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.

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 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.

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.

First you’ve got your basic, only-sort-of-an-asshole: the people sprawled, often asleep, with their legs halfway in the aisle. As long as they don’t suddenly wake up and whack you in your private parts, you just have to step cautiously over these appendages.

Then you’ve got the overhead rooter assholes: the people who hang out in the aisle digging through their luggage in the overhead bin because they did not plan appropriately and left their reading material in the carry-on at their feet.

(These assholes may sometimes belong to another category: the assholes who put all their luggage — rolling suitcase, purse, briefcase, jacket — in the overhead bins because they don’t like stuff at their feet.)

And of course, there’s the iPod asshole. These people believe that their music can only be properly enjoyed if it is blaring so loudly that everyone in the neighboring two rows can also share in the tunage.

Don’t forget the mini-assholes: the children. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones you feel bad calling assholes because they’re small children and they can’t help being freaked out by airplane flights or they’re sick, and they scream and yell and cry through the entire flight. They are unwitting assholes, but still assholes.

The asshole I encountered on my most recent flight, however, was surprisingly a parent, and not a child.

I have very firm views on parents, and admittedly, this is because I’m not one. All parents, no matter how good, are going to screw up at some point. This is a fact. Your only hope as a parent is that you don’t screw up so badly that it permanently affects your child, and that you’ve managed to convey the crucial aspects of parenting which include:

1. I love you. No matter what.
2. But don’t kill/hurt anyone, mentally or physically.
3. Or an animal.
4. Or steal.
5. Or do illegal drugs.
6. Also, if you could cry at a later time when we’re not trapped on a 6-hour flight, that would be excellent.

It is very easy to have a child. It is very hard to raise a child, and this is why I wish all people interested in signing up for parenthood would first go through mandatory testing showing that, at a minimum, they have common sense.

A few hours into my flight, I had figured that the best candidate for asshole parent was the one who was just as noisy shushing her child as the screaming/yelling child. Then I went on my first bathroom break.

As I headed to the bathroom, I spotted a small child leaning partially into the aisle as her father watched her. I had to angle a bit to get past her, but I’d already had to twist my way through the aisle past other people who were hanging out of their seats, and at least this kid was small and mostly in her seat. Also, I am of smaller-than-average-American size, so I didn’t have a problem squeezing past.

On the way back, however, the child was standing in the middle of the aisle. I got close to her and then stopped to wait for her to move. The child, being a mere 3 or 4 years of age, merely continued standing still and stared at me. So I turned to look at her father, who was looking at her.

The father noticed I was just standing there, and turned to stare at me. He didn’t ask his daughter to move, or apologize to me, or pick up and move his daughter himself, any of which would have been typical responses from most of the parents I know. In fact, most of the parents I know would have done all three in successive order.

“Excuse me,” I said politely, because despite my willingness to be an asshole myself, I have not been able to keep from being at least a polite one.

I said this to the small child, but loud enough for the father to hear, because what I really meant was, “Move your daughter out of my way. I’m obviously trying to get past her because you just saw me walk by in the other direction about 5 minutes ago and your daughter, while of a smaller-than-average size, is still another body in this aisle which clearly was not constructed to fit two smaller-than-average-American people or even one average American person.”

The father continued to stare blankly at me, as if I was the one with the problem.

So I took an exaggeratedly gigantic step around his precious child, who was evidently being groomed by her father to follow in the family career path of becoming an asshole.

Parenting is not about being your child’s playmate or best friend, or about being liked. It’s about teaching your child manners, decency, morals, and whatever else it takes for him or her to eventually become an independent, happy, functioning member of society. If you don’t teach your kid this, you know who will? That asshole on the plane who has to step one too many times around your kid, and very firmly but politely delivers a lecture on Why You Should Move the Fuck Out of People’s Way In An Airplane Aisle.

“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.”)

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.

“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.

“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!”