This weekend R and I went to his co-worker's lake house for the weekend. There were 13-14 adults mostly late 20s-early 30s with the parents of one girl being the owners and hosts for the weekend. I'd like to share some observations.

Backstory: I'm a recovering attention whore. It's something that I have been working on since college. When you go to a Technological University you are all the sudden surrounded by men and it's very easy to get a very big ego and your personality can become ugly. R has helped me a lot with this and often says he's proud of how I behave today, compared to college, when I had to be the life of the party to the point of embarrassment.

Observations Owner's daughter is in her late 20's and married just shy of a year. Off the bat she seems really fun. She's relatively attractive, fit, runner, she also can go ripping around the lake on a jet ski and is up for adventures. Throughout the weekend though she became less and less tolerable. We were all drinking - having a great time - but if attention moved off her she would start pulling it back in even in negative ways. She constantly talked over people, interrupting both her dad and husband when they made simple suggestions.

Some work needed to be done on a jet ski - a rope was tangled, the jet ski ended up upside down - no big it happens. So her father, an engineer, and the other guys, also engineers, are leaning over figuring it all out making sure they get it all working the first time. (drain the water, check the sparkplugs, check the oil etc) She felt the need to comment often about what they were doing and how. Mainly the men just started to ignore her so she would physically try to stand closer and her voice only got louder. Her husband was called to start grilling for dinner and I think he was happy to leave the group for another task. R and I were just sitting watching the whole thing rolling our eyes together.

After dinner we were going to take our drinks down to the fire pit and relax. This was not her idea so she got noisy saying we should play a drinking game repetitively until we all gave in. She wanted to play a complicated game (Waterfall) which a few people had never played and uses a deck of cards. Each card type has a rule. It can get confusing especially as you drink. She got louder and crankier until again, they all gave in. Once the game started she was unhappy with how others were playing and then decided she didn't want to play and just said really obnoxious things until the game slowly dissolved because no-one wanted to be around her. (At one point she was going on and on about eating placenta, anything to get the attention back on her. )

Closing As we were driving home R brought all this up and said "She seems like a handful, she starts off really attractive and then she opens her mouth" I agreed and said I hope I had never gotten that bad back in college. He said there were times - but he was always able to reign me in. He also commented that he does not think her husband has the ability to reign her in and that he was embarrassed for the husband. R told me he was happy with who I was today, and he never once felt disrespected this weekend. I'm really proud of my self, ladies.

While I wish I hadn't been that way in college I'm so happy with how far I have come. I'm glad I'm able to see this in other people and use it as a tool to better myself. Also, because R knows he's able to reign me in I feel like I've created a healthy space where he does not have to tiptoe around my feelings. I have created a relationship where he can call me out if he needs to call me out. In the end I'm very appreciative he's able to call me out - even something as simple as a hand on my knee under the table to signal you're hitting that line, close your mouth.