Thanks a lot

The other day, my loving, secure, generally happy relationship came to a tragic and abrupt end when my boyfriend of five years finally decided to leave me. I am as flabbergasted as I am devastated, since I thought we had a tight, permanent bond. The day had progressed in a normal fashion: we went out to breakfast, we went to the library, we bought a bag of fruit, we went home, we had lunch, I said "you seem uninspired. Was there something wrong with the lentil soup?" and he replied in a quivering voice; a lone tear meandering slowly over his stubbly cheek, "you don't want to know."

We debated this point back and forth for several minutes and arrived at the conclusion that, no matter how painful and difficult, I did, indeed, want to know. I wonder what would have happened if I'd said "you're right...judging from that particular phrase, your tone of voice, and that teardrop, I actually don't want to know. Let's go to the movies!"

Maybe we'd still be together.

He never said directly "it's over" or "I don't want to be with you anymore", but he didn't have to. He went briefly over the issues as he saw them. We are such very different people, he said. The cons had finally outweighed the pros. He had stopped being happy long ago. We have irreconcilable differences like the fact that I defend the rights of the ants in the kitchen and the spiders in the basement. That I think most beauty products are dangerous carcinogens. That I believe the band Styx is sort of cheesy. 

I want to buy some land, start a hobby farm and live off of the grid until I'm eighty-five. He wants to lay around on the deck of a cruise ship, play Eagles' covers on his guitar for baby boomers and eat hotdogs until he drops dead of a heart attack at sixty. He was holding me back from my dreams.

Since under similar circumstances and in less important relationships I had a history of wild emotional outbursts, I am proud to say that during this heavy moment I remained extremely cool. There was no point in begging, arguing, probing, getting angry or throwing things, I reasoned. I knew this only because I'd tried all five of these techniques in the past with terrible results. If you love something, set it free... I read this poem once in sixth grade and I was finally coming around to trying it out. Since I was busy being cool and he really didn't have a heck of a lot to say since none of his complaints was particularly new, the whole thing was over in less than twenty minutes.

"Leave," I told him. It took him a while to comply. He's slow and blubbery. Kind of like a manatee.

After he left, I had a long, pensive, numb moment where I simply sat in the rocking chair looking around the lonely house at all the things we'd accumulated, mostly items he'd scored at estate sales. I depended on him to supply me with wine glasses and bring home weird instruments. He was my decorator. He was my foundation, my best friend, my confidant, my only real family. I held his felt hat and cried.

Later, I got drunk on whiskey and went on a smashing rampage that resulted in several casualties including irreplaceable photographs, a complicated puzzle that required months to put together, and his Takamine guitar that he hardly ever played. Luckily, the Yamaha that he prefers was at a safe distance: out in the car along with his expensive sound equipment. I then wailed uncontrollably for hours and the cats scampered away taking shelter under the bed. I'm glad, because I didn't want them to hurt their little paws on the broken glass.

At the end of it, I still felt like shit. I stood in the middle of the destruction wishing I'd been a little bit more selective about the pictures I'd chosen to smash. For example, I wish I'd smashed the crude line drawing of the corkscrew with wings that was probably painted by some frat boy in Art 101 instead of the Picasso.

You are probably shaking your head at this juncture thinking "no wonder he left you. You are a lunatic and a destroyer of art and instruments and a frightener of felines". You are also thinking: "there must be another woman involved." 

And of course...you are right.

I'd had these thoughts for a while, not so deep down, in fact, they were pretty much perching like hungry pigeons on my frontal lobes. He'd been displaying odd behavior consistent with "cheating" for several months. I know how to identify these behaviors because I educated myself utilizing a credible website with pictures of really foxy people on it called "ten ways you know your partner is cheating" and he hit almost every one. I confronted him directly and often, though usually I tried to stifle the paranoia. I told myself that if I bugged him too much it might become a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe his behavior has nothing to do with me at all, I thought. Maybe he is merely depressed and he'll talk to me about it eventually if I just give him some space. He is fifty-three. It is about time for his mid-life crisis.

The next day following the twenty minute drive-by break-up, I found out the truth when he came over. Lest you think he came pleading for me to forgive him and take him back, I need to disclose that his visit was only after I insisted that we at least needed to give our five-year relationship a few more minutes of our attention, and perhaps discuss those practical things like what we were going to do with the lease and the picture of the flying corkscrew.

"I smashed your Takamine," I said, gesturing to the splintered wreck in the corner as he walked through the door.

"I was going to give it to you anyway," he shrugged.

"Damnit!" I yelled, "I needed a good guitar!"

"Serves you right," he replied.

It was after this discussion that he slunk into the chair across the table from me and began to methodically and tearfully spill the beans. There was another woman involved, he confessed. A woman from Ohio.

"Ohio?" I asked, scratching my head, and taking a protracted sip of my blueberry tea, "you've never been to Ohio."

"We met on-line about a year ago," he said, "we've never actually met in person."

His wet eyes grew wild with disillusionment and pain as the absurd tale unfolded. They had started out as friends, he said, playing a mindless on-line picture guessing game. I remembered when he started playing this game. I remember him showing me a drawing she'd done of a rooster and thinking, "that's stupid". Just another one of those irreconcilable differences that he spoke of.

Eventually, they got to know each other. As it turned out, she was fabulously wealthy, talented, educated, kind and beautiful. She owned vast estates, jets and horses. He knew all of this because it had been confirmed by pictures that she had sent him and a few text messages from her uncle. At some point, he began to disclose intimate details of his relationship with me.

"Why aren't you married?" Miss Ohio sagaciously inquired one day while drawing a picture of a sausage.

