Day 90 Adam and Rachel

Adam and Rachel met in Grinnell College, Iowa in 2004. The first thing Rachel said to Adam was that she was pretty enough never to have to work for a living, and he told her she was no where near pretty enough.

They would run into each other at various parties without paying much attention to one another until the spin the bottle party. Rachel asked Adam to leave with her so she could avoid the advances of another Grinnellian. That may or may not have been a sorry excuse to leave with Adam. They spent the night wandering around campus looking for somewhere to make out and eventually settled on the TV common room in one of the dorms until they were thrown out by the security guard.

And so began a relationship that was not so beautiful. They lasted for two years and they laughed a lot together, but in the end Adam was in his early 20s. He wanted to sow his oats and so Rachel left him. Adam eventually moved to Chicago and Rachel moved to San Francisco.

They stayed friends and there was that one fateful trip that Adam made to the Bay Area. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to win Rachel back or not, but he was open to it. In the first day, he found out that she had started to see someone else. He said nothing to her about the way he felt, and instead had a miserable time pretending to be her friend.

For four years Adam languished in Chicago. He tried dating other women. Many other women. In the beginning it would be exciting, but then problems would surface and he would always think of Rachel. For four years, he drove his friends crazy talking about her. He would call her family every Christmas and Rachel’s little brother in particular was always happy to hear from him. Rachel moved in with the guy she had started to date and it did not go well.

After four years of pining away, Adam was in a spiral and the only thing left to do was call her. It was August 2009. Adam couldn’t have picked a better time to call. Rachel had broken up with her live-in boyfriend and was mourning the end of a doomed relationship. Adam invited her to come to Chicago and Rachel, wanting to get the hell out of San Francisco, said yes.

The day Rachel flew into Chicago they drove out to Lake Michigan and made out. Rachel needed the distraction. Adam had carefully planned what he needed to say to win her back. Things did not go as planned. He ended up blurting out his undying love for her in the middle of making out by the lake.

It took Adam a few more days and a few more trips to win Rachel over. They are planning to move to New York together this spring. For Rachel, the timing isn’t exactly perfect, she’s still reeling from her last relationship, but she says, “if we’re going to do this, let’s do this”. For Adam, he’s learnt that when you’re in a relationship with someone, your job is to make them happy, not chase after women and expect the person you’re with to put up with it because that’s just who you are. Reading more Socrates and less Nietzsche has helped Adam be a better person.