Can I Outsource A Breakup?

I’d sooner continue a bad relationship than deal with drama.

When Vance and I began talking, it was an immediate connection. Intelligent, funny, and his deep voice could sell me Amway in a heartbeat.

We have fun together. I got what I wanted: someone who made more money than I did (because I can’t pay for the majority of things like I did with Thomas while I recoup divorce funds), made me laugh, was a parent and took charge.

He’s a 5 out of 10 in the bedroom. That’s a whole other topic. At best I could bring him up to a 6.5 but there’s only so much you can do with men beyond their forties. You can’t turn me into a dominatrix or be into partner swapping if that’s not my style. We have our opinions that make someone a 10 in the bedroom; what I think is a 3 could be a 9 to someone else. To him, I’m the best sex of his life. My years of whoring have paid off in experience.

I long for someone who can rival my banter and ability to debate dumb stuff. If you think The Batman was a good movie, I’ll battle for hours. I can best anyone that the best Star Wars movie is Rogue One and that Diet Pepsi is better than Diet Coke. These are superficial topics and are fun to discuss.

With Vance, a light topic edges towards character assassination.

Unlike most people with kids that I’ve dated, Vance wasn’t married or living with his daughter’s mom. She got pregnant and they agreed to co-parent after some discord. He only sees his daughter every other weekend and every Wednesday. He has never been a full-time parent, nor has he experienced living a complete family life with anyone and then severing it in half.

When mentioning how my ex-husband and I share streaming accounts, Vance went on a tirade about how he didn’t understand why ex-couples shared streaming accounts. He prattled about how if there’s a login issue one person will have to contact the other person, wait for them to do a password reset, and it’s a whole big thing. “If you can’t afford ten bucks a month for your own account, that’s a whole other problem.”

His stance is ex-spouses who share streaming accounts use it as an excuse to stay closer to each other. “You won’t change my mind on that,” he said before I even replied.

Vance has never shared a TV, a household, or a Netflix account. He doesn’t get it.

I explained that my husband Joseph and I would pay extra to stay on the same account because it’s not about money. We’re trying to ease the strain of this divorce on our traumatized kids. If they watch Thor Ragnarok at their dad’s house in the morning and pause mid-way, they can go to my house and pick up at the exact same spot. My children won’t know what episode of The Simpsons they last saw at my house and find it when going to their dad’s house. Also, if they try to explain a movie they saw with Joseph, I can go into his viewing history to see what they meant because kids never remember movie titles.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Vance replies. Bro, don’t be so quick to say that I can’t change your mind.

His quick judgments never end. Despite working from home for seven years, Vance is the ultimate extrovert. He’s a VP of Sales and is on Zoom calls all day long. He says only the women at his company keep the camera off because they don’t want to do their hair and makeup (cue my blood boiling at his assumption). He insists people who say they have anxiety going back into an office are making excuses to avoid work. “How did they manage to go in every day before the Covid?” he says, confident there’s no reply.

I reply, “You’re an extrovert. Two and a half years of being secluded for us introverts was a big deal. To throw me back into an office setting gives me massive anxiety. We sucked it up before because of the consequences of not going to work meant unemployment. But now that we’ve experienced at-home life away from mindless watercooler talk, going back is somewhat terrifying.”

If your job has been remote for over seven years, you don’t get an opinion about the rest of us returning to in-person life.

I continue. “At my company, the women are fine being on camera. It’s the programmers that hate it. And I do as well. We just want to be left alone to work. I don’t like being seen when I’m attending an all-hands meeting and I hate being seen on camera in general because it’s an actual spotlight on me on other people’s screens.”

Again, Vance accepts my reply. I don’t think I changed his mind but at least he stopped.

His snap judgments hit closer to home at times. When out for a drink, I confess to him that I’m struggling because the only times I’ve truly fallen for someone is when I didn’t care about the future of the relationship so I show my authentic self. I explained that I’m stuck in a dilemma of wanting to dazzle and impress because I like him, but that I want this to last so I know I need to show my true self.

Vance’s reply was out of left field. He berated me for going into relationships with the bad intention of not wanting them to last. I was scolded for my attitude when jumping into relationships with those guys. He assumed all situations where people fall in love are when there is a dating intent that will lead to a long-term marriage. In my case, those relationships started with the intention of being short-term flings.

I was so stunned by his response to my moment of vulnerability that I didn’t explain that not all relationships start with a clean slate and a desire to walk down the aisle in a white dress.

