Friday, August 11, 2006
I hate my mother's boyfriend
This has been a loooong time coming. I wanted to get this out of my system for quite a while now. I don't know why I held it in.
I don't hate him because he's "my mother's boyfriend"; I hate him for who he is. Personally. Individually. And it just kills me to feel this way.
I hate him for two main reasons. One, he's old. Now, it's not the fact that he's 60, and I know that at 52 my mother isn't really young either. It's not the age difference, because both my grandfathers were 8 and 20 years older than their respective wives. It's not because he's older than my dad. It's because he acts old.
They say "Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter". And this is exactly the problem. He acts old. He walks like an old man, he drives like an old man, he smells like an old man. The fact that his mother lives with him only adds to the "old man smell" of his house, and the fact that she looks and acts so much older than my maternal grandmother just makes it all the more obvious. The most ironic thing about this is that since my mother started seeing him she has more energy, she goes out more often, she's happier. In short, she's acting younger.
The second thing is his behavior and general attitude. He was born in Yemen (Joey: Wow, that sounds like an actual country), and so his behavior towards women is... non-western. I don't mean that he hits my mother or anything, it's just that women aren't equal to men in this area, and I don't mean in "not getting paid the same", but in "HEY! You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!" Whenever I'm over there (to fix his computer, which is another thing I hate doing, especially since my own computer is all sorts of fucked up), he tells her "bring him (me) some fruit". Never "please", never "could you", never "thank you". It's all "I'm the man, and you're a servant". Maybe my mother is ok with this, but I'm not. There shouldn't be that kind of master-slave relationship outside of historical movies and BDSM sex.
Another reason isn't so much about him as a person, but as "my mom's boyfriend". Whenever he's here and my dad comes to visit, my dad stays downstairs and I go over to talk to him outside. This is fucked up. Yes, he doesn't live here anymore. And yes, he's the one who left. But goddamit, he's still my father, and he shouldn't stay outside like a fucking stray dog when he comes to visit his kids.
It took me a long time to figure all this out. I couldn't understand why I didn't like him much more than my father's girlfriend. At first I thought it was because my dad had another girlfriend (or two), which made it even worse, because that means that I'll feel ok about this when my mother will start going out with different guys. Then it hit me. It's so much simpler to hate someone because of some attribute they have, like Arab, or American, or Christian. But when you have to hate someone on a personal basis, especially when this is someone that you can't get out of your life? That's hard. I wish I didn't feel like this. But then again I wish that my parents could still be married.
I don't hate him because he's "my mother's boyfriend"; I hate him for who he is. Personally. Individually. And it just kills me to feel this way.
I hate him for two main reasons. One, he's old. Now, it's not the fact that he's 60, and I know that at 52 my mother isn't really young either. It's not the age difference, because both my grandfathers were 8 and 20 years older than their respective wives. It's not because he's older than my dad. It's because he acts old.
They say "Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter". And this is exactly the problem. He acts old. He walks like an old man, he drives like an old man, he smells like an old man. The fact that his mother lives with him only adds to the "old man smell" of his house, and the fact that she looks and acts so much older than my maternal grandmother just makes it all the more obvious. The most ironic thing about this is that since my mother started seeing him she has more energy, she goes out more often, she's happier. In short, she's acting younger.
The second thing is his behavior and general attitude. He was born in Yemen (Joey: Wow, that sounds like an actual country), and so his behavior towards women is... non-western. I don't mean that he hits my mother or anything, it's just that women aren't equal to men in this area, and I don't mean in "not getting paid the same", but in "HEY! You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!" Whenever I'm over there (to fix his computer, which is another thing I hate doing, especially since my own computer is all sorts of fucked up), he tells her "bring him (me) some fruit". Never "please", never "could you", never "thank you". It's all "I'm the man, and you're a servant". Maybe my mother is ok with this, but I'm not. There shouldn't be that kind of master-slave relationship outside of historical movies and BDSM sex.
Another reason isn't so much about him as a person, but as "my mom's boyfriend". Whenever he's here and my dad comes to visit, my dad stays downstairs and I go over to talk to him outside. This is fucked up. Yes, he doesn't live here anymore. And yes, he's the one who left. But goddamit, he's still my father, and he shouldn't stay outside like a fucking stray dog when he comes to visit his kids.
It took me a long time to figure all this out. I couldn't understand why I didn't like him much more than my father's girlfriend. At first I thought it was because my dad had another girlfriend (or two), which made it even worse, because that means that I'll feel ok about this when my mother will start going out with different guys. Then it hit me. It's so much simpler to hate someone because of some attribute they have, like Arab, or American, or Christian. But when you have to hate someone on a personal basis, especially when this is someone that you can't get out of your life? That's hard. I wish I didn't feel like this. But then again I wish that my parents could still be married.
