The F Word

There are certain topics which are widely regarded as off limits for criticizing one's significant other. For example, I would never criticize a guy's height, penis size or baldness. Those are all things that are beyond their control and furthermore, if they were things that truly bothered me, I would simply not date the guy in question.

The list of off limits topics for women would probably include any facial features, breast size and weight. Of course, this didn't stop my exes from bringing up each of these topics. Perhaps the most alarming was the weight matter. I am not fat, so it would seem logical that no one would ever have anything negative to say about my weight. Apparently, this is not the case. Men seem to think that because I am not fat, they get a free pass on the weight issue, like it won't bother me. Well, assholes, it does.

When I was dating Fred, I was 5'8" and wore a size 0 (I have since ballooned up to a humongous size 2). Yet, he seemed to take pleasure in pointing out any area of me that had even an ounce of fat on it. One such area was my ass. I am not a big girl, but I have a lot of T & A. While this is not something I love about myself, it is something that I mostly accept and do not think about on a day-to-day basis. And seriously, if my ass still fit into a size 0, how much A did I really have?

I should also bring up that I grew 6 inches in high school and as a result, still had the faint remnants of stretch marks on my upper thighs in mid college (in case you really care, they are no longer visible). Well, one day Fred took it upon himself to point this out to me.

Fred: Your ass is too big

Me: It's a size 0.

Fred: But you have stretch marks. That means you're too fat.

Me: No, it means I grew six inches very quickly.

Fred: But it means you got too fat.

The conversation went on like this for a while before I finally gave up. Yes Fred, I am fat.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this is that he was, in fact, fat. 5'8" and 220 lbs is fat. Sorry, but it is. Yet, I would never have told him that. Also, I was much thinner than the girls he dated prior to me (and the ones he has dated since). If he ever called them fat, I hope they were more willing to roll with this kind of criticism than I was.

I often wonder what types of conversations he has had with these other women, given his penchant for playing fat police.

Fred: You're fat.

Fred's gf: You're fat, too.

Fred: Let's have fat sex.

Fred's gf: OMFG, I LOVE BUTTER!!!

Or something like that.

He's a Caaaaaniac, CAAAAAANIAC!

It's a little weird how much of my relationship with Fred revolved around chicken.

The night after I had discussed the chicken wings incident with Fred, we went to Raising Canes. Since Fred had already eaten one dinner and I am hardly the type of girl who can pack a continuous stream of chicken wings for three hours (sorry, I love my size 2 ass too much), we decieded to split a Caniac (which I paid for).

For those of you out of the loop, this includes 6 chicken fingers, some fries and two pieces of toast (this is important).

Well, since Fred was too busying blowing on a conch shell (insert phallic reference here), I went ahead and seperated the chicken fingers, removing three for myself. Well, this did not go over well. He threw a hissy fit (seriously, a fucking hissy fit) that I was trying to eat his food.

Um, wow. Didn't know he was so protective over it (just kidding, his fat ass and matching beer gut was a dead giveaway that he never let one morsel of food escape his claws).

Also, as a math major, he really should have realized that removing three chicken fingers from a six chicken finger meal is, in fact, taking half of it. But apparently he was blinded by the idea of being potentially denied a chicken finger.

In his fit, he claimed that I was trying to take his food from him. Apparently he believed this to be an ongoing problem. This was weird to me because we were about the same height, but I was half his weight. He was clearly not missing out on any food.

Anyway, I finally got my act together and and dumped him after this...I just wish I hadn't taken him back a few weeks later. D'oh!

Somebody Save Me

Yay for a joint post!

BJA

Disclaimer: This isn't the happiest post.

I had a horrible habit while dating String Bean that I'm disappointed to look back on now. I let him get away with most of the ways he treated me because I thought I needed to save him. My mom called it "broken-wing syndrome." My brother did it with one of his girlfriends, so this isn't simply a habit of women to pick up a partner who has the best of times just as often as the worst of times.

Let me actually explain a few things. String Bean was messed up in the head. He claimed it had to do with where he went to high school and a certain incident that happened on April 20, 1999... most of you should know what that was. He was injured. Plus his parents were divorced, he lived in a volatile family life with no one to look up to (including one uncle who had a restraining order from the rest of the family). He used his past as an excuse to treat me badly. Or maybe I simply used it as an excuse. He was hurtful, violent, judgemental, and possessive. He cheated, lied, yelled, drank, and mentally abused me in ways that today I know I would never accept.

