murphy's law of dating

I dated this guy for years in my 20s. He was smart and charismatic and everyone in my life loved him. As is usually the case, our relationship was six months of bliss, and then the crazies came out. This guy grew up in a family of millionaires and had no concept of the need for money. He ran his own "business," in quotation marks because it didn't actually have any customers. I put in many unpaid hours, trying to help get it off the ground. To get a break from all of this business he was doing, he would book us on "surprise vacations," again in quotation marks. When we got off the plane or train, he would never be able to either rent a car (because his driver's license had expired) or pay for a meal or a hotel (because his credit cards were all maxed out). Inevitably, the supposed surprise vacation would turn into an expensive vacation for me. And then we'd go home and I'd have to beg the utilities people not to disconnect the heat and hydro even though he hadn't paid the bill for months. I should mention that this was at a time in my life when I was a very junior political aide and I only ate because I was a reception whore, not because I had any money to actually buy myself food.

Eventually, despite the protestations of all of my family and friends (who didn't have to endure all of the crap), I got out.

And, since that day, apparently business has picked up considerably. In fact, buddy seems to be immensely successful now. He's won a bunch of awards, written a best-selling book and been interviewed on a million tv and radio shows. My parents and some of my friends always call when they see or hear of him and tell me how great he is. As you can probably guess, I love it when they do that.

So this evening he resurfaced again. I was driving home from work, drinking my kale-pineapple-banana-rice protein juice and listening to an audio book about open source software. Yes, we can stop there and acknowledge:
- that drink sounds grody (Sunny almost hurled when she saw me with my kale-raspberry-persimon-rice protein juice last week, but I'm a bit of a health nut and I swear you to that it's quite tasty)
- the fact that I'll listen to audio books is weird all in itself, but it's even weirder that I'll listen to an audio book about software.
But then, it's not like I'm going around speculating why I'm single.

At any rate, the book I was listening to cites the expert and collaborator otherwise known as MY EX. When I heard his name, I spit out my drink. Then I back-tracked a little to check if I was imagining it. No dice. Half an hour later, his name came up twice more.

Annoying. It's not like I'm still in love with him. In fact, I fully expect that life would have gone in a bad way if I'd stayed with him. Still, Murphy's Law is never fun, is it?

RainyBow