I like to think that I am a somewhat rational person. A hopeless romantic, yes. But I do like to think I can see the writing on the wall and know when to hightail it out of a situation that is not working out.
After all, I’ve got three ex’s painted on the side of me. I look like I was an ace fighter pilot in the Big War. Three spouses downed in the conflict, all because something wasn’t working out.
Now, if you think I’m going to trip down that primrose path some more, I’m not. At least not directly. Rather, this is about my own naivety when caught up in a relationship that was not only on the rocks, but hard aground.
I now realize that the other half of the crew had already jumped in the lifeboat and headed for emotional safety some time before. But for some reason I kept baling, even though there was no saving the S.S. Marriage. She had foundered, going down by the head (there is a joke in there somewhere, I just know it).
Unhappily never after... the camera tells all.
You’d think a guy like me would know when to jump ship. Obviously, I’ve done it before, and not just in those situations where the seemingly happy couple had signed on the dotted line only years before, promising “til death do us part.”
If nothing else, I am not known for holding onto hopeless situations. Not in my personal or working life. I am usually the first to yell “man overboard,” me being the man.
But for some reason, I was smitten in my last marriage. Not with the other person, mind you. I was smitten instead by the idea that we could still somehow be friends after things fell apart.
O.K., quit laughing. I know now that this is damned near impossible, until perhaps years later. But it sounded like a good idea at the time. After all, we still owned a house together. I was in no hurry to scurry. I didn’t know what I wanted to do quite frankly. At the time, I thought I might meet an exotic woman from Italy (you know who you are) and move there. Or I’d move back to Seattle, or just stay put right where I was.
At least for a couple years. As I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was in half of the house, she was in the other. We even managed to celebrate our 1st unniversary together at the place we had gotten married.
I know, kind of sick huh? I might as well be porking her mother at the same time. It’s not what sane people do. You don’t live in the same house as your ex. It’s not natural. It’s not right. But in Hooterville, Florida it seemed perfectly normal. Like being in the hills of West Virginia, but with palm trees.
As I said, famously naive. I can’t help but laugh at it all now. I should have legally changed my last name at the divorce proceeding to “Stupid.” For that’s what I was.
Initially, it wasn’t so bad. We laughed about some of the times we had. Before long, she was back to dating one of her ex-boyfriends who she was supposed to have married long ago. Me, I went back out on the dating circuit, putting my profile up on several web sites, just to see if any beautiful fish were lured by the bait I was dangling. The tackle would come later on. 🙂
We had rules in the house regarding bringing our respective catches back home. Neither of us was allowed to bring a date to the house if the other was there. Seems simple enough. But soon, my roomie wanted to spend the knife with the night guy. Sorry, flip that. Spend the night with the knife guy, her intended one-time future ex-husband.
Well fair enough. True, I couldn’t do the dance at the house, but what the heck, I had met a redhead on plentyoffish.com who I was intrigued with so off I went to the Orlando part of Florida, letting her have the house.
I never got much action in Kissimmee, largely because she wanted to bring in her pinch hitting gal pal into the game and be a real swinger, while I just wanted to get into the box and have a few at bats.
Well, there we go. I struck out, she made a quick home run and I was out the cost of dinner, a hotel and gas. It was a definite shutout.
Funny, but the real rub in the whole living together thing wasn’t about us doing the hokey-pokeme with someone else. It was all about the usual source of friction – work.
We were still intertwined in our performance world. There were too many obligations on the horizon that we both had a stake in. The only difference was that I just wanted to just get through them and she wanted her usual control.
Looking back I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that everything blew up where it first started – in Key West. That December, all hell broke loose and I still am pretty sure that the earth shook, the heavens opened up, and just for a moment, judgement day was upon us.
Well, judgement day for me. I was found guilty of nearly everything and right then and there, the friendship, the cohabitation, the B.S. that I could ever be friends with an ex-wife (not an ex-whatever, I am still friends with some of them) and the sympathy sex ended. Thankfully.
This nonsense of a relationship once blessed by the State of Florida and Mickey Mouse (poetic), had blissfully come to an end.
My stint in the naive-y was over. It was one screwed up relationship from the very start, that’s for sure. Thankfully, it all came crashing down around us and within a week, I had finally moved out.
In the Emerald city, back where I belong, smiling at my innocence, cursing at the divining rod between my legs, and my once desperate need to be part of the naive-ity scene,
– Robb