Thursday, February 18, 2016

Narrow Escapes

When I was in college I dated this guy - nice guy, though a bit of a culturally normative misogynistic bastard.  (Autonomy and respect, you see, are less important than a dude's ability to feel manly.)

Anyhow, it's been so many years that I barely remember why I ditched his morose ass, except for the last part, where I said 'You know what?  You're right!  I was always going to break up with you some day and that day is TODAY!'

I'm so glad I didn't stay trapped in that terrible relationship.  My boundaries are, yea verily, like unto granite; my spouse is supportive and respectful; and when I buy him half-off Valentine's chocolate every year, he recognizes it as an expression of my most frugal affection.

Who's your narrow escape?

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:52 AM

    My first boyfriend. I was a senior in high school, he was a freshman in college. We'd been going out for about 5 months and he was talking of marriage (not immediately, but eventually). I went to Europe for three weeks (first time to Europe) and came back 100% convinced I could not marry him. It took another, awkward, month before I was able to tell him this...

    Those three weeks were incredibly formative, and a big part of why I've now lived in Europe for over a decade.

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    1. Good reasons to NOT marry the person we were dating at 18! (Sometimes. By which I mean most of the time.)

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  2. Your "the last part" made me laugh. Out loud, as the kids say. My narrow escape was also in college. He was horrible in a way that seemed romantic at first, but that I now recognize as undiagnosed Asperger's. And not in a "everyone's on the spectrum these days" way, in a that guy definitely had Asperger's way. When I broke up with him he cried and said "I thought we were going to get married", nevermind the fact that we could barely function as a couple. When I learned years later that he had died in a rock climbing accident I was **relieved**, knowing he would never bother me again. And yes, I thank him for teaching me about the kind of person I actually wanted to be with.

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    1. I was really annoyed by that point.

      Ergh, weird exes. Now you're reminding me of the strange Russian mathematician I once dated and then never spoke to again.

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  3. Oh, so many to choose from! How about the French self-hating neo-con Jew who declared that he would decide, for the health of the baby, when I would go to the hospital if I were in labour (which would have been way earlier than I would have wanted and way earlier than medically necessary)? This was just a hypothetical situation, but still, it seemed like pretty good grounds for breaking up.

    And of course there's the guy who wrote to my parents after I broke up with him (to tell them what a horrible person I was)...

    And then there's the most recent one I didn't even have a chance to break up with, since it didn't go very far once he told me that he had a girlfriend.

    I think I've had enough narrow escapes for one lifetime, thank you!

    It was glorious to be in France for Valentine's Day and to remain almost oblivious to its existence.

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    1. Oh yes, and there's the Moroccan guy I convinced you not to date. If of told you why, I'm sure you'd consider him a narrow escape too!

      The French dude sounds a rare treat. Definitely grounds for summary dismissal.

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  4. The charismatic and deeply unbalanced friend/major crush of first year of college. Man, I am SO GLAD the feeling was not mutual, even if I ate my heart out over it at the time. This is the only friend I can think of whose behavior towards me inspired observers to ask if I knew what an abusive relationship was. (I did not, apparently.) Blocked on all manner of social media thanks to a tendency to contact me to apologize in the most patronizing ways possible.

    Plus she once deliberately used said crush to manipulate me into ironing a really dumb shirt of hers so she could go on a date. Blah. (I have gotten much better at telling people to fuck right off, I'm happy to say.)

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  5. Very similar, except that I didn't have the balls to do anything except say "I'm going to Europe and don't want a boyfriend so TTFN." And then he met someone while I was away, and I was truly free.

    I thank my lucky stars, all the time, and I plan on raising my daughter to be bold enough to bail out of a relationship.

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