The Potato Chip Defense

I've heard a lot of excuses for a lot of things over my lifetime. I was married to the master of storytellers at one time so I really thought nothing could top anything I'd ever heard in the past. Giving credit where credit is due, this one was different. A different man, a different breed. Beautiful to look at, he treated me with the utmost respect and the best cook I'd ever met. I used to call him the McGuyver of cooking. He could take cardboard and rubber and make the best lasagna you had ever tasted.

A lot of female friends that adored him and thought very highly of him, at first it didn't bother me.... After a while I knew who the key players were and understood these were true friends... His best friend that lived in another state, his daughter's mother who has always been his friend, the girl who introduced us and his roommate. All females, all central to his life as he knew it. I embraced these relationships and respected them. It was the "imaginary" ones with other women all over the place that I could not tolerate. The women he had met over the years online that he was still friends with, the ones that seemed to constantly text and call him, the ones he text(ed) and called. These are the ones I had issues with. How do you create boundaries between making the one you're with the priority all the time (not when you are just with her) and having a life on the side. One that feeds your ego and your sense of how you want to be. How can a guy who still wants to be a player settle down with one woman and let go of the women that make him feel that he still has game? This one didn't or couldn't.

Did he love me? I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that he did. Was he faithful? I don't know and really don't want to think about it. Were there things I could not get past or ignore? Oh yeah.

So the potato chip defense was finally the straw that broke this lumbee's last nerve. When a woman sends a text to your guy saying "come over" and when confronted, your guy says that it was her daughter texting and that she wanted him to come over and try a new potato chip. I believe I saw red.

Red: not so much that a girl sent him a text but that he actually thought I would buy a line of bull that ridiculous. If you are going to try and have a normal life with a girlfriend and still maintain your player status... you have to learn to tell a believable lie. For instance: "her toilet needed plunging (that could be a lie and a euphemism) or "she wanted to dvr the movie "how to be a player". There were so many credible stories that may or may not have made me believe that he was telling the truth. But I really don't think anything would have worked after the girl has called back to back on one occasion and had recently split with a boyfriend. There is nothing a man loves more than a girl in need.

Will I be ok? Of course. I have been through 99% worse than this in the past few years. This is disappointing and depressing and more than a little annoying. Yes I said annoying. I had put my hopes into this man that we would have a future together. The lesson learned: don't put your hopes in anyone for the future but yourself.

Am I mad at him? Not one little bit. I think he is a great guy who just has been burned in the past, has a hero complex and loves the attention of many many women. I, however, love myself too and need a man who does not need so many random women in his life. A man who can put me first even when he is not around me.

This breakup will forever be blamed on the "potato chip" defense.