Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

I never wanted to be divorced and I sure as hell didn’t ever want to date again, but here we fucking are. 

I have never liked dating, even when I was younger. I’m just too weird. I have zero chill and I want to know like all of your deepest, darkest shit, not what your favorite color is. I want to know what broke you and how you put yourself back together. I don’t want to know all the things you hate about your ex. Like, trust me when I tell you, I don’t give a shit. 

I am going to fill you all in on some ridiculous dating stories of mine and hopefully you get a laugh out of it, but also a friendly reminder to check in on your single friends in the dating world. We are not okay. HEHE!

To be clear, I am not bashing men with this post. I know SOOOO many strong, reliable, safe, protective, kind, caring, and wonderful men. However, most of them are either my dads, uncles, brothers, friends, or they are married. The ones that I am about to talk about, do not fall into the “wonderful man” category. None of these individuals’ names will be used, instead I will use fun nicknames I have gathered over the years. 

So, buckle up! The shit show is starting…

We will kick things off with Prison Mike. Again, that’s not his real name, but you will see where the nickname comes in shortly (also this should resonate with any “The Office” fans). Prison Mike reached out to me on match.com. We chatted for a long time before discussing meeting up. He was smart, witty, handsome, and so fun to talk to. I really thought we just clicked. I was so excited to meet him. He was the first real date I was going on since my divorce. 

For those of you who don’t know me that well, I am a lover. I go from 0 to 100 in 5 seconds, especially when I like someone. I don’t mean like planning a wedding, but more like I get way too excited and think to myself, literally every fucking time, “OMG! Could he be the one?!” Spoiler alert: He’s wasn’t. 

Anyway, back to Prison Mike. He lived out of state, so we agreed to meet up at a mutual place for dinner. When I walked in and saw him, I was so happy to see that he wasn’t catfishing me, well not physically anyway, and that he was just as handsome as I hoped he was. We started chatting, ordering our food and enjoying our night. 

Well, while I was doing that, I got a text from a friend. I had told her about the date and where I was going just in case I got kidnapped or something. So, she messages me and says, “UMMMM, did you do a background check on this dude?!” I responded, “No?” Like, why would I have to do that?

You see, being new to this whole dating world, I was unaware at this time that I should’ve been doing background checks on people, "just in case". In case of what, you might ask? Well, I’m about to tell you. 

My friend sent me a link she found while she was doing her side hustle as a part-time FBI Agent (apparently). I excused myself to the restroom so I could hide my reaction in the bathroom stall as I read the text. It was a link to a court case of this guy, Prison Mike, for being arrested and spending 10 years in prison. He was charged with felony domestic and sexual assault, and kidnapping, of his ex-wife. Really. This happened. 

So here I am, in the bathroom stall, completely frozen and panic-calling my friend. 

“What the hell do I do?” I asked.

“Get the fuck out of there!” she yelled. 

So, I did. I came back to the table and lied my way out of the rest of the evening. Hilariously, I forgot my own lie to him. At first, I told him my son was sick and I had to leave immediately. Then, as he was walking me to my car, I told him thank you for understanding and I have no idea why I don’t feel good. He paused and reminded me that I said my son was sick. I panicked and lied again. I told him that yes, my son was sick but when you’re a mother, you get sick when your kids are sick. I still giggle at that because I am such a terrible liar. He knew it. I knew it. But I didn’t care. I needed to get the hell out of there! I drove off and blocked him. Lesson learned: always do a background check!

Another gem I met; we will call Trailer Park Johnny. He was fun, outgoing, attractive, and a complete douchebag. I just didn’t know that right away. The fun started one night while he was texting on his phone all night but wouldn’t do it in front of me. You know the sleezy shit of like taking your phone to the bathroom or putting it on the other side of you, or always face down, so someone else can’t see it? Yeah, a lot of that was going on. Even though it absolutely annoyed me when he did it, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get labeled as “crazy” or “clingy” or “jealous” or whatever other bullshit terms douchebags use to describe women who have standards. 

Well, one night, his phone was going off like crazy. It was midnight and I asked who it was. He said no one and turned his phone off. He was weird and panicky, and his energy was all over the place. Clearly, something was going on, but he thought that by telling me it was nothing over and over again would ease my anxiety. What a dumbass. 

*Sidenote: To any men reading this, if your woman approaches you with a very specific question, trust me when I tell you she already knows the answer. Save yourself some fights and just tell her the truth. You’re welcome. 

Shortly after Trailer Park Johnny’s little spastic freak out, I get a knock on my door. I don’t ever have unexpected people at my house, so I was immediately nervous, and I just knew in my gut that this has something to do with him. So, I get up and answer my door. Sure enough, it ended up being his girlfriend, whom I didn’t know existed. She asked me if he was here, and I said yep. I hollered up my stairs for him to get the fuck downstairs and out of my house. He comes down, sees his girlfriend, and turns white as a ghost. He stood frozen on my stairs for what felt like an eternity. Finally, I picked up his shoes and threw them out my door. I told him again to leave. She was crying, he was telling me it’s not what I think and that they broke up and he wanted to be with me, and she means nothing, she starts hysterically whaling and screamed that they are living together while he was supposed to be here in town for work. I told them both I did not care, and I don’t want to be a part of this. I apologized to the girl as I obviously didn’t know about her, and she apologized for being a trainwreck. 