I wish someone had shook me when I dated him and told me how many better guys are out there. Even then, I look back and people I knew did try to help me see it. My parents, his parents, his brother, his friends, my friends... they all told me that he wouldn't change. But I wanted so badly to believe that this man I had fallen in love with, the man I had watched myself grow and change along with and who I had seen what I thought was progress in... I couldn't believe he wasn't the man I "knew" he could be. I was so caught up with the fact that he just had to be the person I thought he was when I first met him - funny, creative, liked going on walks, made me laugh, gave me gorgeous jewelry, danced with me - that I was willing to wait through it all to be the one there for him when he finally acheived it.

I didn't realize that I was trying to be his savior. And the real kicker? I lost friends over it. I lost friends who couldn't bear to see how he treated me and how I treated myself with him. They told me time and time again and I came up with excuses. I thought they were reasons at the time, but they were nothing but excuses.

He cheated because his last girlfriend cheated and he can't open up to women. - No, he cheated because he had no respect for our relationship.

He lied because he had taught himself to cover up his true feelings and didn't want to hurt me. - Nope, he was a compulsive liar who had been lying so long he couldn't stop. And he just didn't want me to know.

He was abusive because he harbored pain and aggression from the shooting. - False. He was abusive because I took it. Because I stood up to him and was in his way.

He drank because he hid his pain through alcohol and hadn't learned to control it. - Wrong again. I even had the stupidity to tell him that song line, "whenever you need something strong, baby, just let me know." If I knew then what I know now...

To any girls who have gone through this - you can't change him. You can't save him. He has to save himself. You can believe all you want that you are the one who will give him the opportunity, the reason, the motivation to change. But you'll be wrong. When he wants to change, he will. But until then you will be hit, abused, cheated on, and otherwise treated as less than the woman you are.

To guys - most of you will never be like this. And I thank God for that. Yeesh, even the guys featured on this blog for the most part will never reach this level of loserex. I mean abusive guys are scraping the barrell!

I don't know what made me write this today. I started talking to an ex of mine and we talked about what we learned from each other and whether or not we learned the MOST from each other. And I have to say, the one who taught me the most about life and love, relationships and myself, was String Bean.

The benefits of this type of blog is we women can vent about things that drove us crazy in our previous relationships. (See CrazyHo for the newly birthed guy version.) Some are the quirky habits that guys can change of course, some are ones that are specific to certain dead beats who most would not imitate, and some are things that perhaps we couldn't deal with, but another girl might. (Think fajitas, early morning booty calls, and tattoos.)

A real man would never do the things String Bean did. No excuses, no reasons, no meds. And I am so happy I figured that out before my boobs started to sag.




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It would be very easy for me to write my horror story of dating Shrek. He was not a good person. There are very few people I honestly feel this way about. In fact, other than Shrek, there is only one person I know personally who I would say is not a good person. While I was dating him, I didn't believe this. I honestly thought that his behavior was a result of his less than ideal upbringing, but that it wasn't ingrained in him -- it wasn't an unchangeable part of his character. I thought he was just waiting for someone to come along and help him. I thought I was going to be the person to do that. By dating him and by tolerating his completely unacceptable behavior, I thought I was saving him. I was really just enabling him.

But, as it has been said before, this is "LoserEx," not "Why My Ex is Going to Rot in Hell." I'm not going to talk about him. The point of my blurb is not to tell the world that Shrek is a horrible person -- everyone else seemed to pick up on that pretty quickly. My point is that you cannot change someone.

On a less serious note: when I met Fred, I saw a lot of things a couldn't stand, but I thought I saw potential to mold him in to the person I wanted to date. Fred was unattractive, slightly overweight, dressed like a retarded child and had absolutely no clue how to behave himself in public.

