The Bitch Factor

Disclaimer for the men in my life: Firstly, Dad, I realize that you gave this web address to all your friends and coworkers and most of the immediate family, but that's really not my problem. This is my little corner of cyberspace, and I shall fill these pages with the random musings from the deepest recesses of my brain, as is my right. If my topics are a little risqué, I apologize, but that's the nature of the beast. You raised me. Deal with it. The rest of you – and you know if I'm talking about you – I will not call you out here, but if you don't like a) the topic I've chosen, or b) the light in which you are portrayed herein, feel free to send any and all complaints to stfu@gmail.com. This is MY BLOG, and you have no place in the editorial process. Thank you.

I was sitting here trying to come up with a blog topic, and I found my brain wandering back towards thinking about relationships. There's really not a lot to think about out here in Iraq – it's a pretty standard playlist – I think about what I'm going to do when I get home, where I'd like to live once I'm not assigned to Fort Stewart anymore, which pair of this season's Jimmy Choos I'm going to invest in (shoes that cost more than an in-state college education are more of an "investment" than a "purchase")…and of course, I think about guys. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of most members of Tribe Penis. While I like to think that I'm a pretty equal opportunity subscriber to those of the male persuasion, I definitely have a "type". The guys that I've dated over the years have toed this phenotypic line pretty closely – tall, good-looking, with a distinct Bo Duke slant to their personality – with one significant outlier. But that's not what this blogspot is about.

I'm not going to write about any of those past relationships – why they didn't work out is incidental – the only thing that matters is I'm not dating any of them anymore. I'm not dating anyone at the moment – unless you consider my relationship with Current Crush™ to be such, and that only works if you have a really creative take on the definition of the word "dating". No, what I'm going to talk about today is the hormonal detritus that we engage in once said relationships are over.

I've got a good working relationship with 3, count 'em, 3 of my former boyfriends. One is an awesome friend, a fantastic photographer, and taught me the value of bullwhips, shotglasses shaped like cowboy boots, and enormous belt buckles. The second is an adorable metrosexual who takes longer in the bathroom than I do, but has great taste in music and introduced me to Alkaline Trio. The last is an infuriating self-absorbed assclown, but I love him anyway, even if he is picking up and moving across the damn country before I get home on leave so I can't say goodbye properly, you jerk. These three guys rock the house, and thankfully the bumps in the road of our friendships have been relatively minor – I'll always have a place in Austin, Fort Campbell or Cali should I choose to exercise the privilege. (No worries boys, I have no plans to invade your respective casa-de-los-hombres any time soon – you may breathe easy.) Most of the guys I've dated, unfortunately, do not fall into this mold.

Most of the guys I've dated morphed into Turbo-Dick upon the dissolution of our romantic entanglement.

That's the main point of my blog today – why do we do that…why do we insist on making the ending of a relationship even more painful by acting like complete hemorrhoids to the other party? Does that honestly make you feel better? It never made me feel any better, acting like a bitch to my former significants – then I just had shame to add to the top of an already heaping pile of suck.

I've noticed that behavior following a breakup follows a pretty distinctive pattern and involves playing a complex series of games using stereotypical and completely pathetic behavior in an effort to hurt the other person as badly as you yourself are hurting. 1) You play the I hate you and hope you die game, throwing every heinous thing the other person did back in their face (in technicolor, possibly in public and certainly not in your "Indoor Voice"), much like the Money Shot in a porn flick, only more grotesque. 2) Once you've exhausted that route, you try your hand at Russian Roulette in the form of the I swear I didn't mean it, baby game, in which you desperately try to get that person back, because as awful as the relationship was in those last few weeks or months, it's still better than the sudden cold shock of being single again. 3) Then, once you realize that there was a reason you broke it off with your *snicker* better half, you play the Looking for a Hole and a Heartbeat game, in which you either honestly go on a Debbie-Does-Dallas-esque rampage through the reproductive organs of your choice, or you merely attempt to make the other person believe that you are on a mission to single-handedly raise the stock of the Prophylatic Industry.

**edited for snarky content**

Happy now?