So, This Cool Girl From Work and I were sitting in a booth away from the crowd at a bar, ignoring the fact that our position made us look somewhat like the chaperones at a high school dance, when this random guy appears. Random Guy announces his friends are being lame and asks if he could join us.
Hoping that by "join us" he meant "purchase you lovely ladies adult beverages," we said yes. The adult beverages were not immediately forthcoming, but we learned that he wasn't exaggerating when he said his friends were being lame -- one apparently thought sweatpants were appropriate attire for a bar, although a doormen had disagreed and refused entry. This particular bar, obviously, had been somewhat understanding.
We met Sweatpants and learned about his Other Rotund Friend, and then Random Guy shared that he was going through a divorce. But, you know, they really only got married because she was diagnosed with cancer and needed his health insurance. And now she was cancer free, so... But it still hurt.
Yes, Random Guy really said that. After That Cool Girl From Work had indicated that I, too, was divorced.
I will admit, while my divorce was pending, I subjected a few unfortunate souls to long monologues of everything that I thought might have gone wrong with my marriage, etc., but now that I'm on the other side of that molehill, I cringe just thinking about it. If you were one of those unfortunate souls, I apologize.
But, in the era of starter marriages and high divorce rates, many singletons ages 27 to 35 are divorced. And whether they ultimately think their previous marriages were loveless, fraught with cheating or just plain dumb, few likely will believe that Random Guy's marriage came down to health insurance.
Maybe he wasn't as supportive as Ex-Mrs. Random Guy would have liked throughout the cancer issues. Maybe when he got insecure about the marriage, he mention his "we only marriage for health insurance" theory and that didn't go well. Maybe his lame friends were always around. Maybe he wasn't ready to get married when they did. Maybe it was a lot of things neither of them really knew how to deal with.
But maybe it's better not to reduce months/years of your life and months/years of the life of someone you once promised to love forever into a handful of words you toss at two partially buzzed women you just approached in a bar.
It might evoke sympathy.
Or it might ring a little hollow, or leave one of them wondering what her ex-husband tells people about their marriage.
Hoping that by "join us" he meant "purchase you lovely ladies adult beverages," we said yes. The adult beverages were not immediately forthcoming, but we learned that he wasn't exaggerating when he said his friends were being lame -- one apparently thought sweatpants were appropriate attire for a bar, although a doormen had disagreed and refused entry. This particular bar, obviously, had been somewhat understanding.
We met Sweatpants and learned about his Other Rotund Friend, and then Random Guy shared that he was going through a divorce. But, you know, they really only got married because she was diagnosed with cancer and needed his health insurance. And now she was cancer free, so... But it still hurt.
Yes, Random Guy really said that. After That Cool Girl From Work had indicated that I, too, was divorced.
I will admit, while my divorce was pending, I subjected a few unfortunate souls to long monologues of everything that I thought might have gone wrong with my marriage, etc., but now that I'm on the other side of that molehill, I cringe just thinking about it. If you were one of those unfortunate souls, I apologize.
But, in the era of starter marriages and high divorce rates, many singletons ages 27 to 35 are divorced. And whether they ultimately think their previous marriages were loveless, fraught with cheating or just plain dumb, few likely will believe that Random Guy's marriage came down to health insurance.
Maybe he wasn't as supportive as Ex-Mrs. Random Guy would have liked throughout the cancer issues. Maybe when he got insecure about the marriage, he mention his "we only marriage for health insurance" theory and that didn't go well. Maybe his lame friends were always around. Maybe he wasn't ready to get married when they did. Maybe it was a lot of things neither of them really knew how to deal with.
But maybe it's better not to reduce months/years of your life and months/years of the life of someone you once promised to love forever into a handful of words you toss at two partially buzzed women you just approached in a bar.
It might evoke sympathy.
Or it might ring a little hollow, or leave one of them wondering what her ex-husband tells people about their marriage.
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