In May of last year, when Chris said he wanted a divorce, he said he probably wasn’t ever going to get remarried. Even then I knew that wasn’t true, and I said so, because I knew he was incapable of being alone. I don’t say that as a bad thing, necessarily, but more because I knew him. And for all the time I had known him, he had been incapable of being alone for extended periods of time. Time he spent away from me was time he spent with his friends, so there was always someone there.
So all his bullshit excuses for not being with me because he couldn’t be in a relationship and didn’t want to sacrifice “any more” (not that he ever did, much) are just that: bullshit. He went from a relationship with me to a relationship with someone else, in a relatively short period of time. Maybe he’s not having what he thinks is a serious relationship, but he’s having a relationship not much different from what he had with me when he said he had to leave: someone to fuck once in a while, someone to stay the night, someone who happens to have her stuff in the same home as his.
Yes, I’m in a relationship with someone else too. But I see him once, maybe twice a week. I don’t leave my stuff there and he doesn’t leave his stuff here, because we don’t spend so much time with each other that we have to leave “convenience items,” as Chris calls it, at each other’s place. (Chris can call it whatever he wants, but when you let your girlfriend leave her things at your place, you’re at a certain level of seriousness in the relationship, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself.)
I spend most of my time alone, because as much as I like this other person, I still have massive amounts of hurt and anger, and I know I need to figure out that stuff on my own. And you know what? Even if I WERE in a serious, see-him-every-day, talk-to-him-every-minute, when-are-we-getting-engaged relationship, I’m not the one who said I couldn’t be in a relationship. I thought I WAS in a relationship, until Chris told me I wasn’t.
I have so much anger, and nowhere to put any of it.
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.
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.
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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Cousin Terry visited me this past weekend, and in return for her thoughtfulness, I took her out to brunch where we accidentally became part of the most boring date in the world.
The young woman sitting behind us at the restaurant had a very loud voice, which is how we first noticed her and her date. It wasn’t an unpleasant or grating voice; it just never stopped, and at a volume we couldn’t ignore.
Terry had her back to their table, and after about 10 minutes, she asked me, “What race is that woman behind me?”
I gave her a puzzled look, and peered around her to look at the woman. “Just white, I think,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “She sounds like she has an accent.”
“I think she’s just talking very fast,” I said doubtfully.
The woman was talking so fast that at first, I couldn’t distinguish any of her words. Luckily, Cousin Terry is under 30 and therefore, according to the Internet, able to hear high-pitched sounds that we over-30s can’t, so she was able to understand the conversation and translate for me.
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Dear In-laws,
Remember when you said, less than a year ago, that you loved me and Joe just like Cindy and Chris? That was clearly a lie, and I wish you hadn’t lied, because the lie made it that much harder for me when you cut me off without a second’s thought once Chris decided he wanted a divorce.
What happened was this:
One day Chris said he felt disconnected from everyone. In that same conversation, he said he wanted a divorce. This was the first I knew about any problem, and in many conversations after that, he continued saying he wanted a divorce. It turns out that by the time of the first conversation he had with me, he had already figured out a solution to his feelings: divorce. I had and still don’t have any say in what he wants and what he decided about our life together and how it would end.
Apparently our past 11 years together was just a lie, during which he felt very little but had convinced himself this was how a relationship should be. Now that he has seen the light, he needs to re-learn feeling and emotions, and to do so, he has decided he must dump me to the curb and start over with a fresh woman, and only then can he learn what a real relationship is.
Now you know as much as I do.
Maybe you would know more, if you actually talked to your precious son instead of reading my website or waiting for information to be passed from Joe to Cindy to you.
In the last few months, my life as I knew it was completely destroyed. I had as much warning as you did, and believe me, I feel a LOT WORSE than you do. So stop making things even harder. I do not need you accusing me of treating your son unfairly, or doing things behind his back.
I do not snoop. I have never snooped. My change of address has not been processed yet for my paychecks, and my household income has dropped by 2/3 in the last few months while my expenses have gone up 1/3. In other words, I need my money the day it arrives. So on the days I go to take care of the dogs, I bring in the mail to check for paychecks. Chris knows I do this, and has never indicated that he has a problem with it.
Cindy’s envelope was in the mail one day when I happened to bring it in, and that’s all I saw — the envelope.
Do you know what my parents did when they found out about all of this? They wanted to know what Chris was thinking. They wanted to see him. They wanted to talk to him, to tell him they loved him. I asked them not to, and told them some of the things Chris had said about me, about our marriage, and how much he was hurting me, and that I needed their support now more than Chris did. I also told Chris that my parents wanted to reach out to him, but I had asked them not to.