I thought I would start by pressing the clothing issue. I gave several gentle hints that I did not like the way he dressed. In fact, look back a couple of years on the blog and take note of how many "what not to wear" entries there are. When the gentle hints didn't work, I tried buying him clothes I liked. He would wear them and claimed to like them, yet he never bought similar clothes when left to do his own shopping. I finally banned certain articles of clothing. Specifically the Hawaiian shirts and jorts. He stopped wearing them for a few weeks, then picked right back up again. My grade for changing his fashion sense: F

While this was going on, I decided to work on the area of his appearance as well. Granted, what Fred really needs is a chin implant, but I would never tell someone to get cosmetic surgery. His jaw line was weak and feminine. A chin implant would have given him a better profile and balanced out his other features. Anyway, since I couldn't really bring this up, I tried to suggest other things: a better haircut, bleaching his teeth (they were the nastiest shade of yellow you can imagine), clipping his nails, not washing his face with old spice body wash. He listened to none of my suggestions. My grade for changing his appearance: F

After dating for several months, Fred really started to pack on the pounds. Granted, he was never thin, but HOLY CRAP did he get big. I suggested we do several activities together such as, rock climbing, hiking, joining the new (and really nice) gym next to his apartment and running. He shot down all of my ideas. I would even go to the gym in his apartment building, thinking he would feel motivated to come along. Instead, he spent this time playing on his computer. My grade for changing his weight: F

The worst of all was his inability to behave in any social situation. He was loud, make inappropriate comments and basically was unaware of what everyone else was doing. There is not enough room on the internet for me to mention all the times he proved this. Basically, every time I thought I had him trained enough for a certain social situation, I ended up being wrong. I'll write an entry about this soon, but really, there are too many to mention now. My grade for changing his ability to behave in public: F

Yes, these examples are trivial compared to my problems with Shrek. But, seriously, if stupid trivial behaviors like these can't be changed, it is foolish to think that major character flaws can be.

My Camp Boyfriend

I loved summer camp. A lot. I was totally into the singing and campfires and banana boats.

Sidenote: If you’ve never had a banana boat, you are really missing out. They are the best things in the whole world. And they are really easy to make too. All you do is cut a banana down the center to form a long groove and then you stuff marshmallows and chocolate into the groove. Then you wrap the banana in tin foil and put it in the fire (I guess the oven would suffice for those of us who aren’t living in Africa, the 19^th century, or at camp). Then after about fifteen minutes, you take the banana out and eat it. It’s amazing.

Anyway, I loved camp. But my favorite part of camp was the camp dance which was held on the basketball court every Thursday night after dinner. The fact that it was on Thursday is very important, because that gave us enough time to find a camp boyfriend—that special someone to help you with archery, plot (but never carry out) elaborate schemes to sneak out after lights out, and most importantly to hold you at arms length and rock back and forth on the basketball court to the gentle strains of whatever totally PC music happened to be popular that summer.

Well, I was honestly never all that good at the camp relationship thing. I wasn’t like those camp sluts that rolled their wind shorts up to their asses and had to wear t-shirts when they went swimming because their swimsuits were too skimpy. I wasn’t about to throw away my kissing virginity on some pimply twelve-year old. (Also, I was insanely shy and socially inept as a kid.) But then came the year that I met Wholly Boy (I’m calling him that because these days he’s apparently decided to turn himself into a human colander through body piercing). Now Wholly Boy wasn’t wholly at the time. He seemed like a nice (maybe slightly overweight) boy. And, he was an intellectual.

My camp relationship with Wholly Boy began innocently enough with flirtation at the picnic tables and long-lingering glances across the dining hall at meals. We’d have long intellectual conversations that mostly consisted of him pontificating about things that he knew absolutely nothing about. I look back on it now and realize that he was full of shit, but at the time I was really impressed. I distinctly remember a conversation where he was explaining to me why I didn’t like to swim or canoe, but did like to ride horses which are much more dangerous. He told me that it was because I can’t control water, but I can control the horse. “Water has an untamed essence. No one can control water. It simply is and cannot be changed or controlled by anyone.” He actually said that. Later, he sent me a note via another boy in his cabin, asking me to the dance. Of course I said yes.

Well, Thursday rolled around and the all hell broke loose in the cabin as girls ran around fixing their hair and throwing clothes around looking for the perfect outfit for the night which could well be the most important night of their lives. I, of course, did the same thing. And after having tried on every item of clothing that I had packed, I finally decided on my denim skirt and a pink polo shirt. (OK, I have suddenly realized that my sense of style has not changed since childhood).

