Ex-boyfriend.
Ex.
Boyfriend.
This is simple, really. Or it should be. But for some reason, for me, it’s not.
For the past year or so, I’ve found myself phasing this word out of my vocabulary, almost completely (my previous post is the only time I can remember saying it without cringing, possibly because the word ‘boyfriend’ was modified with the words ‘high school,’ thereby making the whole thing far less serious and far more distant from my present place in life).
Last week, we got new an enormous new printer in the office, and it barely worked for the first few days. I found myself saying to a coworker, “I used to date this guy that was a software engineer, and he used to say that printer software was the most complicated he had ever seen, so he was never surprised when they don’t work.” Perfectly reasonable (if a little boring) story, right?
Except I didn’t just date that guy. He was my boyfriend (cringe) for more than a year and a half, I lived with him for a year, and at one point, I thought I might marry him (note to the ladies: the only thing that can make breaking up with a dude make you feel more like the bad guy than it already does: when the dude tells you, during said breakup, that he was saving up for a ring). We had a freakin’ pet together, for fuck’s sake (except it was a cat, and in my head, cats don’t really count). And still, I can’t spit out the word “ex-boyfriend.”
And he’s not the only one that gets a hindsight demotion – they all do. Lord knows that I’m somewhat of a commitment-phobe now, but is it possible to be a retroactive commitment-phobe? Or am I somehow trying to subconsciously lessen the fact that all of those relationships got screwed up by lessening what they all meant to me in the first place?
I’m tempted to say that it’s neither of those, that the thing that makes me pause before saying ‘ex-boyfriend’ is simply that ‘boyfriend’ seems like an overly dramatic word, perhaps best used by high schoolers to describe their first loves. I’m at least partially an adult now, and do adult women really have boyfriends? Because if I ever date a boy, someone please punch me in the throat and tell me to stop, mmk?
3 Comments
August 10, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I followed your link from tPF. You have a very cleverly written blog. I’ve enjoyed reading your entries.
This entry was funny to me as I do not have any ex-boyfriends either because they simply cease to exist me anymore! (I am so mean!)
August 12, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I literally can never remember that guy’s name. You were still dating him when we first “met.”
August 13, 2008 at 2:18 am
You know, I’d rather I didn’t remember his name either.