Damn My Ex 

The other night my boyfriend took me to a basketball game. I was super excited to go, because he is such a huge fan and usually goes to the games with his brother or friends. During halftime the kiss cam panned our section and stopped on us and the couple sitting next to us. The other couple started making out heavily, and the whole arena roared with applause. I nudged my boyfriend to kiss me, but he acted really hesitant, and started waving his hands and shaking his head no. People started to boo us. Humiliated, I started to go off on him about embarrassing me by refusing to kiss me. He asked me to quiet down, then went on to explain that he wanted to break up. When I asked him why he brought me to the game when he knew he was dumping me, he told me it was because he didn’t want to miss the game, and he figured if he did it in front of a crowd of people I wouldn’t make a scene. After he dumped me, he got up and said “I’m going to the concession stand. Do you want a popcorn or anything?” Um, no thanks! I’ll pass.

My boyfriend and I celebrated our anniversary with a 7-day Caribbean cruise. My boyfriend had been through a rough year, with family issues and getting his work hours cut to part time, so I offered to pay for the whole thing. I was trying to make it the most romantic vacation ever, so I spared no expense, and my boyfriend and I had a great time. The night we got home, he went back to his place so that he could get unpacked and rest. The next day, he calls me while I was on my lunch break. He told me that with everything he had been through recently, he just didn’t think his head was in the right place for a relationship. I was stunned. I mean, we had just come off this amazing trip and now this. He explained that he really needed the vacation and didn’t want me to waste my money. So, he had ‘put on a happy face’ and went through with the trip before he broke up with me.

john and i had been together for over a year and a half. quite frankly, he was the best boyfriend i had ever had.  he was wonderful to me and my two-year old son.  he was more than my fiancée; he was my friend.  we had less than a year to go before our wedding, and everything was perfect.

one day, john didn’t call. he didn’t call the next day, either. he didn’t return my calls or texts. we normally spoke every day. by the third day, i was getting worried. what had happened? was he in the hospital? or arrested? i wanted to call the police. then i remembered that he had given me his myspace password.

i go to my computer and log in. i simply intended to email some of his friends to see if they had any clue as to where he was. what i found was a new email from a girl. i went into the sent messages to see what he had sent her. he had said how he had broken up with me because of all the fighting (what fighting???) and that he’d always liked her and if she liked him as much as he likes her would she want to go out with him?

all news to me. we used to laugh at how maybe we should fake a fight just so we looked like other couples.

i sent him an email with his email copied and pasted into it asking when he was going to tell me we had broken up. i never heard from him again.

i gave marie thirty days to leave.  i figured she’d just call daddy up and get him to pay for a plane ticket and a moving truck.  nope.  she called my mom.  she had given my mom her sob story.  you know, how i beat her, treated her like shit, and wouldn’t buy any food for the apartment.  amazing how a person can maitain 300 pounds of flesh with no food.

short story long, about two weeks after moving in with mom, i get a call.  it’s my mom.  she’s telling me how dirty marie is, how lazy, how disrespectful she is, and how she just doesn’t treat people right.

of course, i can’t disagree.  i tell her that’s just some of the reasons i kicked her out, along with the lying and cheating on me.

turns out, my poor, sweet mother thought there was still hope for us, but i was just too pig-headed to work things out.

“now i see why you don’t like her,” mom says.

i used to hang out in a group of friends about 10 or so big.  the group was kinda fluid, people coming and going: it was a different group on a weekly basis.  overall, there were easily 100 people that hung out, just not everyone everytime.

ok, so this new gal and i were making dinner for everyone, and she says, “you aren’t the monster i thought you’d be!”

WTF?!?!?

“from what marie (my then wife, not her real name) told me, you’re a real asshole, always beating her and stuff, but i don’t believe her now that i’ve gotten to know you.”

i went outside to the smoking porch and asked everyone else if marie had ever told them anything similar about me.  turns out, it was her favorite topic!  she told everyone she met how i beat her every night and how afraid she was to go home with me.  i was appalled.  marie and i were bitter (married) enemies, but this was absurd.

next morning (easter), i wake up, go into her room, and ask her about all this.   she admitted it, but insisted it was her consitutional right to say whatever she wanted, true or false.  i gave her a choice: either tell everyone that she lied about everything or leave.

thank god, she left.  now, we’re happily divorced.