familiar patterns

Satanist Dan got a second job about two weeks ago which means he's working all the time, and getting three hours of sleep a night, and I never get to see him. I gripe a lot, to my friends, to Twitter, I rant in my head. I mean, what's the point of having a boyfriend if I never get to see him? And that thought is sometimes followed by Maybe I should get a new boyfriend. But I don't want a new boyfriend. I like the one I've got. He isn't just the role he plays and he isn't interchangeable. He used to be. When he was Boy 2, any time I might spend with him could have just as easily been switched with Boy 1 or 3, and I might have been more excited about 3. But then he got a name, albeit a joking one, and I appear to have acquired feelings, albeit not-very-serious ones. And I joke about it, and I put on an air of oh yeah whatever, but I really do miss him.

This makes all kinds of alarms go off in my head. I can't have feelings and stuff for him! That's what happens in a REAL relationship. And that's NOT what this is! I feel like, despite all my protests, I keep falling into familiar patterns. I wasn't going to have a boyfriend at all. I was going to "date," in non-committal, non-exclusive kind of ways. That didn't last. I wouldn't call us committed, but we are exclusive. And now here I am, missing, not my boyfriend, but Dan. I like him. I care about him. He makes me happy. But when I look at it, I don't think I'm really going overboard. It's not particularly clingy to want to see him once or twice a week. I'm not considering making changes or plans to stay with him. I think it bothers me, not because I worry that I care too much or am taking this too far, but that it is one further step towards caring too much and taking it too far. I feel like those D.A.R.E. people warning against marijuana and tobacco as "gateway drugs." Is this affection I have a gateway into something more dangerous?