We’d been dating about four months, when, during a phone call, she told me that she considered the town I was living in (pop. 7,000) “too big of a city for her” and she wouldn’t live any place “that big” — and her goal in life was to retire from Walmart. I responded along the lines of “You’re joking right?” She hung up on me, and then wouldn’t answer the phone. When I stopped by her house, her mother answered the door saying, “She don’t wanna talk to you, you’ve upset her…”

—Doug

Aftermath: I never saw her face-to-face again, recovered the few items I left at her place and only look back to laugh at how happy I am that I’ve moved on.

10

Our relationship was a bit strained from the start, mainly because she liked to smoke weed and steal things from my apartment (which I’d eventually steal back). I was serving my 10th year in the Navy and living outside the base. The one thing I asked of her was to never smoke marijuana in my car. I was driving to work one morning and the military police pulled my car over for a random drug search. I didn’t think anything of it until the drug sniffing dog found her leftovers.

—Tom

Aftermath: Right after work, I confronted her about my “near jail experience.” She couldn’t understand why it was a big deal. She almost flushed my career down the toilet.

63

A month before our five-year anniversary, he told me he couldn’t make love to me because I’d become so fat that he couldn’t stand looking at me naked. I gained about 11 lbs, or 5 kg. Four months before that, he weighted 275lbs (125kg), so I told him he was a hypocrite. He then apologized, but started sleeping with another woman whom he met on a World of Warcraft server.

—Maria

Aftermath: We lasted for another 15 days, tried to be friends for months but it always ended with him trying to sleep with me. Four months later, I met a guy who showed me what a loving relationship should look like.

18

He called me a c*** because I told him it was stupid that he and his ex-girlfriend had joint custody of their dogs.

—Chelle

Aftermath: We tried to make it work, but after he said he wasn’t sure if he would love his child more than his dogs, I was done. We haven’t talked in over year…thankfully.

40

We were fighting one day and he drew me a graph on his whiteboard of hours spent together vs. utility derived from the relationship. He argued that us going on nice dates is just as good as him sitting on my couch playing video games for eight hours. Not only did he graph our relationship, he completely missed the concept of diminishing marginal utility. Good job, econ major.

—Peaches

Aftermath: We broke up the next morning, and were on and off for a few more months. Maybe his social sciences improved with the next girl.

30