I went into crisis mode over the weekend. That's when my brain kicks up it's clock speed, my emotions are drawn down to a low background level, and my ability to make strategy and execute tactics comes to the fore. I actually enjoy this state of mind, although it is physically consuming. I can get a little bit short with people in this mode, but it makes me very good at being a leader during time-critical situations where risk is high. I most often experience it when guiding a large ski tour in very bad weather, or when running the control tower at a major motor sports event.

The house buying crisis caused it this time. By Saturday last week, Brent had put his house on the market, received two offers on it, and had put in his own offer on another house that we liked. I wasn't emotionally ready, nor had I made any of the financial preparations needed before signing on the dotted line to buy a house. Brent was caught up in the excitement of moving and was making decisions too quickly in a vacuum of information. I decided it was up to me to look at the real steps required to share a house and our lives.

First, I told Brent I would do everything I could to mentally prepare, but with pending sales already lined up, he hadn't left me any time to get guidance counseling for myself, or to introduce my parents to the idea gently. I decided that I was willing to accept the risk of making a poor emotional decision to move in with Brent despite my fears and get counseling after the fact. I was pretty sure that with the right help I could get over my mental reservations anyway. I decided I was willing to accept the risk of greatly upsetting my parents as well. Three years ago, I went to extreme lengths to make my coming out to them as healthy and productive for them as possible - which made it much harder on me. Since then, they have done little to help themselves get over their homophobia. I'd like this to be easy on my parents, but I can't hold up progress in my life because they failed to take advantage of the opportunity I gave them (at my great emotional cost!) to make progress in their lives.

With those two emotional issues out of the way, I was able to look at the financial issues. Brent knows a lot more about the technical side of house-buying than I do, so I relied on him for some data. He had to calculate what our monthly house payments would be, based on loan costs, taxes, sale of his house, home improvement expenses, etc. When he supplied me with a monthly number, I started us talking about a monthly budget and cash flow. The discussion took hours; both of us were getting tired. I reminded Brent that he had offers pending and we had less than 72 hours to really know if we could accept them.

Household budgets are tricky things. Everyone thinks of including their monthly bills (e.g. water, electricity, cable TV, car insurance) and consumable things like gas, groceries, and new clothes. But there are lots of things people forget about that add up to significant amounts of money. For instance, I often buy a large cup of coffee ($1.00 - I get it cheap!) in the morning and another in the afternoon when I'm at work. If I do this just four days a week, I'm paying $32 a month for it - that's more than a monthly subscription to AOL or a basic mobile phone service and equivalent to my cable TV bill! There are many other things like this that crop up. Brent's pet cat costs about $20 a month if you average in the cost of one trip to the vet every year for shots, food, and then set aside $5 a month for surgery should she get a tumor or such. That's not unrealistic. Say your cat, once in a ten-year life span, needs a $1000 surgery to remove said tumor. That's $8 per month over the ten years.

If you're going to buy a house, it's all got to be budgeted for or you'll eventually not be able to make the payments and you'll loose your house. Brent's eyes got bigger as we talked and added items to our spreadsheet. How about gifts? I gave about $250 worth of gifts at Christmas this year, Brent spent a little more. Between us that's $50 a month for Christmas alone, without sending thank-you cards, buying birthday cards and gifts for friends and relatives, or taking Mom and Dad out to dinner on Mother's and Father's Days.

You can't just pull numbers out of a hat when you do this. You have to KNOW. For instance, could we just say $100 a month entertainment expense? That sounds generous. Shall we run the numbers?

Brent and I watch one or two movie rentals a week and see a theater movie about once a month. That's $31 dollars a month. We go to at least one party a month, so there's a mandatory $10 bottle of wine or beer to contribute. I have my friends over for a party at least once a year - food and drink for that is easily $150 or about $12 per month over the year.

What if I play three rounds of golf a year for $30 in greens fees each round. Average in $10 a year worth of golf balls, new $75 golf shoes (trust me, those are bargain shoes on sale!) every three years, six trips to the driving range to practice (twice for each round on the course) at $6 per trip, and to be nice, let's assume I'm never going to buy new clubs again while we're paying for a house. Total golf expense; $13 per month.

