All of us have been dumped. But for whom?
Women, do you get booted for someone who is obviously more credentialed than you–a former Miss America who has a degree in nuclear physics, anchors the evening news and visits shut-ins in her spare time–or a no-class, no-job, no-looks tramp?
Men, do you get ”Hit the road, Jack” for a brain surgeon with the sex appeal of Don Johnson and the charm of Bruce Willis? Or an alcoholic bum who`s living in the back seat of his car?
Jennifer: ”My husband was 49, I was 47 when he announced he was in love with a 21-year-old. This girl was bi-sexual, smoked cigars, was a punker and a junkie. (When I once used marijuana, he had threatened to make me move out.)
When he said she intended to spend weekends at our house, I got the message and left. I told him that a 21-year old girl would kill him. He had had one heart attack years before. His reaction was: ”Way to go!” He died 14 months later.”
Anonymous: ”I`ve always lost my boyfriends to losers. It`s making me wonder if men are going for the `Plain Jane` look. I guess I have always taken it for granted that men wanted a Christie Brinkley on their arms and have given them just about that. Maybe I`ll put on a few pounds, go around without make-up and wear brown clothing.”
Jeanette: ”I fell madly in love with a smoothie. He had a fantastic apartment, furniture and owned his own gas station. We had a non-stop date for three months, a torrid summer romance. Then I took a week`s vacation by myself. I had arranged a second week off of work to watch his kids while his ex-wife went on vacation. I came back and found out he had been dating non-stop the whole week I was gone.
I gave him an ultimatum: Stop seeing her or me. He agreed to stop seeing her. All week long, while I`m watching his kids, he keeps phoning with excuses to be late. Dumb ol` me didn`t figure it out till the end. He just couldn`t love one woman. The kicker was he left me for a woman who was five years older, unemployed (he had to support her) and a smoker (I had to quit for him!). It killed me. I was a successful, college-educated, self-supporting career woman and he leaves me for a mooch.
A year later, after I had moved out of town, he calls and wants to have a long-distance romance. He`s still seeing the woman, but it`s `tapering down`
and all they do is fight. I get three months and she gets a year. He supported her. He once bought me a gift with the $5 price tag left on it. He owned a gas station and he never filled my tank or gave me a dime. Who was the dummy? Me or her?”
Alice: ”I have a college degree and a good job, am fairly normal and entirely self-supporting. I am also not as humorless as this would suggest. But a year ago I lost my boyfriend to an unemployed woman with a 2-year-old daughter and a brain the size of a lima bean. Apparently she is very beautiful but you should hear her talk, which I did once when I called up and she was there. Right after he met her he started paying for her daughter`s day care so the two of them could spend more time together. She has not made any efforts to find work, as far as I know. They have been going out ever since and seem to be very happy together.”
Richard: ”I went to college in the days when sports heroes were everything and if you were a woman who dated a man with a letter sweater, you were a campus queen. I played football. I was a BMOC. But I lost the love of my life to a physics major who weighed about 105, had a goony-looking face and was one of those slide-rule kind of guys.”
Does love really come along when you least expect it? Send your tale, along with your name, address, and phone number to Lavin & Kavesh, Tales from the Front, Chicago Tribune, 335 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
