I hate my friends’ exes more than my friends do. I am under the impression that my well-rounded hatred is dialectical, calculated and absolutely accurate. It is a hatred that is so understandable and approachable that I cannot comprehend how a name that shall not be named is somehow once again crossing their phone screen and exiting their lips.
Perhaps I am being dramatic. It is just exhausting to continually hear and entertain the mediocrity of male partners who could not even reach the bar that was already lowered to the floor. My friends are the most beautiful, intelligent, kind and worthy women who deserve the world and a partner who tries to give it to them.
I have been dating the love of my life for over two years. My boyfriend is genuinely everything that a good partner and man should be. He is supportive, passionate, kind, loving, sensitive and consistent. He is that perfect love interest in a rom-com, only better.
There was no fixing, tweaking or training involved to “make” him this way. He just is who he is. He loves how he loves. I am not saying that we never disagree or that we do not have to set boundaries because, at the end of the day, we are two different people from different places just trying to love each other.Â
Misunderstandings are normal. However, it is important to sincerely understand that in a good relationship, misunderstandings do not require “fixing” the other person involved. If you are so incompatible that “fixing” is required, the answer is simple: Thank you, next. My favorite saying is, “If he wanted to, he would.”Â
How did we ever even accept the notion that it was a woman’s responsibility to make a man into a good partner? Why isn’t being a good partner his sole responsibility?
My entire life, I have been surrounded by women who put up with less than they deserve. Excusing and enabling unacceptable behavior because either their partner just does not know better or they are worried they cannot find better.
Somehow, from experiencing all of this, I had convinced myself that men had a completely different brain. I sincerely thought men could not handle certain domestic tasks or the particular needs of their spouse or partner because they were wired differently. How could it possibly be fair for the women in my life to take up the taxing emotional labor of compensating for their terrible male partners on top of their own stuff?
I became so frustrated with the entitled men in my life that I swore to be alone forever over putting up with any of that. I swore I would only date for the hell of it. I think a woman can and should do whatever makes her happy. The ultimate dream for many may be in marriage or the home; for other women, myself included, it is not. My dream has never been to become a wife or mother, but to become a successful lawyer and die as a bachelorette in a gorgeous home, single and happy. My nightmare: a marriage with someone who could care less, leaving life as the wife of a man who resented me and as the mother of kids I regret.Â
As an adult, my hatred and fear of unbalanced relationships continue to persevere. I am seeing my friends, even my sister, leave and keep returning to the men who hurt them. Typically, there is this fear that an ex will leave for someone better. And if someone else did give their ex a chance, good riddance and good luck!Â
My entire life, I have observed relationships that should have ended but instead stuck around. Women who deserve better need to know that there absolutely is better. You all are cordially invited to join my anti-mediocre-exes club, where we hate to the fullest potential and support locking that terrible ex out of your heart to make room for someone who actually deserves a place in it.
On your way out, your ex, through tears, might say they can change or “be better,” but if they were capable of giving you what you wanted or needed and willingly chose not to this whole time, their better is not — and never was— available to you. Anything they employ to manipulate you into staying is just to excuse their poor treatment and terribleness. Do not enable it. After all, you cannot spell “excuse” without “ex.”
Heartbreak sucks, it does. But being miserable in love lasts for a moment too long in a life already too short. Do not waste one more day, one more second or one more breath on someone who never deserved you.
You deserve to be loved how you love. You deserve to be cared for how you care for others.Â
Stop getting back with your unpleasant, menacing, incapable, childish, stinky and incompetent exes. Stop giving chances to people who don’t deserve a second, third, fourth or especially fifth chance. Please, for your sake and mine, move on.