Chris says he never asked you to stop contacting me. You chose that on your own, and you and Cindy cut me out of the family faster than Chris cut me out. Do you see the difference between my family’s reactions, and yours? Maybe this difference is why, after knowing Chris 11 years, I wanted to do whatever I could to make things work with him, even though I didn’t understand what he felt, even though I was devastated by what I was hearing. And after 11 years of knowing me, Chris only wanted to walk away, rather than have an actual conversation with me.
Sincerely,
Your former/ex/daughter-in-law, who was never a daughter in any sense of the word, and you made damned sure I was always reminded of that.
Or, How to Get a Real Woman to Respond More Favorably to Your Online Dating Profile.
Photos
- You must include a photo of yourself. Or you can totally, totally, rock the written portion of the profile, during which not one single typo is allowed. I will tell you now that you will not rock the written portion; therefore, you must include a photo to get some kind of response.
- If you have done some quick Photoshopping to crop out an old girlfriend from your half of the photo, just take a new picture of yourself. If you don’t have a camera, borrow a friend’s camera or use your cell phone, because we women are not blind. We can, in fact, still see your old girlfriend’s lopped-off arm draped around your neck. All you’ve done is remind us that if we choose to fall for you, we too will someday be just be a lopped-off arm around the neck of a tremendously lazy man.
- Don’t include photos of yourself with another woman of your generation, even if she’s your sister (“he must be already dating someone or why would he include her?”). Or with a group of women (“player!”). A mixed group of sexes is generally fine (“okay, he knows how to make friends”).
- Mixed group photo = okay. Photo of you with a bunch of your best guy friends all dressed in identical Booze Cruise t-shirts = not okay. First, if we can’t pick you out from the crowd right away, all we’ve learned is that you have a Zelig-like ability to disappear into photos (and consequently from our memories). Second, some of your best guy friends are going to be hotter than you, and we’re going to be wondering how to reach them, not you.
- Do not make the primary photo one where you look thinner than the average woman. We do not want to date men who weigh less than we do.
- Shirtless photos or nearly naked photos of you are less attractive than you think. Yes, we can see you work out. We would have preferred that you just tell us in the profile, though, and save the bedroom pics for when/if you actually make it into the bedroom with one of us.
Usernames
- Choose a simple username: something with just initials and numbers, or an innocuous description about a TV show, non-sexual object, or your career. “HotandHumble”* and “footfetishfreak”* are not eyecatching in the way you want.
Description
- Let’s face it — everyone on dating sites is laid-back, easygoing, and has a great sense of humor. And what are they all looking for? An emotional connection with someone confident, outgoing, and adventurous. Everyone is lying. Except “footfetishfreak.”
- You can either stay safely generic (“passionate guy searching for true romantic connection with fun, caring woman”) or try tossing some honesty we’ll remember into your description (“as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”). Just be sure not to go overboard with your honesty (“blahblahblah cant believe i have to fill 2000 characters”).
- Also, it’s okay to use some punctuation.
Your Ideal Match
- No need to be extremely thorough in this section, but you should have some preferences selected. Once we see that you’re looking for a woman “3′ to 8′ tall,” we know you were too lazy to think about what you want. Not thinking about what you want = not knowing what you want = not serious. Unless you’re really open to dating midgets or dwarfs, at least have the courtesy to specify the height/age/race you really want.
First Electronic Contact
- Winks are okay if you’re legitimately uncertain whether the woman is interested in your height/age/race. Otherwise, winks just say you looked at our photo, thought we weren’t ugly, and hit a button. Wow. Thanks for that effort.
- Email people who sound interesting. Ask them a question about something they wrote in their profile, to show you actually read it. Keep the first email short — 3 or 4 sentences is plenty.
- Don’t make that first email too short (“dinner?”), and don’t immediately ask to meet (“dinner?”). Then you just come off like a pervert, and even worse, an indiscriminating pervert.
- Don’t send the same person multiple emails a few weeks apart (“dinner?”). Now we know you’re stupid.
- Advice specific to footfetishfreak: People like different things, and I’m not judging (ok, I am), but if you have a fetish so strong that you need to mention it in your profile and in your very first email to a complete stranger…let me introduce you to something called Google. Go out there and find a group that caters to like-minded people. Otherwise, keep your fetish to yourself until you’ve actually met the other person, and more than once. Excuse me, I must vomit now.
First Person-to-Person Contact
- Coffee/tea. Daytime meeting. Public location. This is the only thing Starbucks is good for.
*Not a real username.**
**But very close to it.
One of the perks of joining the gym (actually, the only perk; everything else you pay for, including the towel) is that you get a free personal training session. This is obviously meant to seduce you into paying for future training sessions, and I myself was seduced, to the point that although I am currently hunched over my keyboard because my arms are in so much pain, I am eager to sign up for another session some day so that I can learn how to work on my legs and eventually make them just as painful as my arms and then realize my goal of being just a torso flopping from place to place.
