Fantasy vs. Reality

I'm listening to "How Starbucks Saved My Life," thanks to a recommendation from my dear friend, The Professor.

This is a true story, and I'm enjoying it very much. I'm just through the set-up portion of the story, and one episode started a train of thought:

Michael Gates Gill is detailing how he got into an affair that produced his fifth child. He writes that, ultimately, neither of the parties in the affair were who the other thought—on first meeting—the he or she was. He met the woman at the gym. He was lying on the floor in the yoga room and she assumed he liked yoga. She liked men who liked yoga. And she portrayed some characteristics that he assumed were who he was.

TJ is visiting us this weekend. Friday night at dinner he asked incredulously, regarding EEFFH, "Mom, what were you thinking?" I was thinking, first, that to reject EEFFH based on his morbid obesity would have been very shallow on my part. But I was also thinking, sad and lonely a year-and-a-half after my favorite husband's death, that this man who was courting me voraciously would spend as much time with me in person as he was spending on the phone with me during our courtship. Assume he was a phoneaholic? Never! He spent hours on the phone with me because he was madly and passionately in love with me. Of course!

I didn't like my first father-in-law. I didn't like him intensely. He always spoke the line "ass out of 'u' and ass out of 'me'" anytime someone used the word "assume" in his presence. I always wanted to punch him in the mouth when he said it; he was such a smug a.h. (My opinion. Solely my opinion. If you knew him, you can think what you want of the man.)

But in the case of EEFFH, I gave four very good years of my life to a man whom I assumed needed me. Needed me to help him achieve the lifestyle he wanted—a lifestyle of culture and loveliness. I was so wrong. I couldn't have been wronger! He merely wanted me to pick up after his sloppiness and slovenliness.

My fantasy was a man who loved me. My reality was a man who loved using me.

Never assume. It makes an ass out of you and an ass out of me.