but we thought they might hit it off, and boy is that an understatement!

My friend, Mark, has been about as happy as I've ever seen him in a long time. He's been calling me, texting me, emailing me, and I'm expecting to see one of those carrier pigeons with a note from him arrive at the front door any moment.

I'm really happy to see how happy he is. He's had some very difficult things to deal with in his life, beginning with being kicked out of his home when he was 16 after telling his parents he was gay.

He's also dated a few guys in the past who treated him badly and is understandably careful about how much he opens himself up to people. We've both been telling him to just take his time and not rush anything, which is always good advice to give, especially when you're first starting to date someone new. But, because you're all excited, it's not always easy advice to follow.

The guy he's dating, John, went to high school with Brad and I met him for the first time about a year ago. He's really sweet and a little shy and the first time I met him he was so nervous I wouldn't like him. He and Brad really understand each other in a lot of ways and have always been the tightest of friends.

Both of John's parents are heavy drinkers and there was a lot of chaos going on at home. He and Brad have always been so supportive of each other since Brad's father was a heavy drinker until about a year and a half ago. From what Brad has told me, when you grow up in that kind of situation at home, it makes you have second thoughts about being open and trusting with other people. We haven't written anything here in the blog about how that's affected our relationship, but Brad's thinking about sharing some of that at some point.

Anyway, all this has made Brad and I think a lot about how important family is. We're all born into a family of some sort, and if you're lucky that family accepts you and loves you and cares about you. No family is perfect, but you always hope there's enough maturity on the parent's part to know how to handle the problems. If that maturity is not there, at some point it's important to find people in your life who you can trust and maybe make your "chosen family."

It feels good to us to see both Mark and John so happy. It's been less than a week since they first met each other but it reminds the two of us how excited and nervous we were during that first week after we met.

It also makes us feel good that both Mark and John trust us enough to talk about their feelings, ask our advice, and want our support. It's an awesome responsibility to be someone's "chosen family," and we feel like ours has just expanded.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I just saw that carrier pigeon fly by the window. It probably has a note from Mark and I need to see what's up. Talk to you guys later. Have a nice day.