Buyer's Remorse
"What do you do when yo' bitch is un-true? / You cut the hooker off and find some-one new..."
I was just thinking about my friend Jeff, a high school friend of mine who has had a pretty rough life. Jeff got his first real girlfriend pregnant just after high school and did the honorable thing and married her. She was a real head case, but when they moved from Florida to Indiana in search of better opportunities, I thought it just might work. But, as usual, my first "gut" instincts were the correct ones. Jeff was working one or two jobs and going to school to learn to repair commercial airline planes. His wife cheated on him and ended things, eventually taking his daughter to live with her and her mom in North Carolina. Jeff was forced to move back to Florida with no family, no job (despite staying up there with enough time to graduate from school near the top of his class), and several extra thousand dollars in debt. His ex did not stay with the guy she cheated on him with long. Now, I am not going to sit here and say his relationship's failure was not at all his fault, but the guy did not deserve this.
Now, this got me to thinking. I know I can't save Jeff's relationship, nor anyone else's for that matter, since my advice is usually ignored more often than traffic laws by Nashville drivers, but perhaps we men should talk amongst our own more. Have you ever seen a man research a car? Most men do days' worth of online research, test drive multiple cars, get tons of written materials read a car magazine (my fave is the Consumer Reports annual auto issue), research financing, etc. What does a man do to pick a wife? He Robert Blakes her -- e.g., screws her in the back of his truck the first night he meets her -- and then has to live with the hoe the rest of his miserable days. In fact, marriage is the contract researched the LEAST by members of the lesser-fair sex. And this needs to stop. And I'm drawing the line right here -- for Jeff, for my dogs out there, and for the world in general.
Of course, the medium is the message. I don't know how to get this information across to my own kind, who generally only uses the internet for sports news and porn (and CLEARLY not in that order), but I'll start with the easiest message -- what NOT to do. If you're in a long term relationship with someone and she does these things, you should be feeling a little "buyer's remorse" right now, and might want to look for a better model. Now, I'm reducing this list to the bare minimum of non-acceptable behavior. The things that, if the state policed marriage like it policed other contracts, would void a marriage as being "against public policy." Here goes.
You should be feeling buyer's remorse if:
1. You have been together for less than two decades, and your wife or significant other only gives you nookie one time or fewer per week (other than when her "special friend" comes to visit).
If she expects you to stay faithful, if she expects you to be around, if she's NOT a porn actress, twice a week is the bare minimum of relations that a man can be expected to deal with. Now, for many couples, this number should be higher. But starting with the bare minumum -- which means I'm assuming the wife has six kids, gets up every morning at 5:30 a.m., works 12 hour days as a coal laborer, cooks dinner six times a week, is a deaf/mute/paraplegic, allergic to latex, and 80 years old -- she should at least find twice a week to clean the man's pipes, on average. If your wife has a headache six nights a week or has her time of the month 14 days a month, you should be having buyer's remorse.
2. You wake up one day and find yourself working for her dad, living in a house on which her parents contributed the down payment or financing, mostly decorated or paid for by money from her folks, and own at least one car which her parents helped you to get.
This one is fairly obvious. Unless you defined the scope of your relationship or amended your marriage vows to make it a three-way bond, mommy and daddy should stay the freak out of your bidness. This is impossible if your well-being is handcuffed to the in-laws. Say she wants a dog. You don't. Her parents have a dog, she loves dogs. Can you put your foot down? Can you even have a fight with her on anything? One mistake, and you're on the street. Men, you've got to cut the umbilical cord early on, lest you wake up one day with no friends, no time to hang out if you could find someone because you've got to meet her daddy next morning for work, being forced to narc on your co-workers, with no desire for life, listening to Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" smoking a cigar the size of Meat Loaf, waiting for either you her parents to keel over. Not acceptable.
3. She spends two or more hours a day talking to her parents, a sibling, a best friend, or someone else who is not you or your seed.
This one is related to my point earlier -- CUT THE CORD EARLY or pay the price. Now, I admit my better half is close to the line on this one, but not quite there. Family members and loved ones especially have a real problem with separating "friend mode" from "guardian mode." In other words, when your wifey tells a loved one who she also thinks of as a friend something in "friend mode," they will still be thinking in "guardian mode," looking to exert some control over your relationship, put their two cents in, etc. Now, the loved one's motives will be pure -- to protect your girl, but, it still doesn't prevent your marriage or LTR from becoming a three-way relationship. When the wife starts her argument to you with "well, my dad thinks you have a problem...," then you should be feeling some buyer's remorse.
4. Every few weeks, you find out she lied to you about ANOTHER thing from her past.
Another no-brainer. Remember that Fresh Prince episode, where Will finds out years into his relationship that his fiancee changed her name? Bingo. Buyer's Remorse set in, and Will the Thrill called off the engagement. This should be you, hero. You dont want to wake up one day three years into your marriage to find out your wife boned double the guys she told you about, is five years older than she said, used to be married to someone else, "altered" a portion or segment of her body, or used to have a frank and beans between her legs. Everyone says "that's not my Sally...," but that's what God made sodium pentothal for. Just kidding. But if you're still in the "Well, here's what really happened" stage of your relationship, and you've been together for a long time, you should be feeling some buyer's remorse.
