This is so true and quite sad when we rotate our social lives or our happiness around a man.
Excerpt from 'The World's Worst Boyfriends' by Wendy WassersteinShare
Some general rules apply here. First of all, the worst boyfriends are not, on the surface, the meanest boyfriends. Most girls don't meet Bluebeard on a first date and think, 'sure, he's a little nasty and a little sly, but he's really furry, fuzzy, and cute' . Mean is simple. It's the more complicated stuff that's hazy.
There are very nice men who will happily spend twenty years taking you out to dinner twice a week, to the seashore on summer weekends, and on annual fall leaf-peeping tours of New England, yet when you timidly bring up 'moving forward', they explain that they are just beginning to make real progress in therapy, you need to be patient and give them some more time, they really love you but there are a few things they need to work out still. Think of the head cold sweet Nathan Detroit gave to Adelaide in Guys and Dolls . She had a permanent case of " La Grippe" from getting off the train to Niagara fourteen times.
What distinguishes the contestants in the W.B.E. ( Worst Boyfriends Ever) Olympics is their ability to wreak emotional havoc. Where once there was calm, now there is constant tumult and turmoil. Today is Tuesday - that means he likes me. Tuesday is our good day. Especially if I haven't seen him since Saturday. I wonder if I'll ever get to see him on Wednesday. I guess I ought to prepare. I'll cancel the doctor, the ballet, and the drink with that third available man from the survey. I have to keep my nights open. Just in case.
Another distinguishing trait of worst boyfriends is their ' Dear Occupant' behaviour. In other words, they don't do anything as obvious as raise their voices. They don't stamp their feet or throw toast. They simply decide that you have ceased to exist ( poof! no more! all gone!). Fear of intimacy is understandable; being treated like junk mail is insufferable.
Triangles. Ask a worst boyfriend and he'll admit that the triangle is his favorite configuration. There's safety and torture in isosceles. A triangle means there's always another angle who's less threatening ( or more threatening), prettier and smarter ( or less pretty and less smart). Contrary to popular belief and geometric theory, it's easier to deal with hexagonists. Then you're just 'e pluribus unum' - one out of many. Which is to say, he's clearly a philanderer and you're maybe long-suffering but otherwise clearly perfect.
The worse the boyfriend, the more stunning your American Express bill. Since the worst boyfriends have keen and critical eyes, you have to shine for them, dress for them, coif for them, and in California, liposuct for them. And there's nothing like primping for an ininterested party. Consider the case of the wretched Mathilde in Stendhal's The Red and the Black. She had her daddy, the marquis, offer her beloved Julien a fortune and a title just so he'd like her a little bit. No dice - he still preferred Madame de Renal. But, of course, Mathilde was an extremist. She buried the head of her worst boyfriend.
Obviously, the worst boyfriends, like Julien, can cause disastrous side effects. Low self-esteem, low energy, low humor, in fact low everything except calorie intake are standard symptoms of a W.B.E. relationship. And it spirals. " Oh God, will all my boyfriends be worst boyfriends? Do I do something that attracts the worst boyfriends? Do they give one another my number?" Finally there's the ultimate self-recrimination: "If I were really good, I wouldn't have a worst boyfriend."
Forget it! The point is, it's not our fault. It's theirs. They've been this way for centuries. Worst boyfriends are not a new phenomenon. Six healthy gals in a row all thought they could change Henry VIII. ( Henry, by the way, is only a semifinalist in the W.B.E. Olympics. He has points deducted for [1] actually marrying the ladies and [2] being happy for a time.)
