Secret Single Behavior

(Photo by Munzer.)

I was standing in the walk-in refrigerator room at Costco, holding a $5 gallon box of spring greens, when it dawned on me that I was very out of place.

The monolith that is Costco is not meant for people like me. It is meant for families who go through 300 snack-size Ziplock bags per paycheck between soccer game snack duty and elementary school lunch. It is meant for caterers, and restaurant owners, and couples (DINKs: Double Income, No Kids) who honestly believe that they need a $2,000 leather home theater seating arrangement...in their living room. I am, for all intents and purposes, a bachelorette.

Despite my temporary quasi-singledom, I've found that my grocery shopping habits haven't changed. That led me to wonder if I did anything out of the ordinary while Brian is on patrol. Imagine my surprise when I came home to watch my Fourth Season of Sex and the City, and the following scene unfolded in Episode 61:

As Aidan and all his stuff officially move into Carrie's apartment, Carrie starts feeling increasingly claustrophobic. Carrie complains to the girls that without any private space, she can't indulge in SSB or "secret single behavior."

Carrie admits standing at her kitchen counter eating Saltine/grape jelly towers while reading magazines, Miranda confesses her love for putting her lotion-covered hands in conditioning gloves, and Charlotte discusses her odd fascination with staring at her pores for hours at a time.

I'll admit that my biggest SSB is exactly what I'm doing now - spending copious amounts of time indoors, either watching DVDs or typing away at my computer. What I love so much about Brian is that he is "Nature Guy," a nickname given to him while he was a counselor at outdoor school camp. He was the one who dragged me out of my previous unhealthy reclusive lifestyle and into the proverbial (and literal) sunlight. We went hiking every weekend, took day trips to the ocean, discovered all the fun San Francisco events I always ignored in college, and generally did whatever spontaneous thing struck our fancy.

I supposed that slipping into an antisocial apathy is a natural part of the stages of deployment, for which lowly girlfriends - yes, even Coast Guard girlfriends - are not immune. Perhaps my inclination to eat junk food and cry when Carrie cheats on Aiden is not an SSB, but a NGB....a normal girlfriend behavior.

So here's the juicy part, where I admit not shaving my legs for 2 weeks or walking around naked in our townhouse...but neither of those are true. What's stunningly and curiously odd about my Secret Single Behavior is that I act the exact same way now that I did around Brian. We've lived together for well over a year, and my habits are rooted on a very fundamental level.

Beyond any behavioral psych reasons for my resistance to changing routines, is the simple fact that Brian has seen me at my ugliest. It's hard to keep secrets from someone who has had to run to the grocery store for me because I was lying on the bathroom floor gasping for cocaine-strength Midol. :P