We got into a heated debate over the appropriateness of having a phone on the table during a date. For a fine-dining situation with someone new? Of course, try to keep the phone away. But if we’re already dating and sitting at a bar, keeping a phone out isn’t a big deal if you’re not actively using it. I’m a mother; I’ve had too many experiences of missed calls that were child-related emergencies. Keeping it out eases my anxiety that all is well with the kids.

Vance rants that it’s rude. He doesn’t understand for high-anxiety people, seeing the phone not light up means I’m not checking my bag every few minutes for a missed call. “You’re telling me you can’t hear your phone vibrate inside your purse?” he retorts.

Dear men: much like pregnancy, you don’t get an opinion on my auditory capabilities of a device in my purse. Until you carry a bag with you every day, you can shut your pie hole. No, I can’t hear a phone vibrate in my purse. My new phone is so big, it doesn’t fit into half my bags anymore anyway. I’m not a guy; I can’t keep my phone in my pockets while sitting down. Where else should I put my phone if I don’t have a pocket or a purse to hold it in?

The final straw came this weekend.

When driving back after meeting his friends, I ask Vance how long he dated his daughter’s mother before she got pregnant. I didn’t need the full details; I know it’s a long story and I don’t give a shit to hear it. I just wanted to know the number of years, months, or weeks before she peed on a stick.

Vance rants for twenty minutes about how he’s tired of explaining it (on dates) because it’s convoluted and long. He goes on and on about how they dated for two years with a brief breakup. He prattles about how his parents died during that time and how he had to go to court after his daughter was born to have rights. He’s irritated I asked.

“I just wanted to know how long you were together before she got pregnant. That’s it.” I tell him. Vance launches another tirade about assumptions people make and how does the timeline even matter? His deep voice getting agitated triggers my fight-or-flight response.

“If I got pregnant now after six weeks of dating that’s a whole other ball game than if I got pregnant after years of dating. It’s a completely different pregnancy experience and how you learn about someone. The time frame is all I wanted to know.” It’s all I can mumble.

The subject is changed but my brain has shut down. Vance is happily blabbing about the real estate market and I’m in “mm hmm, yup” mode while looking out the passenger window. If he had said, “this is a delicate subject and I’d rather we talk about it when we can sit down to focus on it”, then I’d understand. Instead, he immediately flipped his lid and made assumptions about my single question.

I briefly wish for Thomas’ patience and gentle demeanor.

Yeah. This relationship has to end.

The problem? I feel like I need a justified reason and every reason I can provide is how someone could describe dating me. He’s judgmental. He’s aggressive when stating opinions. He’s very set in his ways.

Good lord, I’m the absolute worst to date. I consider sending flowers to anyone who boned my obnoxious self. I believed that I needed someone who could stand up to my strong personality. Now I realize I need someone who can temper and soothe my personality. They need to be the calm to my wild.

That evening with my girlfriends, I explain Vance’s red flags. They express concern over his behavior given the short timeframe. I say that Vance by text is the funniest, sweetest, most amazing human. I adore him by text. In person, I want to punch him in the throat.

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” Julia tells me. I show her a picture on my phone.

“You know who he resembles? Joseph. You have a type.”

I look at my picture. What. The. Fuck.

She’s right. Vance has an uncanny resemblance to my ex-husband Joseph. We pass my phone to another friend who makes the same guess.

I yell, “I can’t date a guy who looks like my ex-husband! I promise every guy I’ve dated so far has been blond or has a shaved head!” Inside, I think how I also can’t date someone who behaves like my ex-husband.

My friends put the final nail in the coffin. While I have fun with Vance, this has disaster written all over it. I’m the worst with breakups. If the person is nice, then I hate being the bearer of bad news. If they’re a dick like Vance, then I’m scared of his reaction.

Vance is traveling this week for work. He’s already sending me texts with pictures from his friend’s daughter’s birthday. “What could have been!” he writes under a snapshot of us while holding his friend’s baby. He’s right. We look like a legit couple.

I also see Joseph in that picture. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Can’t I get someone else to break up for me? Why can I hire a hitman to end a life but not to end a relationship?

I can’t do it the next time I see him. The last time I saw him (when he flipped out over the baby mama question), he later confided his insecurities and confessed I was only the second person he’s ever told. You can’t peace out on a guy immediately after he lays out his vulnerable side.

Since Vance was an asshole to me when I had been vulnerable to him, I teach him by example. Later, I text him, “Thank you for the lovely afternoon. And I appreciate you sharing stuff with me, I totally get how it’s rough to share stuff like that.” Not the most poetic prose coming from a writer but I was driving so you get what you get. It’s the thought that counts.

My anxiety is at an all-time high. Dating is easy. It’s the breaking up that’s hard. Why doesn’t Uber offer a breakup service after delivering my overpriced Greek meal?