Had to go to Bedford tonight to go through the house and determine who’s keeping what.
In the course of going through the house, we came upon a girl’s sweater hanging in what used to be my closet, shampoo/conditioner for colored/treated hair in the master bath, long girl’s hair in the bathroom sink.
Chris said he had hidden some of her stuff but that obviously he had not done a great job getting everything.
So not only does my husband disrespect our whole relationship by departing it with one conversation about how he is having problems with relationships and therefore wants a divorce, and another conversation in which he tells the couples therapist and me how I created all the problems in the marriage and so he had no choice but to leave me, but now he disrespects me by moving another woman into the home I still own with him, into the home which he knows I still have to visit.
A simple rule for men: if you’ve got your girlfriend’s shit all over the house your wife needs to go into, put the girlfriend’s shit into YOUR closet, not the closet which still contains stuff belonging to your wife, which she will need to open at some point.
I don’t care so much that he’s moved on. I’ve moved on, and I am 100% certain that I don’t want to be with Chris ever again. But it hurts when the choices he’s given me for why our relationship failed have been:
1. He cannot have a relationship.
2. I am defective.
If he is able to so easily move on to a relationship so significant that a woman has moved multiple things into our house, then that leaves me with number 2: I am defective.
I do much better when I don’t have to deal with his shit and mind games. I doubt he even knows what he’s doing or why, and he says he doesn’t intend on hurting me this way. But to have someone with whom I spent over 10 years treat me so cavalierly and disrespectfully, treat me in a way in which I wouldn’t even treat an enemy or friend, let alone someone who was the closest person to me for a major part of my life, makes me wish the last 10 years had never even happened.
This is why I have decided to give up the dogs. I love them. I thought I would be their dog mommy forever and ever, and I despise turning into the kind of person I always hated, someone who would give up ownership of dogs. But I cannot continue dealing with someone who treats me this way, who wants me to believe I am defective.
“I got dizzy! Wanted to throw up. Good thing I brought medicine; I took some very fast. I think Daddy felt sick too. I think the movie was good, but I’m not sure. FBI, too much action, got dizzy. I guess we have to sit in the middle next time. And at first we were the only two people in the theater. I thought what if someone comes in and robs us? But luckily more people came in later, a young couple. Maybe the 7:25 showing had more people later. The Shaw’s Market next to it was very nice, though. But parking was $11, and senior tickets $10 each.”
Today would have been my 9th wedding anniversary.
I am generally happy with my life now, or as happy as I can be, given that my life was upended without warning and without any input from me. I enjoy living alone and am mentally and physically stronger than I was. I have better relationships now with my family and friends, and have even started having a pretty normal, and good, relationship with a guy.
I still don’t know what to do about my dogs, though. I love them, but right now, I would give them up in a second if it meant never having to talk to my soon-to-be ex again. I don’t even begrudge his wanting the divorce anymore. What I can’t get over, and possibly never will, is that he evidently valued our relationship so little that he was not able to talk to me about whatever problems we had, and gave us no chance of trying to work things out. If we had tried and failed, that would be one thing. But to never even try — I don’t know who this person is.
Thank goodness we never had children.
On long airplane flights (long being anything over an hour and a half), I often (meaning, always) have to get up to use the bathroom.
It’s not just my copious water drinking habits or my pea-sized bladder which make me get up so frequently, but also my deep and abiding paranoia of developing deep vein thrombosis. (Look it up, and you too will not be able to stop yourself from getting up and strolling up and down the aisles of the aircraft, although I certainly hope you will refrain from performing calisthenics in said aisle as my father is prone to doing.)
However, my greater-than-average trips through the airplane mean that I also have a greater-than-average chance of running into more assholes than the average person.
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“Where are we going?”
“We’re going home.”
“And what we do then?”
“Well, we can play cars, if you like.”
“I love you!”
“What?”
“I love you!”
“Wow…that’s great….well, I love you too, what do you think about that?”
“Well, I love Spider-man, too.”
(His mother later explained, “He must really like you, because he really, really loves Spider-Man.” She paused to consider this. “Also the Transformers.”)
I mentioned I was dating again to my sisters, separately. Their reactions:
Sister 1 (in hopeful tone): Does this one read?
Sister 2 (in a resigned voice): Is he non-Asian?
Me: Yes, he’s half-Jewish.
Sister 2: What!?
Me: And half French.
Sister 2: Oh, he speaks French?
Me: Yes.
Sister 2: Oh, that’s OK then.
- Women who get on exercise bikes and apparently become so involved with what they’re reading that their legs barely move and the women don’t even break a sweat or look like they’re exerting themselves at all. It’s a GYM, not a library. And believe me, I’ve been to both enough times to know the difference.
- Women who are busy fiddling around with their iPods or texting on a phone or talking on the phone while they sit on a machine without actually using it. Meanwhile, I’m hovering around you like a stalker because I’m waiting for that particular machine. If your iPod requires so much attention, get off the machine and take care of it.
- Women and men who show up in jeans or khakis to work out. Why? Just…why? Buy a pair of sweatpants if you don’t feel comfortable in shorts. I’ve got like 20 sweatsuits at home; I’ll run home and get you a loaner. I just don’t want to see you in spinning class in your Dockers.
- People who don’t use deodorant. I don’t care whether you use it in your personal life, because I can choose to not stand near you or not date you. But at a gym…please use it. Because sometimes I have no choice about standing near you, and my nose hates you.
“Hey, have you seen my Tupperware container of dog chicken? I wanted to give the dogs a treat,” I said, peering into my parents’ fridge.
“No,” said my father, his standard response to all questions.
“Tupperware? No,” said my mother, who actually listens to questions.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a Tupperware container…but one of those glass containers with a blue plastic lid on it?”
“Glass?” my mother said. “You mean the chicken bone?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t see it,” I said, moving things around in the fridge. “Chris cooked it for the dogs and gave it to me, and I put underneath the canned dog food, but it’s not here anymore.”
My mother turned on my father. “You said that was left over from yesterday!”
My father turned on my mother. “How was I supposed to know!”
My mother: “You should have told me that was dog chicken!”
My father: “But I didn’t know!”
My mother: “I knew we didn’t have leftovers! I asked you why there was a bone!”
My father: “I thought you left it!”
“Hey!” I yelled. “It’s no one’s fault; I didn’t tell anyone it was dog chicken. But where is it now?”
My mother turned glumly to the pot she was stirring. She opened the lid. The three of us stared inside the pot.
“I put it in the soup,” she said.
“You tell Chris he’ll never find anyone so good again,” my mother said.
“Why would I tell him that?” I asked. “Anyway, he can; it’s easy to get married to anyone these days.”
“No, I’m not talking about you, I mean me. He’ll never find another mother-in-law as good as me!”
Until this past year, I hadn’t had much time to get to know my nephew because he lives a 6-hour plane ride away. And let’s face it, very young babies aren’t usually too interesting — by the time one of them gets used to you, your visit’s just about over.
But now that P.T.’s almost 3 and has firmly developed a personality, I’ve begun discovering the joys of being “Auntie Jane.” So when my sister said she and her husband had a business trip in New York, and would I be able to come down and babysit him for a day, I agreed.
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