5. You often think some variant of, "Gee, I'm the one lucky guy who turned a hoe into a housewife!"
"You can't turn a hoe into a housewife..." is more than just a Too $hort or Tupac lyric. It's chapter and verse. Believe that. If you think you've got the magic stick, and we should carve you out as an exception to this rule, go talk to my man Jeff.
6. You have changed a core principle, belief, or characteristic of yourself for HER and not because you actually wanted to do so. In short, you get "Agent Smith-ed."
I had a friend from late high school early college who changed his whole life for a girl. His wedding was the last time I have ever seen or heard from him. We didn't even get a "Thank You" card from the wedding reception. This guy was a pretty genuine guy. He loved basketball, he was very tolerant of others, he had a few beers on occasion, was very smart, and happened to be an agnostic. When he started dating his current wife, we never saw him. He became a hardcore evangelical Protestant just because the girl would not marry him if he did not convert. He quit drinking, and once even criticized me for a premise of Catholic theology that she believed was faulty. He became a totally different person because he put this girl on a pedestal. Which brings me to my point -- he got Smith-ed. As in Agent Smith, from the Matrix, where one touch (one taste, one feel, insert your own colorful metaphor here), turns you into her. If you're smart enough to realize this has happened, you should be having buyer's remorse.
7. You're still whipped by your own parents, and your woman is okay with that.
If you're still emailing or calling your parents once a day, or you are 27, have no job, and they still have not cut you off, or you are in some other way generally whipped by your own parents, it is not the time to enter a LTR with a girl, particularly a controlling or high-maintenance girl, because you are just switching the hand that is pulling your strings. Hey, its all cool to be a submissive once in a while, but you need to have your own identity before you take the plunge, and that's that. If you are marrying a girl because your parents would cut you off if you just moved in with her, because they think that would be "too immoral," then you should be having all kinds of remorse, buyer's or otherwise. Else, you will just be switching from watching HGTV with your mom to attending your wife's tupperware or botox parties. And that's not cool, especially when you become the butt of all your friends' jokes.
Well, that's all that I can think of for now. Most of this comes from the personal experience of my former friends or my friends' former friends, and I just don't want to see it happen to anyone else. And to all you girls out there who think you've found a great marionette to settle down with, think again.
Because a Jeff is a terrible thing to waste.
I was just thinking about my friend Jeff, a high school friend of mine who has had a pretty rough life. Jeff got his first real girlfriend pregnant just after high school and did the honorable thing and married her. She was a real head case, but when they moved from Florida to Indiana in search of better opportunities, I thought it just might work. But, as usual, my first "gut" instincts were the correct ones. Jeff was working one or two jobs and going to school to learn to repair commercial airline planes. His wife cheated on him and ended things, eventually taking his daughter to live with her and her mom in North Carolina. Jeff was forced to move back to Florida with no family, no job (despite staying up there with enough time to graduate from school near the top of his class), and several extra thousand dollars in debt. His ex did not stay with the guy she cheated on him with long. Now, I am not going to sit here and say his relationship's failure was not at all his fault, but the guy did not deserve this.
Now, this got me to thinking. I know I can't save Jeff's relationship, nor anyone else's for that matter, since my advice is usually ignored more often than traffic laws by Nashville drivers, but perhaps we men should talk amongst our own more. Have you ever seen a man research a car? Most men do days' worth of online research, test drive multiple cars, get tons of written materials read a car magazine (my fave is the Consumer Reports annual auto issue), research financing, etc. What does a man do to pick a wife? He Robert Blakes her -- e.g., screws her in the back of his truck the first night he meets her -- and then has to live with the hoe the rest of his miserable days. In fact, marriage is the contract researched the LEAST by members of the lesser-fair sex. And this needs to stop. And I'm drawing the line right here -- for Jeff, for my dogs out there, and for the world in general.
Of course, the medium is the message. I don't know how to get this information across to my own kind, who generally only uses the internet for sports news and porn (and CLEARLY not in that order), but I'll start with the easiest message -- what NOT to do. If you're in a long term relationship with someone and she does these things, you should be feeling a little "buyer's remorse" right now, and might want to look for a better model. Now, I'm reducing this list to the bare minimum of non-acceptable behavior. The things that, if the state policed marriage like it policed other contracts, would void a marriage as being "against public policy." Here goes.
You should be feeling buyer's remorse if:
1. You have been together for less than two decades, and your wife or significant other only gives you nookie one time or fewer per week (other than when her "special friend" comes to visit).
If she expects you to stay faithful, if she expects you to be around, if she's NOT a porn actress, twice a week is the bare minimum of relations that a man can be expected to deal with. Now, for many couples, this number should be higher. But starting with the bare minumum -- which means I'm assuming the wife has six kids, gets up every morning at 5:30 a.m., works 12 hour days as a coal laborer, cooks dinner six times a week, is a deaf/mute/paraplegic, allergic to latex, and 80 years old -- she should at least find twice a week to clean the man's pipes, on average. If your wife has a headache six nights a week or has her time of the month 14 days a month, you should be having buyer's remorse.
