I have horrible taste in men. Truly. I do. And I can be a bad judge of character. It is one of my biggest downfalls, though I am learning. It seems like for awhile I went out of my way to surround myself with alcoholics and people lacking initiative. This encompassed not only the men I dated, but many of my close friends as well. At least I considered them to be my close friends at the time. I spent many years being the designated driver, not just because my friends were heavy drinkers, but also because they had no car. This was more exaggerated with the men I found attractive. I wouldn't say I was a magnet for lazy sleezeballs, but moreso that I seemed to chase them down and throw myself at them.
As I have gotten older, my friends and I started some basic dating rules. No married men (including "separated" men). No unemployed men. No homeless men. No major potheads. No overly flatulant men... I think you get it. But then I find myself fleeing from ones that seem like they are what women want: commitment focused men that would sacrifice themselves on the altar of love. These men scare the living daylights out of me. Instead of facing them, I run directly into the arms of the men that fall just next to horrible.
Just over a year ago, I decided that I was going to ditch all the next to horrible men that I have learned so many life lessons from, and leave some room for someone new to walk into my life. And one day, in my hair salon that I manage, he did. He walked right in, asked about hair products for his daughter, and smiled an adorable smile down at me from his six foot seven, 325 pound frame. He was a giant. He was also (and still is) a mall cop at my mall. Over the next few days, he continued to pass by my shop, until finally he saw me there without guests and came in and asked me out. And then, over the next few weeks we fell in love. That intense, passionate "I have to be with him or I'll explode" love. I found out early on that he had four kids (two of whom are twins), from two different mothers, both of whom he had been married to - at different times, of course. This didn't phase me. Because I'm stupid, really stupid, sometimes.
After a couple of months, he started demanding that I tell my parents about him. He thought I was hiding him like a dirty secret. I thought I was just being a sane woman, not telling my parents about someone unless we're near engaged. This was two months of hyperactive loving; we weren't quite at the meet the parents point in my eyes. We were so active, that at one point I started to feel pain, intense pain that I couldn't well define, in my groin.
After a short while, things started becoming more apparent in our situation. He loved me, without a doubt, but he was always broke. He owned a gun that he loaded every night. He smoked pot nightly, though he had narrowed that down at my insistence. He also loathed my family, my faith, and my culture, but he loved me. Well, whatever was left of me, that is. Though I loved him, I couldn't do it. These weren't red flags. These were deal breakers, a lot of them. We were done, and I was devastated.
Weeks after we broke up, we both rebounded in our own ways. I started dating a professional athlete (which is a story unto itself), and he started dating a girl ten years younger than him that he had originally spurned as soon as he met me. Within a matter of weeks he had knocked her up, and within a couple of months, they were engaged. So his Ultimate Dipshit Scoreboard reads: five kids worth of child support + two ex wives + a child bride = one of the biggest zeros I've ever met. His baby girl was born two months ago. He still walks by my store, looking in, trying to see me. He's lucky I don't flick him off and chase him with the toilet cleaner brush to show him how much of a shit I think he is.
To add insult to injury (or injury to insult, as the case may be), over the last year I've still been having intense pain in my pelvic area. I ended up in the ER because of it. They ran all sorts of tests - pregnancy, std, cervical, etc. They decided it was a UTI, and sent me to my regular doctor. My regular doctor, acknowledging the ER may have been wrong, did more humiliating tests - ultrasounds, more std tests, etc. Finally, a couple of months ago, the pain was so bad I went back again, and requested an xray. My doctor finally agreed it may not be something female oriented, but muscular/skeletal. It was. I had sprained the muscle that attaches your inner thigh to your pelvis. In fact, I had managed to pull some of the muscle off the bone. A year ago. Having sex with my boyfriend. So now, I have to go to physical therapy, and pay my copay, in order to fix what was literally torn apart, with no help from the person responsible. He's got a line of women waiting for him to take care of his responsibilities from having sex with them. I, on the other hand, get to deal with what I am left with on my own. A scarred heart, and an insulting sex injury that has made me walk funny for a year. I guess I need to add no more men with litters of children to my dating rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment