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| When history repeats itself, as in the recent comeback of eighties fashion trends, no one is better off for it! |
So, I am wondering
if you know this feeling: you intellectually know something about yourself, but
you don't actually realize it, you
know, in your heart, until much later. Well, that is what happened to me this
weekend. One thing that happens when you get divorced is that it causes you to
review all of your past relationships in your head, or at least it has caused
me to do this. Right after I got divorced it became very important to me to
figure out why my marriage didn't work. I knew in a general sense why it didn't
work, but I wanted to know the specific roles my ex-husband and I each played
in its downfall. I have ruminated on this idea a lot, and I think I am at peace
with the role I played in my divorce, but one step in moving forward is to
figure out the mistakes you made in the past to make sure you don't repeat
them. We all know history tends to repeat itself, and the results can be less
than desirable, particularly in the case of things like people treating each
other poorly throughout history, and in the case of eighties fashion, which was
so unfortunate the first time around that I am not sure why it has made such a
comeback in the past few years.
As I have mentioned
in several other posts, my picker is broken—meaning that I have the world's
worst compass for finding good men. Coupled with my terrible sense of
direction, finding a good man has been next to impossible for me. It's like if
you told me that there was a colony of awesome men living at the South Pole,
and I set out to find it, my Man GPS is so broken that I would end up in the
outer reaches of Mongolia where they probably would have sent all the men whowear loafers with shorts and smoke clove cigarettes. So one of my missions
nowadays is to analyze the types of men I have chosen, and how my past
relationships have gone so that in the future I can meet someone who prescribes
medical marijuana rather than who smokes it.
On Saturdays around
11 AM, my mom and I always go to Willy's Mexicana Grill for lunch, and when we
are there I usually have a round of Mom Therapy. My mom might be the greatest
listener in the world, and she gives really good advice, plus, being 35, I am
now old enough to realize that I should usually take the advice she gives me.
During Saturday's Mom Therapy session I was discussing my past relationships
and the types of guys I have typically chosen for myself. As is usually the
case with Mom Therapy, I started out not sure where I was going with my
thoughts, but ended up learning something about myself. I was in the middle of
a particularly delicious bit of tofu when the realization hit me with the force
of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, and this time I understood with both my mind
and my heart. The main quality that many of my past flames have shared is how
inconsiderate they have been!
When I say they have
been inconsiderate, I do not necessarily mean that they willfully set out to
forget about me. Actually, some of them were nice guys who just couldn't see
past themselves, or who were so wrapped up in what they were doing that they
seemed to forget they had a girlfriend. And, to be fair, a good number of them
were also just assholes. (Sorry for the swearing. I will immediately put $5 in
the Swear Jar when I finish writing this post.)
I can remember a
specific experience that I have repeated so many times with past boyfriends
that I have stopped counting. I am dressed and ready to go out, and the guy
doesn't show up on time. He might just be 15 or 20 minutes late, or he might be
two hours late, and, there I am sitting there waiting for him in the way most
modern women would never want to be caught dead waiting for a man, and the jerk
doesn't even bother to call because it doesn't occur to him that my time is
important too. The first time I recall participating in this Groundhog Day type
scenario was with my first boyfriend back when I was just a teenager. And the
most recent time I experienced this situation was just a few months ago. The
difference between my teenage years and modern times is that when I was a
teenager I continued dating the guy for a year after the incident, and recently
I ended it after only a couple of dates, so clearly I must be getting smarter,
at least a little bit anyway. Plus, none of the guys who have done this has
ever had a good explanation for why he has done it.
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| Spending time with Andre the Giant is not a good excuse for ditching your date with me! |
A good explanation
would be something like, "My mom got in a car accident and I was at the
hospital," which is never an explanation I have received for the behavior.
The explanations I have gotten have been more like "I fell asleep watching
a Cops marathon in my bedroom and finally woke up when I fell off the bed in my
sleep and hit my head, and then I remembered I was supposed to come over,"
or "I got really involved in cleaning my basement, and I found my old WWF
action figures down there, and in the middle of staging a fight between Andre
the Giant and Junkyard Dog it occurred to me that we had a date tonight."
Clearly, these guys would not win any awards for Boyfriend of the Year,
although they might garner praise for their original excuses!
Anyway, I now
understand that I have a knack for attracting and choosing unreliable guys to
date and to have relationships with. I am sure every woman has attracted her
fair share of losers with no follow through, but the difference between most
women and me is that most women pass these guys up after one or two dates, once
they have realized that during three hours spent at a restaurant the only time
these guys have asked them about themselves is when the guys questioned if the
women would like to pay for dinner with a MasterCard or a Discover Card. I, on
the other hand, take these kinds of guys on as my personal projects, because,
obviously, if they only met the right woman they would change, and clearly I am
the right woman!
Well, no longer will
I sign up for it! I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore! I am so tired of picking guys who are
inconsiderate that I have developed some new guidelines for dealing with them,
which I call the Inconsiderate Guy
Protocol. These guidelines are very simple, and actually consist of only
one guideline. The next time a guy just doesn't call, or talks about himself
for three hours, or keeps me waiting, I am simply going to punch him in the
face, no questions asked. Punching him in the face will not only help me
relieve my frustrations, but it will also effectively end the relationship for
me before I have a chance to date him for four and a half years because I am
going to change him. I am guessing most guys would not want to continue dating
a girl who punched them in the face with no explanation, and if they did, well,
that's a whole other set of issues right there!
Olivia Newton John image courtesy of http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/2010/1/29/whits-knits-spiral-rib-leg-warmers.html
Andre the Giant image courtesy of http://www.examiner.com/article/a-great-article-on-andre-the-giant-s-drinking-stories
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