Recently, my friend mentioned to me that she was done with relationships that are “long stories.”  We all have friends who answer to questions about their boyfriend with a statement that begins, “Girl, let me tell you what happened yesterday!” Then, she proceeds to tell her version of a long story. The story can include a plethora of events, mostly ones featuring her boyfriend behaving badly. She may mention that she caught a questionable text message in his phone; he hasn’t been home for the past two nights or that fact that she caught him in a lie. Long stories, according to my friend’s experience, never end well. Her advice: leave any man that gives you a long story and move on.

After she made her statement, I was trying to play devil’s advocate. I thought about my friends who are in relationships. Did any of them have a long story? I remembered a friend who got married recently. Her story was long until she became fed up with his foolishness and broke off the relationship. He changed and now, they are happily married. Besides her, I couldn’t think of one relationship with a long story that ended well. I even thought of my own relationships. None of those relationships ended well either. In fact, do you know where such men are today?  Not in my life, that’s where.

But, there is one man who doesn’t give me a long story. When people ask me how my current boyfriend is doing, I don’t have much to say. But, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you how one day, I was stressed about making a bill payment and he, without telling me, deposited the exact amount of money needed to cover the bill.  I’ll tell you how he danced with me at a party one weekend just to make me happy, even though he hates dancing in public.  I’ll tell you how he honored his promise by dragging me to Wal-Mart one Sunday night at 10pm to help him pick out a handle for a doorknob that broke on the front door to my parents’ house.

I’ll tell you how he brags about me to his friends and edits my blog posts without me knowing it. I’ll tell you how he encourages me when I’m down, calls me “awesome,” every day and how he helps me cultivate relationships between me and his closest friends and relatives.

With him, there are no long stories. There only short stories that are boring. There’s no plot, no climax, and no tension. They are succinct. Ask me how he’s doing, I’ll smile and tell you. “He’s fine.” I’m finished. No long stories.