My cabin walked to the basketball court and we all scattered to find our dates. Well, the music started and people started to dance. I looked at Wholly Boy expectantly. And then he started to dance. Oh God, did he start to dance. I still look back on this moment with incredulity. I have never seen someone fail at dancing so badly. He wiggled and jiggled and his belly fat bounced to the music. And his pants crept ever so slowly down his hips until every deep-knee bend (Yes, there were deep knee bends. Many of them.) exposed his rather large plumber’s crack. In the space of a song, he had lost my respect. That intellectual façade he had created crumbled and I realized that he was just a fourteen year old boy with an amazingly large ego.

We broke up during the dance, because after having seen his performance, I suddenly lost my desire to dance and tried to get him to sit with me on the benches around the basketball court. He apparently thought that I was being controlling, so he broke up with me with the line “I’m not ready for a serious relationship.” Needless to say, I wasn’t upset.

There's no way to deny she's lovely

There are a lot of derogatory comments that one could make about my appearance. Since high school, my weight has fluctuated between a healthy size 8 (where I am now--my "normal" weight) and a pushing-obese size 12. Most recently, my weight tipped the scales after the Bush campaign when I completely blew my ordinarily-regimented lifestyle to help the President win an election. Priorities. So 18 months ago, it would have been pretty accurate to call me fat. Even today you could remind me that I'm not exactly slim--I was blessed with my Mom's curves. But I don't look bad--seriously, I don't.

You could also point out that I'm breaking out pretty badly right now from a nice cocktail of chemotherapy drugs and stress (induced by my professional and personal lives simultaneously going nuts) and that would be pretty accurate. But I'm hooked on Philosophy Crisis Intervention products and some retinols from the dermatologist and that's keeping everything in check.

I've had bad haircuts (the really short job freshman year of college), bad color (chocolate brown in the winter of 2005), probably bad makeup and once upon a time (early in high school when I was still using my mother's cast-offs) made bad clothing choices (in my defense, this was at the tail end of the grunge era and so if I wasn't in my cheerleading uniform--which we had to wear to school like three times a week, I was a strange mix of as much grunge as my Ralph Lauren-wearing mother would let me get away with, resulting in an ugly preppy-grunge experience). You could have called me out on any of those: I've had bad hair and bad outfits. Haven't we all?

The one thing I have never been called is "plain". I am not plain. In the interest of not sounding narcissistic, I am going to try to tone this down a lot but I am naturally very attractive. According to Cosmo, I am "cute-sexy": big blue-grey eyes, dark blonde hair (which I highlight so it's lighter blonde), classically pretty facial features, full lips (more Scar-Jo than Angelina), a killer smile (thanks to thousands of dollars spend on orthodontic work when I was in middle school and Crest Whitestrips). I used to be a dancer and now I run five days a week so I am in decent shape and my skin gets enviably golden in the summer. I'm pretty and I know it, and so does everyone else.

I am also very conscientious of my wardrobe. I know my body and what sort of clothes flatter it. I know what colors I look best in. It's the result of a subscription to Cosmo, a decent eye for style, a family that loves to shop, and a lot of trial and error (reference the previous comment about preppy-grunge). Furthermore, I take pride in being the kind of girl who is almost always appropriately dressed for any event. Cocktail reception on the Hill/Army Ball/tailgate picnic at a steeplechase in Potomac--check, check, check--I look good. I am not the kind of girl who is going to wear jeans a and t-shirt to a nice restaurant (at least not without a blazer, pearls and heels--did I mention I have the ability to make a t-shirt look like a million bucks?) but I'm also not going to get all slutted up to go to the gun club and watch my boyfriend shoot through 20 boxes of ammo.

So imagine my surprise when my boyfriend told me last week that he wasn't confident our relationship would last because he didn't see me being someone he was attracted to in ten years because I was too plain.

What he was trying to articulate (and failing miserably) was that he wished I would dress up more often and bring some sexy underwear to bed. And if he had said it like that, it would have been fine. Of course I would have countered that if he wanted me to dress up, he should take me places where I wouldn't be out of place wearing a nice dress, and that place is NOT the sports bar that we always end up going to on Saturday night (and even then, I wear jeans, a cute top and heels). And if he wants cute underwear, we need to get down to business as soon as we get back from dinner and I'm still slightly buzzed from the wine. You can't keep me up until 2AM watching stupid action movies that star the Rock (is that really his name?) and then expect me to be ready to change lingerie (since the lingerie that looks good under clothes is different than the lingerie that looks good on its own) and jump in bed with him. Here's a hint--if I'm curled up in your lap, sleeping off the bottle of pinot we shared at dinner, sex is NO LONGER on my mind.
But to tell me I am plain?!?! That's not even close to being the truth. My chin almost hit the floor in shock. Before I could point out that I had a bar full of men downstairs who would line up at the CHANCE of buying me a drink (I was in a hotel room on a business trip), he threw out "you save your A-game for work and I get the practice team."

