I know what you're thinking. Sure, I've told you about the drama that triggered my sudden departure from blogging, but what about ...the men. Because you know there were men.

Of course there were.

As long as I breathe, I will be involved in some sort of totally inappropriate romance.

Today, I do wish to talk a little bit about the end of one such romances and particular the word "intend." As I wrote previously, my boyfriend of three years dumped me by test message. He refutes this even though he did break up with my text message. How then does he refute it? By saying he didn't INTEND to do it that way. It IS what happened, however. I tried to explain to him that you can't say something didn't happen because you didn't intend it to happen. I actually had to explain, "If I walk outside and shoot a gun in the air and the bullet comes down half a mile away and SHOOTS SOMEONE**, they are still shot even though I didn't intend to hurt anyone. It's not like I can say 'Well, I didn't MEAN to shoot you' and then magically the bullet vanishes. Intention can only mitigate guilt, it can't completely expunge the incident or miraculous change what actually happened." (**This scenario was based on a real incident in which a man shot a gun in the air and the bullet came down half a mile away piercing a woman in the stomach.) Since he is an adult (older than I) with children and a very successful job, I didn't think I would actually have to explain how reality works.

And yet...

He continues to believe that he did not break up with my text message because he didn't mean to. I believe that reality can not actually be undone by intentions and therefore he did.

It amuses me that even my break ups now have a kind of weird existential humor to them.

The man I fell for after him also had a difficult time with the word intend. He's a very successful engineer. Again, he's older than I am, with children, having lived all over the world, pulling down a killer salary, speaks 3 languages.

He's also, apparently, a complete and utter moron.

I say this not JUST because he broke up with me (although that is a pretty good indication of moron state especially when you're fucking 50s and you should be thrilled to have the attention of a thirty something sex goddess, but I digress), but also he too thought that reality could be changed by intention.

Time and again he did things that hurt me, things that COULD NOT POSSIBLY RESULT IN ANYTHING EXCEPT MY PAIN, I'm referring to among various things the time he told me I looked terrible and had put on weight when I was already suicidally depressed and weeping into the phone. I mean really. What man doesn't know you never EVER tell a woman that she's gained weight. Invariably, when I pointed out that his behavior seemed specifically designed to do nothing BUT hurt me, his response was "But I don't MEAN to hurt you." And I would have to explain how intention does not change the fact that he did in fact do something that was hurtful and now he had to deal with the consequences of that behavior.

After a couple of months of hammering into his head that intention doesn't matter, he graduated to saying things like "You're the last person I want to hurt, but it seems like that's all I do." And again, I had to point out, if he really didn't want to hurt me, it was pretty easy to pull it off. There were specific behaviors I told him were hurtful. If he just STOPPED DOING THOSE THINGS like suddenly vanishing and not responding to calls, emails or texts for days, he would, in fact, stop hurting me. Again he would say "But I don't mean to hurt you when I do x,y, and z." To which I would respond "But you do. And you know that you do because I've told you. So now you can't say that you don't intend to hurt me when do something I've told you hurts me. If you continue to behave this way you do clearly intend to hurt me because you know you KNOW that is what is going to happen."

He just kept saying he didn't mean to....and he kept doing shit he knew was hurtful.

Anyway, in May he dumped me, but he still wanted to be friends. And because I am crazy, and I was in love, I agreed to try and be friends with a person I should have just fire bombed from space since it's the only way to be sure. Surprising absolutely no one, including me, he continued to be hurtful.

Finally, he showed up at my apartment one night so drunk he didn't know what day of the week it was. I put him to bed and later he told me he wanted to die. This man I was taking care of. And I realized he didn't just want to die, he wanted to kill me doing it.

So I did pull back. Time passed. I became convinced that he would not pull shit with me again.

And then, of course he did.

What happened is he called me and the phone call started off ok, but then, as usual, he manage to say something really hurtful near the end. This man. This man I took care of and counseled and put up with even after he dumped me. To make it worse that day was the one year anniversary of the first day we met.

You might ask yourself why the hell I loved this twit considering what an epic douchecanoe he is. I will write about why I worked so hard to keep this asshat in my life. But that is not currently the point. The point is that a flurry of texts were exchanged mainly me saying he hurt me and he, out of nowhere, threatening to ruin my life.

Now, the threat itself didn't scare me because my life is kind of pre-ruined. I have no idea what he thinks he was going to pull but yeah, he had nothing. But I was terribly hurt he would say that to me after all I done to try and help him.

The next day I told him that I wanted only one thing from him: an apology.

What he wrote was "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to threaten you."

When you outright SAY you're going to ruin someone's life you have exited the realm of try and landed firmly in the country of HAVE. You have threatened me. Whether I find it a credibly threat or not, is not the point. It's a threat. But beyond that I'm left with the question "What other message could he be trying to convey?" I mean if he said he was hurt and lashed out it's one thing, but to say he didn't mean to threaten me when his statement was absolutely and only a threat. what does one do? My belief is generally the person is cray enough you set fire to something and run. Since this was a virtual conversation, I told him he was blocking his email and phone in 30 minutes so he had that time to say whatever he wanted.

He wrote nothing. I finally typed good-bye.

And here ends my lesson on how intentions do and do not interact with reality.