This is so exhausting

 

Holidays are hard

 

Danielle of North Dakota

Part of a text conversation with my friend Frank - I love this so much!

 

If only this weren't fake bullshit

 The amount of complete BS on these dating sites is exhausting. I'm discouraged to think that there are women out here who fall for this.

More dating adventures

I thought this was a pretty good answer, made up on the fly. Even though I had previously said I was looking for a man who listens at least half the time, he, completely without irony, ignored this and wrote a long post about his own interests.

Hitting the reset button for real

So I took a job in North Dakota. A great job, at a great school. 

No, I didn't want to move somewhere colder, somewhere smaller, somewhere with even fewer Jews. 

But I'll make it work. 

The cost of living is low, so I can rent or house share while paying the mortgage on my house in Syracuse. There's a YMCA, there's sushi, there's a club for Democrats, there's always a book club.

And there's hiking and a lake not that far away. It's remote, but it's the size of Flagstaff, and college towns have charms that regular small towns do not. 

I'll make some friends, maybe meet a guy. 

And I'll see. 

I've moved plenty of times. I've started lots of new jobs. Maybe it won't be my last job, maybe it will be my next job and I'll end up in Ariz or Utah or somewhere out west eventually. 

But it feels really wonderful to make a decision that's good for my career and for my goals. It makes it feel like I am really starting a completely new chapter, just for me.

Now I'm pissed all over again

Found out that, when Larry told his family that our marriage was ending, he also said he had "found someone to appreciate him for who he is."

Wow, that is rich. I appreciate him for exactly who he is - a cheater and a liar and a person who breaks his promises.

And a man so cowardly that he couldn't end his marriage even after he got himself a girlfriend - instead he had to hide behind his own daughter, who gave him cover to leave. And who had the unmitigated gall to actually say, even though he was already involved with someone else, "why didn't you stick up for me?"

A man who can abandon his children and still play the victim: they weren't nice to me; I'm trying but they don't want to talk to me.

I could have found someone to appreciate me too, if I'd had time to hang out in bars every week for months, but I was too busy raising our kids and taking care of our house and actually being in our marriage.

I cannot believe that I wasted the best years of my life on this asshole.

I understand wanting to be happy. I want to be happy too and we certainly weren't. But to just walk away because you got a better offer? We made vows, we made a commitment to each other. To leave without even having a conversation or offering an explanation is deeply disrespectful and wrong.

And then drag everything out - don't help sell the house, sit on all the paperwork, make everything take longer than it should. He's moved on, he's settled, but he won't tie it up so I can do the same. What does he tell himself? How does he justify this: he has a right to be happy but the rest of us can just fuck right off? He owes us absolutely nothing apparently.