Breakup Date

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
~Semisonic, in Closing Time

Even when you know a relationship must end, the actual ending is never easy (at least I like to think that even cruel heartless people suffer too, although they may not show it).

When you are doing the ending, the power is exhilarating, but also a burden - for those of us who are at all compassionate. When the end is done to you, it doesn’t feel so hot. In fact, you might even cry, experience rage, beg for another chance or otherwise vent your feelings.

Whether the breakup is expected or unexpected, it HURTS.

Even more challenging is the “I’m torn” breakup. You may have been putting it off or avoiding the inevitable. You may think it’s possible for change, so you hang in a little longer. Or you may really love, adore and cherish certain things about a person – but other things are just too intolerable.

What makes the scales tip? A new relationship, an affair, kids graduating, death of a parent or a cat, an inheritance, a new job, an epiphany. Something in us breaks and we know we can’t go on the same as before.

You may look for a partner with different characteristics from your narcissistic wasbund or materialistic mate, promising yourself “I’ll never put up with that again.” A new relationship holds promise, until we are reminded that everyone has flaws. It’s just a matter of which flaws you can accept, and live with.

In the end, we are left right back where we started, with ourselves.

Can’t break up with yourself.

Just try to break even.

Dating Children

When dating, it’s natural to want to put your best foot forward. This means different things to different people. For me, it means getting all dolled up, smoking some dope and buying some condoms. Kidding. An ex-librarian like me cannot be that exciting, you may muse. Suffice it to say I fall somewhere in the middle.

Other people view children as exciting pawns in relationship-building. My children used to play chess, but now they have become chess pieces in someone’s dating game. She is a botox beotch.

This botox beotch (uncapitalized name to signify insignificance) seemed friendly enough (almost too friendly?) when she was pumping me for information about my husband. Now that that’s settled, why not pump the kids too? I call this behavior Dating My Kids With A Disturbing Ulterior Motive In Mind. Most adults can guess what that motive is. If not, stop for a moment and think. Some might call it a biological instinct, which it is…but use caution, please!

My daughter may swoon over the leopard-print manicure you provide her, or the skimpy bikini you buy her to wear in your pool (with her real mother she must wear a rashguard while swimming – you just helped undermine me). My sons may admire your video game collection. Your smelly dog may provide limited entertainment, and your dinners surely rival my cooking, I’m proud to admit – but knock yourself out all you want. You are absolutely nobody. And you always will be. Dating My Children cements your status a rung below Snow White’s wicked stepmother. They wouldn’t even write a fairy tale about you.

Dating My Kids, botox beotch, belies one fundamental principle: you may date them all you want, but you will never be their mother. Stick to your own mussed-up family, your own 2-1/2 kids who are floundering. You can have my husband. Believe me, he’s ALL yours. But get your sticky, stinky, dating claws out of my kids.

As the saying goes, pick up somebody your own size. And the guy you’re picking is as small, and as green with envy, as you are. Check it out.



bb has herself (in) a pickle

Getting Married Again - Rebuttal

A Response to "Getting Married Again" (blogpost dated 1 September)

by FIERY Fiona

Didn’t we all marry fictional characters the first (or second) time around?? Most of us tried to fit a real character into our fictional idea of what we wanted a marriage, husband or wife to be - that’s usually our first mistake! 

My daughter wants me to get married again so she can be in the wedding - the fantasy of a Prince and Princess - thanks Disney! (Be careful! Disney has a bad habit of killing off the Mother. I still haven’t recovered from watching Bambi when I was little!)

Let’s look at what our next fairytale marriage might look like. OK, OK! We’re All done with the fairytale at this point! Perhaps there’s a marriage that we admire? I think most of us can come up with one of those!  Most of us will look to a couple who has been married for a long time (20+ years?) and admire how they made it there.  Like the couple I ran into one day at the coffee shop on a quiet Sunday morning - not so quiet after my 3 children came barreling in announcing that they want doughnuts and hot chocolate to anyone who could help them. The couple could not have looked more content sitting on the couch reading the Sunday paper and enjoying their coffee together (no conversation necessary anymore). The only thing better may have been staying in bed together enjoying that paper and first cup of coffee. They smiled at my energetic children and then at me and reassured me that they’ve been there too and it will fly by...so enjoy! Ahhh……the joy of knowing that you made through the first 20 years of marriage and parenthood and came out the other side still together!!

Sure they still have those idiosyncrasies that drive each other crazy - how many times did you have to turn the toilet paper roll around the right way, pick up the dirty clothes next to the laundry hamper or take the empty coffee cups out of the car?? After 20+ years, those idiosyncrasies don’t change or go away, but at some point they become part of that person and part of what you learn to love and appreciate about them.  Those of us who are divorced never came out the other side of that marriage where you learned to love and appreciate each other with all of our faults - and we all have plenty of them!! 

For those of us who are divorced and contemplating whether getting married again is even something that we want, the hurdles can be even more insurmountable than the first (or second) time around. Can you actually trust someone again to “love, honor, respect, protect, obey…”?  The challenge of raising children and step-children together can be more challenging than raising your own children together. Then there are also the unmentionable ex-spouses that never really go away...and as much as we all try to live in an amicable relationship with them, they will always have that special ability to take a perfectly pleasant day and turn it sour with the drop of one quick comment - just because they can. How many different relationships do you really want to try to juggle?? Then again, someone has to keep our beloved therapists in practice!!

In the end though, we all want that one special fictional character to become reality. We want to grow together and enjoy life with someone special so that all those challenges along the way don’t seem so insurmountable. So whoever your fictional character may be - Prince Charming, Cinderella, Mr. Cocoa, or Lemony Snicket - we’ve all created someone that we are looking for to enjoy life with!