<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Ben decided to go to Philly this weekend, and I&amp;#039;m secretly sort of happy about it. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong. I would love to have him at my brother&amp;#039;s house with me. He gets along great with LB and Danielle, and Emma is as enchanted by him as the rest of the female species is. But I kind of need a break. Things still aren&amp;#039;t back to pre-New Zealand normality. They&amp;#039;re getting better, slowly, but everything still feels somehow more loaded than it did before. If one of us is annoyed with the other, we overreact and take it personally. I know where my heightened emotions are coming from, but I don&amp;#039;t know if Ben&amp;#039;s are a reaction to mine, or if there&amp;#039;s something else going on with him. All I know is, every crack right now feels like a chasm. And I haven&amp;#039;t brought it up, because if I do, we&amp;#039;ll have to confront the big, sparkly, princess-cut elephant in the room, and\u2014as I&amp;#039;m sure you all have picked up on\u2014I really don&amp;#039;t want to do that. I need a new approach, I know that. Because the longer Ben goes without proposing, the more I&amp;#039;m going to think he&amp;#039;s changed his mind, and the harder it&amp;#039;s going to be for me to feel and act like myself. The flip side, of course, is that Ben&amp;#039;s not going to propose while things are so &amp;quot;off&amp;quot; between us. Here are the solutions I&amp;#039;ve considered so far: Come clean: I see this as my last resort, and I&amp;#039;m not there yet. Consult Ursula: This is only a good idea if Ben still wants to marry me. If he doesn&amp;#039;t, it puts her in a terrible place. Propose to him: This was suggested by Jenna. There are worse ideas, but with potentially emasculating Ben and the potential for rejection, just\u2026 no. Pretend that everything is OK while waiting it out: That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;ve been doing. It&amp;#039;s not going well. Initiate a conversation about our future: Tried and failed super-badly.  Go all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and have my memory erased: Great idea, except for that whole movies-not-being-reality thing. I should probably use my weekend away from Ben to give this some more thought, but I don&amp;#039;t want to. It&amp;#039;s all very emotionally draining, and the idea of just escaping it for a few days is an appealing one. I can bask in the adorableness of my niece, stay up late sharing comfortable silences with my brother, and get to know the people that are a part of his and Danielle&amp;#039;s life. That sounds so much better than spending the weekend agonizing over whether Ben and I are going to destroy our relationship before we manage to work anything out. Posted at: 9:11 PM "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9221/bedroom-blog-041911/>