On [has] been

He is not my forever mate.

I think I figured that out some time between our second date and now. The first two dates were really great. But then again, drunk me likes most things.

I'm realizing that there is a lot of stuff he hates. (I don't like hate. I think we shouldn't hate so much. I really only hate a few things. Toe-walkers and mouth-breathers, mostly.)

Fat people, for instance. One of the things he likes about me is that I'm skinny. Great. Flash forward seven years, to the birth of our first child and subsequent divorce based on the baby-weight that I haven't had a chance to lose.

He also hates wiggling. R once told me that me and his six-year old self would have gotten along famously because he once told his mom that "if you aren't moving, it doesn't count." I wonder what kind of strange six-year old snuggler he was.  I wiggle while we're snuggling, or before we fall asleep.I'll be adjusting, slowly shifting myself into sleep, and he'll say, "Just sleep!" as though I'm that obedient. The other night he said that and I kept wiggling long after I was comfortable just to annoy him.

When we're watching tv, if I say something - anything - he'll grab the remote, pause it, then go "shh!" at me and rewind to before I talked. If you want to hang out alone, do that. If you want to hang out with me, you're going to have to deal with side commentary. Especially when you've seen the episode at least once before.

He makes his bed every morning. Not usually a red flag, but if you know me, you know that this might present problems. Although, for the last week, I've been trying to at least return my bed to some semblance of order and have been successful. Worse than the making of the bed is the sheet tucking. He tucks it into the bottom like you're in a hotel. We switched spots one night for television-screen viewing purposes and I went to pull the sheets out and he screamed. Actually yelled "NO!"

But to be honest, it's not any of those things that proved to be the deal breaker. Minus the remote aggression and the fat-people-hating, there are compromises that exist. I'm a very adaptive person. I'll mimic your habits, tune in to your needs, find myself a niche in your life and fill it pleasantly.

It really ended for me when he moved my toothbrush.

I don't like the way he talks to me. I find his patronizing attitude frustrating. We argued about how your credit score is calculated and I found myself backing down because I wasn't 100% sure. I should have held my ground. I wasn't wrong.

So when he told me that he moved my toothbrush under his cabinet because he didn't want it to get dusty, I got mad. That's not even a smooth lie. I hope by "dusty" he meant "noticed by the other girl I'm bringing home" because that's how I translated it.

I woke up at his place at 5:57 that morning. I wandered around in the pre-dawn, unable to close my eyes again. I stood in the kitchen and watched the sun rise on another wonderful day. It was a moment of utter calm.


Nobody puts my toothbrush under the sink...

(...unless it's to prevent it from being literally contaminated by strange things. I personally don't like exposed toothbrushes, but that is beside the point.)


We went out together, rode the elevator in silence, and I kissed him goodbye.


Also, sidenote: Band of Horses is awesome. So awesome.