I’m An Asshole In This Relationship

I swear I’m not trying to be one.

When it comes to my relationship with Thomas, I think I’m an asshole.

I mean, I might be.

No…no, I’m pretty sure I’m an asshole.

Thomas and I have been dating since last summer. We hit it off instantly. He is the G.O.A.T. of sex. I don’t know how he does it but damn…he knows a woman’s body.

The guy adores me. You know the meme that says things like, “Find someone who looks at you like this dog looks at a barbecue”? Thomas looks at me that way. He texts me in the morning telling me how excited he is to see me later that day. I walk into the room and his eyes light up. Even after eight months, he’s smitten.

A little too smitten. I push back on his talks of the future and integrating our kids. I am in no rush for my kids to meet anyone that I’m dating. As far as I’m concerned, they can meet the guy when they’re in college. When I’m with my kids, I’m all about them. I don’t want to divide my attention with someone else when I already have limited time with my kids as it is.

It’s exhausting pushing back on him. No bro, I’m not giving you a key to my place. I’ve pointed out how he has an Anxious Attachment whereas I’ve got an Avoidant one. The more he wants, the more I pull away.

Why am I not giving in? Because after I moved out, I sat him down and laid out all the ways he’s not boyfriend material. Not that I wanted to break up, but that if he wanted me to commit, he’d have to make changes.

First, Thomas needs to formally divorce. When we met, they were separated and she lived elsewhere. The Wife has since moved back home, thus negating any separation. He hasn’t filed any paperwork yet. He’s motivated now that I told him it’s a deal-breaker on any commitment from me.

Then there’s the issue of his job. I don’t mean to sound like a gold-digger. I don’t make that much money, just enough to be comfortable. And my salary is double his income. My excuse is that after I had kids, my career took a back seat because my then-husband was never around to help raise them. I needed jobs that allowed me to coast while I managed our son’s autism treatments and general childcare.

What’s Thomas’ excuse for being almost poverty-level in one of the most expensive places to live? I pause as I type this because there is no excuse. He wasn’t motivated and enjoys being respected at his job. Dude, respect doesn’t pay the bills.

Next up is his living situation. At his age, it’s absurd that he’s renting a dump near the beach. Rent is absurdly low but that’s not an excuse to not push for a better career with a higher income. What happens when the landlord wants to sell the place? He’s fucked.

This brings me to the next problem: Thomas is a fucking idiot with money but thinks he’s brilliant.

I don’t expect divorced men to have a mansion. I was impressed when I dated Marc and he had a little condo; at least it was his and he paid for it after dealing with his ex-wife’s debt. What did Thomas do with all his money over the years? He sunk it into his Jeep. We’re talking over a hundred thousand dollars worth of upgrades. What. The. Fuck.

Plenty of guys have a second “fun car”. Their primary vehicle is something sensible and not gas-guzzling given the nature of California traffic. Not Thomas. His main vehicle looks straight off the Jurassic World set. It’s dusty and I told him I would no longer climb into it like a fucking douchebag while wearing heels and a dress. Get a fucking grownup car instead of dumping money into something that isn’t conducive to real life.

We’re going on Month 4 since I gave this spiel to Thomas. His insistence on saying how we’ll be together is grating on me. Despite me telling him that he can date other people and I wouldn’t turn anyone down if they asked me, Thomas would be utterly devastated if he knew I was also dating Sean.

I hate feeling like I’m cheating on someone who isn’t my boyfriend.

I’m snippy and irritated. The final straw was when I met for drinks with a girlfriend.

“Why did it take you to motivate him to want to improve his income and career,” she yells at me. “You didn’t need anyone to motivate you. I didn’t need anyone to motivate me. No one should need someone else to motivate them to get their shit together.”

Cynthia isn’t wrong. Why did he choose to be a grownup only upon my insistence and the risk of losing me? It’s great that he’s jumping on managing it all now, but what does that say to his character?

I stammer, “But this guy adores me. He’d give me a kidney!”

She shrieks, “I’LL GIVE YOU A KIDNEY!”

And this is why girlfriends matter. Perspective.

This ruminating causes me to be more and more bitchy.

I understand that Thomas wants to make sure his ex-wife is capable of living on her own. It doesn’t help that she hasn’t accepted the request for a divorce.