Brent and I both enjoy reading books. We splurge at Border's to the tune of $30 each (hey, that's only one book and a magazine) every couple of months. We usually each get a $2 cup of coffee while at Borders too. We both like music too. In the past few years Brent and I have each bought at least one new piece of A/V gear per year, but since we're going to be living together, lets just call it one per year at $600 (the price I paid for my new CD player in October), or $50 per month. Add one new CD and one new DVD per month, or $40.

To save bandwidth, I'll stop my list there. We're already $75 a month, or almost $1000 per year, over the $100 dollar budget that sounded so generous only a few paragraphs ago. We haven't gone to a single concert, show, spectator race, or skiing. One might also consider as an entertainment expense the trip to Las Vegas that Brent and I made in November, or the cost of all my mountain climbing gear and expenses to climb Mt. Rainier last July. Those costs would make our $100 per month budget look like a sad joke.

As the figures added up, we realized that the deal Brent had brokered to sell his house and buy the new one that we liked so much last week just wouldn't work. Sure, we could tighten our belts a little and save some money, but not nearly enough to make it possible. What's more, we strongly agreed that we didn't want to see our standard of living cut back so significantly.

Just in time, we got back to the realtor and stopped the process on that particular house, as much as we liked it and thought we could afford it at first. Our new plan is a little different. On the spreadsheet we made together, we ran the inverse problem. After budgeting everything else, we calculated amount of money left over for a house payment.

I suggested to Brent that this weekend we make a plot showing the possible sale prices of Brent's house on one axis with the possible buying prices of a new house on the other. In the grid formed, we will plot a few points (using a loan calculator) where we know the difference in the two prices produces a loan that has payments inside the limits of our budget. The line that connects the points will represent all the possible combinations that we can afford and will help us in looking for a reasonable house. This line will shift as Brent's equity increases and interest rates change, but can be easily re-generated on a monthly basis.

I don't know when all the requirements for a successful, planned purchase will be present, but when they are, we can make the decision quickly and without fear - at least financially. This will leave at least some time to deal with our families a little better than we might otherwise have done. Even more important to me, it leaves time to get the relationship counseling I still think I need, albeit not as much as I feared I needed it last week.

Once the finances were sorted out on Monday evening, we could move back to working out at least some of my relationship fears. I did some studying, and we talked. It turns out that communication between Brent and I, as good as it is, still results in difficult misunderstandings. In this case, I come from a conservative Catholic family background, and Brent comes from a family of not quite atheist, but rather apathetic Protestants. Because of this, each had a completely different idea of what committing to each other and living together meant. The trouble is, neither of us was aware of this difference of concept.

To me, commitment is for life. No matter what. Until death do you part. There is no such thing as divorce, and no, you may not separate either. Monday night, while studying a book concerning Gays and Family that Zup lent to me, I read about a woman who told her daughter "You know I hate your Father, but we're never going to get a divorce because that is just not done." That's what I thought Brent meant by commitment. I take my promises very seriously; it seemed unwise to commit myself to a promise like that, no matter how much I love Brent now. When I read aloud the paragraph to Brent in order to illustrate what was so frightening to me, he laughed and thought the woman in the book was perfectly ridiculous! He said that if our relationship became like that, then we should try counseling to work through it, but if we couldn't resolve our differences, then we should happily go our separate ways. He went on to give the example that when his parents divorced, he thought it was the best thing that had happened to their family in a long time.

Thanks for that little bit of help, Andy! Oh, let there be no doubt, I'm still nervous about this, and I'm still going to seek a counselor, but that little conversation with Brent lifted the weight of the world from my shoulders. Common sense and good will replaced dogma in my mind. It seems, in the last few days, that Brent and I have been able to use our individual strengths to help get the other past a conceptual weakness. That feels like good teamwork to me and is a good indication that we're pretty well matched.

Friday January 26th, 2001

Don't you know it's my way out
To be on my own
When I feel like crying out I do it best alone
Can you give me love and 
Protection to shield my heart
All the fear I feel from doubt
Is tearing me apart

I wanna love, I wanna give
I want to find another way to live
Another shout, another cry
And the walls come tumbling down

Don't you know there's no way out
Your pain's your own
And the more we scream and shout
The more we feel alone
I can feel my anger rising
Am I to blame?
And I'm not gonna keep it inside me
Do you feel the same?

I wanna love, I wanna give
I want to find another way to live
Another shout, another cry
And the walls come tumbling down