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The Deadbeat Goes On
I really identify
with the girl who wrote you about her lazy, jobless boyfriend. I supported
a deadbeat boyfriend who lived with me for a year. He always claimed he
was “going” to get a job, and that he was “going”
to contribute to our expenses; he just never did, and I finally got him
to leave. I realized I’ve had a habit of getting involved with nonworking,
nonproductive partners. How can I prevent history from repeating itself?
--Charity Worker
"There’s
a name for a woman who provides the one she loves with a roof over his
head, three square meals a day, and all the little necessities of life
-- and it’s “Mommy.”
Maybe, like a lot of wanna-be parents, you’d hoped to bypass the
long lines to adopt an infant by going for an older child -- one in his
30s or 40s. Adopting a 42-year-old, for example, does have its advantages.
Surely, your middle-aged moppet won’t be badgering you to send him
to a pricey private elementary school, nor is he likely to clamor for
you to take out a second mortgage to fund his college education. No, he’ll
be earmarking the money from your second mortgage for his beer and cigarettes
fund. Like college tuition, this fund will be a gift that keeps on giving
-- admittedly, just a little -- whenever he gets a handful of change for
turning in his empty beer bottles. You really
can’t blame your last man-child (or his predecessors) for staying
home playing Nintendo while you were at the office playing oppressed worker.
Retro-lefty types might have even had the nerve to claim they were just
too busy poring over Mao’s Little Red Book -- in their $400 Karl
Marx-style wire-rims you’re still paying off. Surely, you don’t
expect Mommy’s Little Commie to soil his hands with filthy lucre.
No, that’s your job, but he’ll take a double cheeseburger
and an extra-large Coke, just as soon as your filthy little hands are
free to scribble down his order.
This brings
us back to the blame, which still needs to be placed -- preferably, where
it belongs: with you. You didn’t just trip and fall into the arms
of guy after guy looking to experience “Womb, The Sequel.”
You’re eager to provide that experience; probably because you’re
terrified of being dumped. Only when you get comfy with possibly getting
discarded will you have the guts to go for the kind of guy who stays with
you because he loves you -- not because it’s the difference between
sleeping on 300 thread-count sheets in your bed or on a sheet of mildewed
cardboard in a urine-soaked doorway.
Give a little thought to getting dumped. It really isn’t an indictment
of your worth as a human, nor will it squash you out of existence like
a bug under a boot. Millions of people survive it every day. It’s
nobody’s idea of Mardi Gras, but it is a great way to lose weight
while curled up in a fetal position next to your treadmill, and unless
you sleep face down crying, and drown in your own tears, it’s unlikely
to kill you. Behave with self-respect,
and self-respect might actually follow. Find the spine to demand that
a guy bring more to a relationship than two hairy hands with upturned
palms. That’s all it takes to make the American Idles scatter, clearing
your way to guys interested in being equal partners instead of sharing
equally in everything you earn. Cling to your newfound spine, and you
should eventually find a man who’s attached to you instead of a
pod looking to attach to the mother ship. |