He won’t get a lawyer (you know, money and all) but he doesn’t understand how child support is a calculation determined by the courts or that he will owe alimony (he insists he doesn’t because he paid for her car. That’s not how that works.) It also means the whole thing will take longer as he navigates the convoluted court system.

I paid a flat-rate mediator to handle my divorce. Money was an issue for me too. I had four streams of income that year just to cover it, but that’s how motivated I was to make it happen.

While I don’t care about his not-ex-wife, I do care that this is an affair. He doesn’t treat it as such since they lived apart and he dated dozens of other women. But I went through the hell that is divorce. I want someone else who has as well. It’s not my job to hand-hold someone else.

Last weekend he had a party for mutual friends of theirs.

And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Am I the camel? Fuck, I need to rethink this.

First off, even small barbecues cost money. If getting divorced and having your shit together matters, then you wouldn’t host an afternoon party. I understand it was pushed upon him by friends however any adult can say, “sorry guys, I just can’t do that right now.”

Secondly, it was at the dumpster condo he shares with the not-ex-wife. Since his friends don’t fully know the extent of their breakup, they might as well have hosted the party together.

My blood is boiling. Why am I emotionally invested in a guy who is hosting parties with his not-ex-wife? Thomas would argue that it was his party, however, my response would be, “it was with mutual friends in the house that you both live in and she attended. That makes it a joint party.”

I have arguments over this in my head. Meanwhile, he continues to send me texts about how he adores me and thanks to my patience while he gets things done on my “list”.

This is where I’m a total and utter asshole:

For Valentine’s Day, he wants a day all about me. Thomas says I deserve it, it’s been ages since a guy has done that for me, blah blah. His original plan was for us to spend the day “in the mountains” (what the fuck does that mean?) trekking in his shitty man-vehicle. Then he wanted to come back, dress up, and go somewhere fancy. I told him there’s no planet where I can spend a day trekking, then take 2 hours to get ready while he’s hanging out, and then go out to dinner.

He conceded and said that he’d take me out to a fancy dinner another night.

This plan sounds fucking awful. And it’s all under the guise that it’s a day “all about Jen”. If he had said, “I think this would be fun to do” then I’m on board. But if it’s to make me happy and dote on me all day, then why the fuck are we doing something I wouldn’t want to do?

Pretty sure that any Medium reader of my content would know that doing nature crap in a vehicle I hate for hours on end is akin to gouging my eyes with a fork.

I’m an asshole. I have a guy who adores me and is excited to spend a whole day with me doing things he thinks I’ll enjoy. But it just makes me mad that he never once considered what I would want to do if it was “my” day. Thomas is so excited and thinks he’s so brilliant for this idea, I can’t crush it by telling him that this isn’t my idea of fun.

This brings back flashbacks to his shitty Christmas gift. I showed it to a friend and her immediate reaction was, “Oh hell no. Just no.” It was a digital picture frame. A fucking one hundred dollar digital picture frame.

My MO in life and this house has been to have no clutter. To add, don’t give me a gift that requires me to do work. If I have to search and install an app, configure the device, constantly add pictures to it…forget it. I’m out. I would have been happier with a $5 mug.

For the record, my gift to him was awesome. We had a budget and I stuck to it. Do you know what I got him? A food processor. Why? Because he said, “I wish I had a food processor.” In return, I got a fucking project that sits in the box because I can’t return it anywhere for store credit.

This asshole behavior of mine is spilling into every interaction. Thomas’ childhood pet was put to sleep and I brushed him off that I was too busy with meetings (in my defense, I really did have meetings). He sends me texts and I don’t reply for hours. I’m angry at myself for falling for a fixer-upper of a guy while also dating someone else with a wonky dick.

What do I do?

Do I stick with Thomas, knowing he adores me and he’s doing his alleged best to progress things forward?

Do I ditch him because what-the-fuck-this-guy-doesn’t-even-realize-he’s-a-hot-mess?

Neither option makes me happy. Eventually, I’ll need to have another “talk” with him. But it makes me such a douchebag to play myself up as a prize if he meets the bare-bones minimum checklist items. It’s emotionally draining.

And so, as I’ve done in the past, I kick the can down the road for me to deal with another time.