Member-only story
Table for One, Please
I used to buy an extra ticket to everything, for an eventual partner who never existed.
When I was married, my husband would join me for some things, but his attitude toward anything I enjoyed was so negative that I stopped wanting him to go with me. So I stopped doing things I enjoy at all.
After my divorce, I started seeing Adam. I would buy an extra seat to anything I wanted to do, on the offhand chance he would actually join me. He never would.
He even resented the last minute things he agreed to do with me, like trying a new restaurant or just joining me on errands. Actually joining me at a planned event was out of the question.
His excuse was needing to be home with his kids and not being able to plan ahead because of them. But it never stopped him going to bars late at night and texting me about the flirtatious waitresses there.
And if I asked him to meet me at a bar? He couldn’t, of course — the kids.
But I would join him at things he had planned: out of town trips for martial arts events, that sort of thing. They were never about me or us — they were about something he wanted to do and I was just along…
