The Ex Factor

February is all about love. We often celebrate loving a significant other, loving our friends, even loving ourselves. The one thing we never celebrate? Our exes. So, this day after Valentine’s Day, I would like to list my top five dating disasters and how they, thankfully, shaped my love life.

WARNING: The following is written with extreme sarcasm, but in good humor.

• # 5: Thank you “Still Lives At Home with Mom” for embarrassing me at my 30th birthday. When the check came all of my friends paid for me… and I paid for you… because you didn’t have any cash. You then also left early to get ready for your brother’s birthday in Vegas, clearly the more important option. You taught me that if someone doesn’t have time for me, then I don’t have time for them.

 

• #4: Thank you “Can’t Hold My Liquor” for all those 3am phone calls to pick you up when you couldn’t find your car. I especially loved when you wet the bed with me in it. You taught me that never wanting to grow up is not fun and exciting, but rather exhausting and damp.

 

• #3: Thank you “Serial Cheater” for never keeping it in your pants. I lived in constant anxiety wondering when you’d cheat on me next, which was so often and always that I had to move across the country to get away from you. You taught me that I definitely had some self-worth issues I needed to deal with… which I did when five years later you tried to cheat on your current girlfriend with me. I really loved delivering that smack down.

 

• #2: Thank you “Not Man Enough to Break Up with Me” for proposing to me, then changing your mind about the wedding. I really appreciated your approach of being as much of a prick as possible until I ended things so you wouldn’t have to. In honesty, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because we were so mismatched marriage would have been worse than the 17th season of American Idol. It also taught me that I was enough without a relationship and one should never get married just because “it’s time.”

 

• #1: Thank you “Prince Charming” for being my first great love. You were so patient and kind while, this time, I was the asshole. I treated you poorly because I was young and not ready to settle down. My heart had never been broken so I didn’t know better. With you, I learned the adage, “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” is so true. After a decade of less than stellar men you remind me that true love still exists.

 

Thank you to all my exes, because every time you made me cry you also showed me the beauty of friendship. Us ladies have each other’s backs in the hard times, and that, is a lesson I’m never tired of learning. Thank you for breaking my spirit, because it only made me stronger. Every time I doubted myself in a relationship it forced me to work on that aspect. Because you refused to love me, I learned to love myself. But most importantly, thank you for breaking up with me, for breaking up with all of us, because it has opened us up to the true love we have now, or will have in the near future.

Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day!

Please visit The Sugarzine , the amazing magazine I originally wrote this piece for, to read more kick ass articles from our February issue.