LOVE HORRORS IV: How To Get Over a Cheating Boyfriend

This Sunday’s Love Horror comes from one of my dearest dears, Arnetta, at This May Sound Crazy, But… I truly love her blog and have been faithfully following since the beginning of time. Hmm, that’s a lie, but you know I mean it’s been a long time; pretty much as long as I’ve been using Blogger. Anyway, without further ado, here’s the story and when you’re done, go on over and visit with her for a bit:

Ever since Steffy (yes, we're on a nick-name basis like that, son!) mentioned that she wanted to feature love horror stories, I've been racking my brain, attempting to post a story that is appropriate for this blog. All of my stories, although funny and entertaining, are a little too . . . how do you say? . . . disturbing for the light-hearted blog that my dear Stephanie hosts. Now the story that I am about to tell definitely has its disturbing moments, but it's all I got so try to be entertained dammit.

About 4 years ago, I was dating a guy who was cheating on me. It was really bad and I sooo wanted to believe that he wasn't (because I was in love with him), but it was hard to ignore anymore and one day after going through his luggage helping him pack for a trip to Miami Florida to a "visit his family," I found a bunch of condoms in his bag (and by "a bunch," I mean, A LOT. Like 30 or 40) and decided to call it quits. Being the passive aggressive person that I was, I didn't confront him about it. I knew he would lie about it and I don't like to argue with people so instead, I just removed all of the condoms and drove him to the airport. From that point on, I decided that I was a free woman.

That particular night, I had to work as a field producer for a live televised event (that took place at a museum). It was the opening of a new exhibit and there was drinks being served and a bunch of rich people enjoying dinner in an extravagant ball room. Now, it is not unusual for the television folk (who don't have to operate equipment) to take part in the festivities after the broadcast is over. So, as soon as the reporter signed off, I headed for the bar in an attempt to drink my problems away. I sat and talked with one of the interns (who happened to be a very attractive young lady that I worked with on other projects). She was telling me about her cheating boyfriend (which made me even more depressed because I thought to myself, who would cheat on HER?!) We toasted our drinks and shared our tales of woe as the other guys from the crew kept the drinks flowing in our direction. It's important for you to know, that I am a light-weight. I can barely drink one glass of wine before I'm seeing double, laughing too hard and talking too loud. Despite my disability, every time I looked up another glass of wine seemed to magically appear in my hand and before you know it, I had about 3 glasses of wine and was tore up from the floor up, telling everyone about my broken heart.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions...this is not a "swinging from the chandelier" story. I didn't make out with anyone from work or make a fool out of myself in front of the Production Manager at my job...and for the record, he was drunk too, lol. I was three sheets to the wind but for some odd reason, I was able to walk with a "sober swagger." So I went with my drinking buddy "the intern" (who was doing just dandy after god-knows-how-many drinks) to the front entrance to be taken to our cars by a good friend (who was also one of the crew guys). As we waited outside in the cold, my "swagger" wore off and I descended to the curb where I sat, hunched over, leaned up against a light post. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like I was on a whirl-o-wheel. Finally, the crew guy (let's call him "Bob") drove his car around and we hopped in. It was obvious that I would not be able to drive home so after Bob dropped off the intern, he drove me to a hotel. (I lived an hour away and he didn't know what else to do, I guess). Now, I was completely drunk at the time, so I don't remember much but I do remember him paying for the room, leading me to my door and leaving. The next day, Bob picked me up for work and we had a good laugh about the whole thing and life went on as if nothing happened.

Okay here's where the story gets interesting. Bob has a wife. A very...crazy caring wife. And while going through his bills, she noticed that he'd used his frequent flier miles to pay for a hotel room. And she did as any suspicious wife would do and questioned Bob about it. And Bob did what any scared husband would do and denied, denied and lied. I think he said that he used the hotel for himself or something to that effect. Of course, she wasn't buying it so he told her the truth. His (female) coworker got drunk at an event and he took out a room for her. Then, as the French would say...the shit hit the fan. Bob's wife came storming up to the job looking for me. The guards had to hold her back from coming inside and attempting to kick my ass talk to me. She called me a bunch of times while I was working and at one point she had me paged over the intercom (I knew it was her because she always pronounced my last name wrong, and so the secretaries repeated the same wrong pronunciation whenever they would page me). At one point, I talked to her and explained to her what happened and it seemed to appease her at the time but for months I continued to get paged.

I was the "precautionary tale" of the office, the center of all gossip and the most talked about person at my job for the next couple months. When I think back to the chain of events stemming from that night, I realize that breaking up with my ex was definitely the easy part.

The moral of the story folks . . . The quickest way to get over a cheating ex-boyfriend is to have a BIGGER and WORSTER problem to worry about. Oh, and don't drink and drive. And yes, I know "worster" is not a word.

Arnetta Green