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Recently the gossip mongers at work have decided the statute on keeping secrets among themselves has run. Last week a co-worker in town on business from Minnesota said to me, "I heard a rumor about you." Hmmm...this is curious. A rumor about moi? When I inquired what said rumor was, she told me she'd heard that Mr. Wonderful and I had been dating. I confirmed that was no rumor and, yes, we've been dating for a year now. She seemed surprised that it'd been that long and she had just heard this fact from some third source. We're nothing if not discreet. Okay, as anyone who's been around us can attest, we are not exactly discreet.

Yesterday another co-worker in Golden, Colorado sent me an Instant Message saying "I heard you have a boyfriend. Anyone I know..." She could skip being coy. I knew she already knew because our co-worker, Fun Bobby, had told her months ago.

My boss asked me last week if we were still dating. I told her we were and she confided that she had told her boss. At this point, I'm nearly expecting to be standing in the checkout line at Safeway and catch a glimpse of the front cover of "Insurance Weekly" showing Mr. Wonderful and I together outside Insurance World. The headline "It's true. They've been seen holding hands!" I'll be wearing those large sunglasses that cover my entire head and Mr. W. will be turning away from the camera. The lens will most definitely capture some extremely unflattering angle that accentuates my all too curvaceous figure in a negative light. Mr. Wonderful will, undoubtedly, look hot and all the girls reading the rag will ask "what is he doing with her?"

Young couples often have to suffer through the marriage question from friends and family at every event and holiday function. They want to know where this relationship is going. They are getting attached to the partner and need to know how invested they should be. It's always a drag when a good friend breaks up with a girlfriend or boyfriend everyone liked. "What happened?" they ask. "Will you remain friends?" their eyebrows furrow in disbelief.

For the slightly older set who may have been married once or twice before, the question of matrimony isn't as pressing as the question of moving in together. Although a few friends and co-workers have asked about marriage (one being the Golden co-worker who said she wanted to "be there" when it happened), the move in is on the forefront of their minds.

After a business meeting with Mr. Wonderful one morning, a co-worker was suddenly standing in front of my desk. "Mr. W. mentioned he was moving to Seattle and I just had to come down and find out if you two were moving in together," she said trying to appear nonchalant.

"Why didn't you just ask him?" I said.

"I didn't want to pry." This she said with a straight face.

Last Sunday I was helping Mr. W. move a few things into his new pad, a condo about a mile from my apartment. He is renting from the cutest elderly Norwegian couple who have been married 57 years! While moving some boxes into his place, we met one of the owners of another unit. Introductions were made, niceties exchanged as we clarified which one of us was moving in and which one of us was not.

"Oh, not yet anyway," the neighbor said smiling at me. "That's an awfully big two bedroom unit!"

"Not big enough," I countered.

At this point, I'm just happy my guy will soon be living in the same zip code.

Baby steps.