2. You wake up one day and find yourself working for her dad, living in a house on which her parents contributed the down payment or financing, mostly decorated or paid for by money from her folks, and own at least one car which her parents helped you to get.
This one is fairly obvious. Unless you defined the scope of your relationship or amended your marriage vows to make it a three-way bond, mommy and daddy should stay the freak out of your bidness. This is impossible if your well-being is handcuffed to the in-laws. Say she wants a dog. You don't. Her parents have a dog, she loves dogs. Can you put your foot down? Can you even have a fight with her on anything? One mistake, and you're on the street. Men, you've got to cut the umbilical cord early on, lest you wake up one day with no friends, no time to hang out if you could find someone because you've got to meet her daddy next morning for work, being forced to narc on your co-workers, with no desire for life, listening to Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" smoking a cigar the size of Meat Loaf, waiting for either you her parents to keel over. Not acceptable.
3. She spends two or more hours a day talking to her parents, a sibling, a best friend, or someone else who is not you or your seed.
This one is related to my point earlier -- CUT THE CORD EARLY or pay the price. Now, I admit my better half is close to the line on this one, but not quite there. Family members and loved ones especially have a real problem with separating "friend mode" from "guardian mode." In other words, when your wifey tells a loved one who she also thinks of as a friend something in "friend mode," they will still be thinking in "guardian mode," looking to exert some control over your relationship, put their two cents in, etc. Now, the loved one's motives will be pure -- to protect your girl, but, it still doesn't prevent your marriage or LTR from becoming a three-way relationship. When the wife starts her argument to you with "well, my dad thinks you have a problem...," then you should be feeling some buyer's remorse.
4. Every few weeks, you find out she lied to you about ANOTHER thing from her past.
Another no-brainer. Remember that Fresh Prince episode, where Will finds out years into his relationship that his fiancee changed her name? Bingo. Buyer's Remorse set in, and Will the Thrill called off the engagement. This should be you, hero. You dont want to wake up one day three years into your marriage to find out your wife boned double the guys she told you about, is five years older than she said, used to be married to someone else, "altered" a portion or segment of her body, or used to have a frank and beans between her legs. Everyone says "that's not my Sally...," but that's what God made sodium pentothal for. Just kidding. But if you're still in the "Well, here's what really happened" stage of your relationship, and you've been together for a long time, you should be feeling some buyer's remorse.
5. You often think some variant of, "Gee, I'm the one lucky guy who turned a hoe into a housewife!"
"You can't turn a hoe into a housewife..." is more than just a Too $hort or Tupac lyric. It's chapter and verse. Believe that. If you think you've got the magic stick, and we should carve you out as an exception to this rule, go talk to my man Jeff.
6. You have changed a core principle, belief, or characteristic of yourself for HER and not because you actually wanted to do so. In short, you get "Agent Smith-ed."
I had a friend from late high school early college who changed his whole life for a girl. His wedding was the last time I have ever seen or heard from him. We didn't even get a "Thank You" card from the wedding reception. This guy was a pretty genuine guy. He loved basketball, he was very tolerant of others, he had a few beers on occasion, was very smart, and happened to be an agnostic. When he started dating his current wife, we never saw him. He became a hardcore evangelical Protestant just because the girl would not marry him if he did not convert. He quit drinking, and once even criticized me for a premise of Catholic theology that she believed was faulty. He became a totally different person because he put this girl on a pedestal. Which brings me to my point -- he got Smith-ed. As in Agent Smith, from the Matrix, where one touch (one taste, one feel, insert your own colorful metaphor here), turns you into her. If you're smart enough to realize this has happened, you should be having buyer's remorse.
7. You're still whipped by your own parents, and your woman is okay with that.
If you're still emailing or calling your parents once a day, or you are 27, have no job, and they still have not cut you off, or you are in some other way generally whipped by your own parents, it is not the time to enter a LTR with a girl, particularly a controlling or high-maintenance girl, because you are just switching the hand that is pulling your strings. Hey, its all cool to be a submissive once in a while, but you need to have your own identity before you take the plunge, and that's that. If you are marrying a girl because your parents would cut you off if you just moved in with her, because they think that would be "too immoral," then you should be having all kinds of remorse, buyer's or otherwise. Else, you will just be switching from watching HGTV with your mom to attending your wife's tupperware or botox parties. And that's not cool, especially when you become the butt of all your friends' jokes.
Well, that's all that I can think of for now. Most of this comes from the personal experience of my former friends or my friends' former friends, and I just don't want to see it happen to anyone else. And to all you girls out there who think you've found a great marionette to settle down with, think again.
Because a Jeff is a terrible thing to waste.
posted by TheRealDookie | 2:53 PM
2 Comments:
Hi, I randomly came across you doing the whole "next blog" thing. Thanks for the laughs!
Thanks Sam!
For anyone interested, check out Sam's blog at "samuse.blogspot.com". With over two months of blog experience, it is clearly on another level of blogging. Well, compared to mine, that is.
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