PRE before NRE

According to wikipedia:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935... The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.

A new crush is a lot like Schrödinger's cat. Basically this paradox says that until something is observed, it's state cannot be expressed as being one thing or another. It's a super power in that in this superposition it's not one possibility but the crush is, for a short time, all possibilities.

When you have such a new crush there is no way of knowing if the object of your new crush is going to be a new lover, a new friend or someone you will eventually block on Facebook.

To me this new potential relationship has an energy all its own. This energy derives from the mystery of not knowing what it is going to be. This is different from NRE (new relationship energy) and I am going to refer to it as PRE (pre-relationship energy). I prefer using the term PRE over NRE in this case, because technically at this stage you don't even know if you ever will be in a relationship together, much less what that relationship will be. The box has not yet been opened...

After meeting Anna I was hit with more PRE (or NRE if you prefer) than I imagined would be possible at 60. The flirting was intense between us. The bubble dreams were spewing like crazy. In preparation of what might be, I got tested. (Frankly, I needed to do that anyway and was already thinking about it.)

My friend Jim said I was like this whole different and ungrounded version of Sam. Buckle up Jim! It was going to be a hell of a fun ride, no matter how it might end.

My wife Sophia supported my crush, but neither of us had ever had a crush on someone else this intense in the decades we've been together. Sophia became hesitant and wary of what was going on, but she was wise to let it play out.

My relationships with my wife (and another partner Dana) have a totally different kind of energy. They both have decades of history. They have old relationship energy (ORE) and ORE has its own kind of super power coolness!

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