Here we were, two girls, apologizing to each other over the actions of a complete and utter douchebag. I snapped out of that real quick and told him what I thought of him, which is way too colorful to put here, and I told her to dump him. I locked my door behind them as they left together and, thankfully, never heard from either of them again. I’m sure they are very happy together. 

And the final jewel, which is my favorite story. Pervert Pete was exceptionally inappropriate but, of course, I didn’t learn that until too late. Over the phone, our conversation was great; intriguing, stimulating, funny, intelligent. I genuinely enjoyed chatting with him. Well, he lived out of town but wanted to take me to dinner, so he drove here. I met him at his hotel parking lot, and we rode together to Medora for dinner. The drive there was pleasant and easy, and I was excited for the evening. A few beers in at dinner, after he just finished telling me how amazing he is in bed and that even his ex-wife would say so, he proceeds to tell me how many women his son sleeps with every week and how he must get his moves from his dad, meaning him. And then, I shit you not, he fucking winked at me. Like that was supposed to excite me. I was supposed to be excited about the fact that his house is probably dripping in syphilis. 

Yeah, that’s a big no for me. 

I tried to suck it up and not judge and told myself I was overthinking as the night went on. But then, after the 4th time he mentioned how much money he makes, I started counting how many times he said the C word (rhymes with punt), and I stopped counting at 12. I don’t know, maybe I’m a bitch, but 12 is just too many times to use that word. Maybe 2 or 3. Preferably zero (this option is the best option). But definitely not 12. 

As we finished driving through the park, I was physically hurting inside because of how much I couldn’t stand this man. If I heard the story of what an amazing football player he was “back in the day” one more God damn time, I was going to jump out of the moving vehicle. 

Finally, as we were leaving the park, he threw his beer can out the window.

I mean, there were so many red flags I could've sold them to those Spanish bullfighter dudes and made a fortune. 

As we got back to his hotel parking lot, he looked over at me and asked me if I wanted to go for a “test drive”, as he pointed to his pants and kind of hip thrusted the air. 

YOU GUYS. This man was well in his 40s!!!!! I literally couldn’t even. None of it. I just short-circuited.

You need to picture this situation. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. If I’m into you, trust me you’ll know. But, most importantly, if I’m NOT into you, trust me, YOU WILL KNOW. So here is this man, foaming at the mouth and attempting to swoon me by hip thrusting and crotch-pointing. And here is me, as far over to my side of the door that I can be. With my left hand across my lap on the door handle, like completely closed off. I’m not even speaking, and all my laughs were with my mouth closed. Most of you know that laugh of mine. If I’m laughing and my mouth is closed, I’m fake laughing. A true Emily laugh requires full range of the mouth. Like, I could not have been more turned off or disgusted by him. There was no confusion. And he still thought he had it going on while he’s waiting for my response. 

I look at him, dead serious, and say, “I don’t feel good and I’m gonna go home.” I grabbed my purse, nervously fumbled for the door handle while he stared at me, and like slithered out of his pickup. I got in my pickup, drove off, and blocked him. 

I have never been so thankful for the blocking option. However, this story makes me laugh to this day and I wish I would’ve recorded it. 

As I am reliving these stories, I am laughing about them now. I know that each person I dated was a reflection of who I was in those moments, and that obviously wasn’t good. This, again, is why loving yourself is so important. The woman I am now wouldn’t even bat an eye at these losers. I have outgrown them and all the bullshit that comes with them, which is why I can laugh about it all now. It is what it is. 

There are so many more horrifying dating stories I could tell you, but we don’t have enough time! I need to put those in a book. Who knows, maybe someday I will! 

What started out as me happily looking for a soulmate, turned into me basically now having a psychology degree, with a specialization in narcissistic personality disorder. 

I am still hopeful that I will meet someone someday and I pray for him every day. But for now, instead of looking for the right person, I am going to continue working on becoming the right person. Then, hopefully, he will come along, and I can write a blog about a great love story, which is long overdue. 

However, I am in love with my entire life now. I am proud of who I am becoming, and I am enjoying this phase of my life where I get to be totally selfish (besides being a mom) and totally focus on my dreams and actually pursue them!! And that’s what I’m doing!! And it’s so exciting!!

Before I started working on myself, I was always lonely. I was always sad that I didn’t have anyone. And now, that feeling is gone. I do feel very excited about my future relationship with whoever it ends up being with. Because I believe that it will be healthy and truthful and real this time. Because I’m just too old now. In the best fucking way possible. I don’t have time for things anymore that I used to make time for. Isn’t that funny? Like if any of these men mentioned above approached me today, I think I would just giggle and boop them on the nose. 

Like, “Whelp, you were clearly a giant mistake. MY BAD.”

I am always working on trying to extend grace to myself, however, because it’s very easy to be hard on yourself about past mistakes, especially with relationships. So, I’m trying to remind myself that again, it is what it is. I had some growing and self-lovin’ to do, clearly (hehe). 

Obviously, some of these stories I share with you all are absolutely horrifying, embarrassing, and so many other emotions. But I am learning, there is freedom is telling your story. There is strength in sharing your story. And there has been so much love shown to me for figuring out my story out loud. 

I will definitely keep you posted on more dating disasters. There’s a shitload. Believe me. 

Until then, try to laugh a little extra this week and get outside in this sunshine. Also, try not to be a douche. 

Happy trails,

Em