My 8 year-old daughter jumped on my bed. I cried.
We tried to do a puzzle together. I cried.
I attempted to get dressed after standing naked and wet by the shower door for 12 minutes because I smelled his body wash which he cruelly left in the shower and I cried.
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| Who knew Matterhorn smelled like lost love? |
After the bed and the puzzle incident, my insanely intelligent daughter started keeping an eye on me. So when she caught me standing by the shower bawling over the scent of Old Spice, I knew the jig was up.
I had to tell her, but I had to be tactful. I couldn't just yell "Guess which asshole just ditched us!?" so I tried explaining things to her like my therapist had advised.**
**Yes- that means I'd already talked to my therapist a few months back about how best to explain things to my daughter because I was already done with the relationship. I tried to convey in my previous post that I'm pretty sure I broke up with Assface months ago- that doesn't mean we can't join together and feel sorry for me right now. Also: I had already told my daughter's therapist because I wanted ideas from her about how best to deal with such a delicate sitch. Additionally: there's nothing wrong with my 8 year old having a therapist. It's called prevention over treatment, and if more people tried it then I wouldn't have to hear an ambulance whiz by every 2 minutes to resuscitate another pregnant, STD-ridden 12 year old, who just had a heart-attack because she exerted herself trying to reach her diabetes meds.
So I tried to mesh together the advice from our two shrinks: sometimes two people fall in love as boyfriend and girlfriend and everything goes really well for a while, but then they realize that they love each other more as really good buddies and decide to go their separate ways. That way, no one ends up really upset and everyone can stay super good friends.
Such. A. Load. Of. Shit.
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| Pretty sure this guy could have phrased it better. |
This is what I said in my mind: Sometimes two people are really into each other and like getting it on, so they move in together to save on cash and inadvertently involve a sweet little girl. Everything feels like it's going well for a while, but then the mommy realizes she's wasting all her pretty (and the few years she has left to snag Mr. Boat Shoes) on a boyfriend who has zero motivation, makes barely enough cash to keep mommy stocked on rum, and likes to talk about his feelings. The boyfriend simultaneously realizes that the mommy more closely resembles a robot than a human when it comes to expressing feelings or emotions. (Right here I'd like to point out that I'd rather have a non-whiny robot reppin' me in almost any situation rather than some emotional chick who cares if her boyfriend had a rough day or can't relate to an article in the New Yorker.) That's when they realize that they make awesome roommates but they don't love each other like that anymore and decided to go their separate ways. That way the mommy doesn't hurt the boyfriend physically and break him emotionally and the boyfriend can start saving his meager earnings again. All of this makes the little girl really, really sad and the mommy feels like shit for that. But the mommy also secretly hopes that the little girl is going to one day make use of all this pain by using it as material in her essay for early acceptance into Harvard, where the little girl will go on to fulfill all the broken dreams the mommy once had for herself.