Normally one would try to evenly work both the top and bottom of one’s body, and as I started my training session, I was upfront about my wish to do so.
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Today, I became the enemy. Today, I winked at someone on Match.com.
As soon as I hit the “Wink for FREE!” button on the person’s profile, I was horrified. I wasn’t ready to wink at anyone yet! I wasn’t ready to try meeting a stranger again for coffee, let alone go through the byzantine process of actually placing an order at Starbucks! (“Yes, please remind me again, what is your code word for a medium sized cup of overly expensive hot beverage?”)
Because Match.com doesn’t let you take back your winks, I did the next best thing — I went on and winked at another person. I felt like a slut. Winking at TWO people! The shame!
Hell, I was already in for my money, so I winked at a third person. Now I was becoming carried away, like a drug addict who’d just remembered where his secret stash was hidden. I had to log off quickly, because otherwise I was clearly going to become a winking whore.
Would any of these people respond? Would I be devastated if they didn’t? Would I be devastated if they did? Now that I thought about it, did I even care? I would be off the site in another month or so and unless I accidentally ran into one of the wink-ees, no one else would ever know that I had dared wink at someone and hadn’t or had received a response. (Well, until I posted about it on my website — if you embarrass yourself and don’t post about it, has it really happened? Answer: Yes, so you might as well just post about it!!)
In all seriousness, I know I talk an awful lot about Match.com on this site, at least recently, but that’s because it’s a diversion from my reality. The reality is Chris is filing for divorce this week, and I don’t really understand why. I know I may never understand why. That doesn’t make things easier to bear.
There are many things I wish that he and I had done differently. I wish he had talked to me when all of this was happening inside him, instead of after he came to his own conclusions and decisions. I wish I had been more proactive in asking him what was wrong. I wish he had been honest with himself, instead of finding ways to blame me for everything. I wish I did not blame myself for everything. And I wish he had chosen to do this 5 years ago instead of now. At least the quality of men in my age group would have been better.
The good news is that I am getting a new refrigerator. I had a wonderful dinner with my landlady and her daughter, during the course of which my landlady admitted that she accidentally gave her brother the keys to my apartment instead of hers when he came to visit a few nights ago.
So at 2:15 in the morning, he let himself into my apartment. Almost immediately he realized he was in the wrong place, retreated, and called my landlady from outside. She was extremely apologetic and mortified.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I didn’t hear a thing, and if I did, I probably thought it was the refrigerator kicking on.”
“It IS loud, isn’t it?” she said. “I noticed when I was painting the bathroom floor. I don’t know how the previous tenant could stand it — I was actually thinking about getting a new refrigerator for the apartment.”
YES!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
As nonchalantly as I could, I said, “That would be really nice.”
Then my excitement got the better of me, and I blurted out, “Actually, that’s the ONE thing that would make the apartment PERFECT! I was even thinking of talking to you about maybe buying my own! I had already started looking online! And — ”
She held up a hand. “Say no more. I’ll get you a new fridge.”
She told me she would start looking for one after she got back from her trip the next week.
And in the meantime, if anyone would like to break into an apartment and steal a bunch of old cassette tapes and CDs, I hear there is someone in the area who can sleep right through that.
The bad news is that I am having a hard time lately. I read a book by a marriage therapist a few months ago, during which she briefly talked about a client who was feeling more and more disconnected from his wife. Almost off-handedly, the author mentioned she immediately had him become MORE involved in his home life, because, she wrote, she knew that the disconnection would only become worse if he wasn’t forced to try to connect short-term while he worked on the larger issues long-term.
Since the day when Chris told me he was feeling disconnected from everyone, he has only disconnected further. He moved out, he stopped talking to me, and he did not do anything with me to try to work on this. While he certainly may be working on his own to deal with his issues, I have no say or input into anything that concerns us. There is no us, to be honest. And now that I’m finding the author was correct in her disconnection theory, there will never be an us again while Chris continues this method of dealing with whatever’s going on with him.
How do I know the author was correct in her theory? Because it’s been about a week since I moved out, and although I have seen the dogs three or four times since then, and although I clearly loved them and made them a huge part of my life, I feel less emotion for them. I feel more concern for myself than for them. I feel, in fact, like I am ready to give them up to Chris, if it means never having to come back to this house, never having to see him again, never having to see that, for example, his sister to whom he barely speaks has sent him a card.
As an aside, does Hallmark actually make “Sorry you decided to screw up your wife’s life by suddenly telling her you’re not cut out for marriage after over a decade together! Feel better soon!” cards? Where the fuck is MY card?
I feel bad for my dogs, in a remote, pitying way. I feel bad for myself, that I can even look at my dogs in a remote, pitying way. I feel I should feel worse.
So now I am going to sit with them, in an effort to reconnect. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but at least I’m trying.
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