I ended up having the same conversation I have all the time the other night with a guy I work with. I still go to my former place of work twice a week to teach knitting, and every once in a while, I run into this guy. He's at least twenty years older than me, and must be doing that swing-for-the-fences thing that older single guys do because he cannot stop hitting on me. He was watching me set up the needles and yarn for my knitting class, talking about how Gino is such an idiot for breaking up with me. "I told him, I said, 'Gino, you're a fuckin' idiot for letting her go, you have no idea'"
I kind of tried laughing it off, but that bothered me. I don't want everyone shitting on my ex-husband. I'm over that stage of grief. I no longer want to hear that people are criticizing him just for doing what he thinks is right for him. I also didn't feel like it was coming from someplace genuine. This guy, who is way too old and way too boring for me, only told Gino that so he could tell me about it, probably. Does he think that insulting my ex will be his in? That I'll be so overtaken with gratitude for pointing out what a dumb move that was that I will repay it in blowjobs, or whatever 50-something-year-old guys like. I don't know what they do.
"You always had this, I don't know, unconditional love for him," Tim remarked.
"Yeah," I agreed, trying to cast stitches on at double-speed just to get away, "For him, specifically."
He then started listing off my "qualities" in a way that made me feel even more uncomfortable. "So, you're young, talented, attractive, with domestic inclinations," he said, "Just the type of girl I've been looking for."
I didn't even look at him when I answered, "Tim, I'm the girl every guy is looking for."
He laughed and tried to say something about how I'm sassy, too, and I chuckled, hoping he would just leave me alone so I could just relax and do my job. I like attention just as much as the next girl, but duh, Tim. Of course every guy in the world is looking for a woman who can knit them a sweater and cook them arancini di riso on a weekday night. And who is short enough to make them feel tall and has a weird figure that looks like it was put together by Russ Meyer. That's pretty much a gimme. I know what my good attributes are, and I don't need a maintenance man in his fifties to tell me what they are. I might sound like I'm full of myself, but until someone else is at least partially full of me, I'll continue to toot my own horn, and then I'll say something shitty about myself to negate it.
I could look at it from the point of view that he was just trying to be nice, but I know better. He's been hitting on me since I started working with him, when I was still happily married. And, when I was married, I did all of the things I did for Gino because I loved him, not because it's just what I would do for any man. Tim doesn't know anything about what my marriage was really like. I might know what my good features are, like my ability to appreciate a joke and my big, fat ass, but I also know what my bad attributes are. I have a temper, and I'm irresponsible with money, I tend to tune out when I become disinterested in a conversation topic, and for years, before I learned to tone it down, I was exhausting with all of my hard opinions on things. I didn't recognize all of the things about me that suck until I became single. Along the way, though, I also figured out what is awesome about myself all on my own.
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