Work gets A-game because my livelihood depends on A-game, but you want A-game? Game on, asshole.

Friday night came around and I put on a black dress, heels and eyeliner, pulled my hair up (in a real up-do that involved pins and hairspray--not a hair shark) and demanded to be taken to wine tasting and dinner at a tapas bar. And then I demanded that we stay to listen to the jazz band at said tapas bar (knowing damn well that he hates jazz). And then I demanded to dance (knowing damn well that he can't run in cadence and clap his hands at the same time). Because those are the activities that one does when she is dressed up.

Saturday night, I played even dirtier. I put on a strapless red number that I bought to wear to a girlfriend's wedding next month, spent 75 minutes straightening my hair and doing makeup and announced that I wanted to eat halibut while sitting on the river, knowing damn well that there were only two places where I can do that, and neither one of them was inexpensive.

Two dirty martinis, a shrimp cocktail, halibut, asparagus and the "special" ring-ding dessert at Chart House Savannah, the bill came. One hundred fifty dollars and I was actually a little disappointed that I didn't drive it up higher.

Sunday morning, I repeated the whole ordeal in a white sundress at champagne brunch. Only after "discovering" religion and forcing him to sit through mass with me. And then when we were done, we went antiquing instead of to the gun range because I wasn't dressed to sit around the nasty-ass gun range and watch him play with his toys.

If he wants A-game, I can play the A-game. But he should be careful what he wishes for. Several times he told me I was being "combative" or "pretentious" and unfortch, that goes with the territory--if I'm feeling physically high maintenance, I am also feeling emotionally high maintenance. If he wants the girl that I was this weekend, I am more than happy to oblige, but he can't complain when I start to play the part, so to speak.

String me along

When I was younger, I absolutely loved pepperoni pizza lunchables. I don’t eat them anymore. There is something juvenile about the whole process of spreading sauce on the crackers, then putting the cheese and pepperoni-flavored sausage on top. I just can’t get past this.

Shrek had a similar problem with string cheese. I found this out one very tragic day. We were at the grocery store, and I was getting some snacks and sodas. When we walked past the yogurt aisle, he nearly wet his pants at the site of the string cheese. “Oh my gosh! I love string cheese!” he gushed. Being the nice person that I was, I offered to get him a package of it. It seemed like an odd food for him to jizz his pants over, but, hey, everyone likes at least one really strange food.

Well, when I got home, I found out that he was grossed out by the idea of pulling pieces of cheese off the main chunks in strings. Rather than resolve to eat a snack which disgusted him less, he just ate string cheese by eating it in two huge bites. And, he didn’t stop with one. In the time it took me to eat one string cheese, he had eaten the rest of the package. This ranks as one of the top 20 grossest things I have ever seen. Come to think of it, the other 19 grossest things I have ever seen also involved Shrek.

It blew my mind that he could eat a snack of 7 string cheeses, and then have the audacity to make a huge deal out of me eating too much. For the record, I was 5’8” and 110lbs (soaking wet) at the time, and he was 6’4” and 250lbs (and it sure as hell wasn’t muscle). I never made a big deal about this. I am only bringing it up now to point out that if one of us should have been concerned about the other overeating, it should have been me. I have never in my life had a weight problem (I am currently the biggest I have ever been, and that is a whopping size 4). He had always had a weight problem. He was the fat kid who was always the first one out in dodge ball. Granted, he was not morbidly obese, but he had a good deal of chub. I would never comment on his love handles though, because I felt it was not my place to criticize him for that. I honestly don’t know how much smaller he thought I should have been. I don't know how much smaller he thought I physically could have been. Unless he goes to a third world country and finds some emaciated woman on the brink of death, he will not find someone to date who was smaller than I was when I dated him.

I haven’t seen Shrek in nearly 2 years now. Where ever he is, I hope he is dating some fat chick.