Browsing Tag

breaking up

Guest Posts, Pets, Relationships

A Doghearted Thing

March 23, 2018
dog

By Jenna Clark Embrey

After a year and a half of dating, my boyfriend Steve and I decided to sign our first lease together and adopt a dog. It was the first time either one of us had lived with a significant other, and the idea of a pet went hand-in-hand with cohabitation in both our minds. This step forward felt like a promise, as if taking care of living thing together meant that we could tangle our lives together permanently. We had talked about marriage and children, but always in slightly dreamy, slightly ambivalent terms. I thought Steve’s enthusiasm to get a dog meant that his ambivalence had turned into something more concrete. It didn’t occur to me to ask him.

Steve and I first gravitated toward each other because of our similar natures. We were both relentless in our ambitions yet also deeply indulgent during our rare moments of relaxation. We loved margaritas and vodka sauce pizza and 24-hour news networks. We celebrated birthdays and holidays with day-long extravaganzas. From the earliest days of our relationship, we felt like a unit that was solid and sure.  Steve and I wanted to widen this circle just a bit, just enough to include a creature with four legs.

When we went to an adoption event near our new home in Brooklyn, I saw a large black pitbull who was standing still while people and animals swirled around her. When we came up to pet her, she sat down on Steve’s feet, and the connection between the two of them was immediate. I felt in my gut that this was the right dog for us, and I told him so. Steve had always trusted my instincts. Two weeks later we brought the dog home. I suggested that we name her Roz Doyle, after the character on the 90s sitcom Frasier, which I had been recently binge-watching on Netflix. Our Roz quickly revealed to us that her favorite things were eating, running, and sleeping, which luckily mirrored our own priorities for relaxation. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Relationships

Depression Music Matrix: Getting Over Him

October 27, 2017

By Amy Turner

Hey. Wondering if you’re over your ex? Feeling crazy and listening to sad songs is as natural as a West Elm jute rug, but sometimes the line between heartbreak and sinkhole gets blurry.

Here’s a depression music matrix to guide the way.

  1. Lucinda Williams, “Essence”

Okay. You’re sad and whiskey soaked. The lyric “I am waiting by your door/ I am waiting on your back steps” seems totally reasonable. Never mind thinking through the idea that if you were in a healthy relationship, said person would just, uh, open the door. I mean, what are you? A cat? Yes. You have become a cat. A sad, drunk cat. Turn this song off. Turn it off now. You, drunk cat, are over nothing. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Relationships

Breaking Up With A Seven Year Old

July 21, 2015

By Sofia Rasmussen

Already as a child, I decided I would never be part of a divorced family again.

When I would be old enough, I’d marry the right man, have three dark-haired children with high cheekbones and never ever get divorced.

In my next family there would be no stepmother. There would only be a mother and a father. Everyone would love each other equally as much, and what had once been wrong, would be immediately righted.

But few things turn out the way we imagine them to be, and I met my boyfriend’s son on a spring day in 2009.

Tobias was 4 years old and worked diligently on a collection of insects he would confine in a red plastic bucket. There was something about this blond boy that I did not recognize from my own childhood; he was distant and withdrawn. But I did recognize the world of spiders, yellow buttercups, beetles, and grass on the bottom of a bucket as a time capsule of something we do not get back.

I did not want to be a stepmother. My own experience with having a stepmother was ambivalent. As a child, I often felt that I was on the verge of belonging and not – it was a matter of a few inches – and my stepmother was in control.

I needed to know she cared for me so I wouldn’t lose my footing, and, therefore, I was a chameleon; I could not figure out how to be honest with her.

When she painted a picture or bought some new clothes, she would show me and ask:

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

And I always said yes, always. As if the truth would peel off all my humanity like a third degree burn and reveal an ugly, black crater: I figured it would be easier to love a yes rather than a no.

My parents got divorced when I was almost 3 years old. Immediately after the divorce, I moved into a small apartment with my father. When I was 4 years old we moved again, this time with my stepmother and her two children.

Tobias was also 4 years old when I moved into the house he had shared with his mom and dad. Continue Reading…