"I don't know," he replied, "is that a submarine?"

It was then that he had the epiphany that perhaps he didn't want to make a life long committment to me. I was not the right person.

After many encounters like this and a growing bond, it began to occur to my boyfriend just who the right person was. She couldn't draw a sausage to save her life, but other than that, she was perfect. She was his soul mate. God had finally answered his prayers and it wasn't in the form of a scratch ticket. Miss Ohio had been provided by God to rescue him from the clutches of his destitution and his inadequate meat eschewing ant-loving hippi girlfriend who he had absolutely nothing in common with. In contrast, the lad who was raised on radio in a shack by the Mississippi river and worked in factories most of his life had much more in common with his rich jet-setting Julliard trained equestrian princess.

At least I can draw a decent sausage.

"At first I didn't understand what she saw in me," he confided, "a fat, broke, street musician who plays Eagles' covers? But she told me she was surrounded by so many fake people who were after her for her exquisite beauty and her deep pockets, and I was real."

Unfortunately, however, as it turned out, and as you probably suspected: she was not.  

When he left the afternoon following the twenty-minute break up he left with the knowledge that he had eaten his very last lunch of lentil soup and endured his very last conversation about the many possible designs of chicken coops. The next morning, she was sending a jet to come fetch him and carry him off to be with her for eternity. From hence forward, he would eat steak every night and make beautiful love. He would play Eagles tunes on the custom-made Gibson she bought for him and she would play Chopin on her polished grand piano naked beneath billowing muslin curtins. No more would he fret about the fact that he could not provide for his children. No more would he have to clean cat boxes, take out the recycling and cope with the fly infested compost. In addition, Miss Ohio was so generous she was even going to pay me off; his poor, abandoned, grumpy girlfriend who provided him with health insurance but never once put on a six-thousand dollar piece of lingerie. It would soften the blow and make him feel like less of a louse if I were compensated some how. It wasn't as though he didn't care about me at all. He loved me and wanted me to be happy, too.

I wouldn't have let him go for less than twenty-thousand.

"So, what happened?" I asked, since judging from his expression things hadn't exactly gone as planned.

While he waited for her, he explained, the story took a nefarious turn. First, a little background. Several years ago, Miss Ohio had watched as her prosecutor husband was brutally murdered in front of her by angry thugs and she had lived in constant fear for her life ever since. Consequently, she was under close survellience and had her own personal security guard. At the very moment that Miss Ohio was readying her jet for take-off to come rescue my boyfriend (did she mention she was a pilot, too?), her personal security guard, the man who had watched over her for years, flew into an unexpected jealous rage. Secretly, it turned out, he had always harbored deep feelings for her and now his chances for fulfillment of his fantasies were about to be crushed by the fat broke street musician. He wouldn't let that happen, he said. He sent my x-boyfriend threatening texts. He had no choice but to take her hostage. He sent him pictures of her naked, bound and gagged. My x-boyfriend didn't know what to do. He began to panic. He ran to our local police station, burst through the door and announced that the woman he loved was in trouble. Somebody had to take action quick!

"Sir," I imagined the police officer saying with a note of pity in his voice, "Calm down. Have a seat. You've been suckered. You've been scammed. You've been...catfished."

Catfished? I can see the look on my x-boyfriend's face as the truth finally dawned on him. As absurd as it may seem, it had never even crossed  his mind until that moment that the woman he loved wasn't telling him the truth. The very qualities that make my x-boyfriend so wonderful are the very same qualities that led him into this trap. He is honest, trusting and ethical to a fault. He could never have even imagined deceit of this magnitude. It is incomprehensible to him.

Trusting? Ethical to a fault? Honest? Though his behavior under these circumstances belies this description, I insist that for the most part, it is apt. The spell worked on him so perfectly, as though he'd been brainwashed. He reminded me of a person who had joined some sort of cult. I could hear the scaffolding cracking in his brain as he began to consider the stony reality that faced him. Even though the woman he had fallen for was not real, she had been real to him and the loss of her was just as painful as a death. In addition, he was questioning his faith in humanity and his faith in God. The night before he went to bed brimming with anticipation and hope for the future. Today, he woke up broke, unemployed, homeless and unhealthy.

Is it true that my boyfriend was unhappy? Probably, since I'm pretty much intolerable to live with. It is true that I wanted to perhaps adopt a child, something he didn't want to do, and that I was pushing an alternative life-style on him that he didn't really care for. So, yes, I think our relationship was destined to fail. However, as recently as six months ago he was buying me pianos and writing spontaneous love notes to me in soap on the bathroom mirror. Our relationship has been under a dark cloud since she entered his life. I think it brought out the worst in him and, in response, the worst in me. Compared to this perfect woman my flaws became more apparent. For example, the fact that I defend the ants in the kitchen might have remained a humorous quirk, a testimony for my true love of living things, instead of an annoying habit that reveals my disgusting tolerance for dirt and grime. Compared to this perfect life on easy street our humble slog to get by paycheck to paycheck must have seemed unbearable.

This brings me to the point of this entire essay. Obviously, I'll never know who this person(s) is/are or what her/his/their motive was. Since there was really nothing to gain, I have to conclude that it was merely sick entertainment carried out with no regard for the real consequences. Maybe the person who orchestrated this deception was lonely or suffering some how. Maybe they were bored. Maybe they were just mean.

However, no matter what the pathetic reason, I have one thing to say to the person or persons that scammed my boyfriend and wrecked my life. I'm forty-five and I waited forever for a relationship as wonderful as this one.

Thanks a lot, assholes.