Spending time with family is something I’ve always enjoyed doing. Except when my ex was with me. Family time is supposed to be fun and happy with lots of bonding and laughing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my family has their shit sometimes just like everybody else but for the most part it’s good times. Especially when everyone gets together. I’m talking aunt, uncles, cousins, grandparents, siblings and all those family members that aren’t really blood related family but still family, family.

Now, I have never been the most vocal person. I tend to be more quite and just take in everything that’s going on. I enjoy seeing everyone else having a good time. But any time my ex came with me to any family event/function/get-together, I would feel even more introverted. I would feel uncomfortable the whole time because I knew he was always uncomfortable and never really wanted to be there. He would sit there with this miserable look on his face and hardly speak at all to anyone and would secretly ask me when it was time to go. Half the time I would end up crying for one reason or another. Honestly, it was better when he didn’t come.

I remember one year we had a birthday party for my twin uncles. I believe it might have been their 50th birthday. It was at some hotel. We get there and start making our rounds to say hello to whoever was already there. We get to my grandad and he says to P “you look familiar” (this was the first time they met). Instantly P was in a bad mood. He said my grandad must have thought he was my ex, B. Now, just to give you a little visual, P was about 5’10” with brown hair. B was 6’1″ with blonde hair. They did not look alike at all, and I knew that is not what my grandad meant. But P wouldn’t listen to me. He just went on and on about how my grandad thought he was my ex and how he knew they liked B better and how it was all bullshit. He got so mean and angry that I wound up in the hall by the bathroom crying. Trying to figure out what it was that I did wrong, how did I set him off, how could I fix it. – There was nothing for me to fix, he was just a jerk. A couple weeks later we saw my grandad again and he told P again he looked familiar ~ and then proceeded to tell him about this actor he thought he looked like.

There was also this time P -reluctantly- came on this weekend vacation with us. This was a trip my family did every summer for years. We always stayed at the same place and we always had the greatest time. I looked forward to this trip every year. This one year P came. I was always nervous when I was around my family with him because I never knew how he was going to be. At first everything was fine, we were enjoying ourselves. Then at some point some of us walked down to a little part of the river we could get to and that’s when he decided to ask me if I ever brought my ex, B, on that trip.– are you seeing a pattern here? hello, jealousy- I looked at him wondering why he would ask that now and why it even mattered. But he never lets anything go so I told him that, yes, B had been once (a couple years prior). And that was the end of a fun trip for me. He got so mad. He truly couldn’t believe that I would bring him on the same trip I brought B and saying how he shouldn’t have come, it was bullshit and he didn’t want to be there and he couldn’t wait to go home. I went back to our room and laid in the bed crying. For a while. I told my family I was just tired but I’m sure they knew better. P kept going at me about how ‘wrong’ I was. But here’s the thing, my family went on that trip every single summer. If I didn’t invite him he would have been mad and wondered why I wouldn’t want him to go. No matter what I did, he would have found a reason to be mad.

There was also this time I was invited to a baptism for someone I worked for. P actually came along. We’re sitting at a table talking and some guy (that I knew) came over to say hello. And you know how you give someone a little ‘kiss’ on the cheek to say hello? It’s normal, right? Well, this guy did that to me and P completely lost his shit, wondering why another guy was kissing me. Then he actually started asking me whether or not there was something going on between us. This man was like 20 years older than me and gross. Hell no there wasn’t anything going on. We were just being polite. P wasn’t having any of it so he got up and left the party. I drove us there so I offered to drive him home. But instead he walked. We weren’t exactly close to where he was living. It was probably a good hour walk. But he wanted nothing to do with me at that moment. So he walked. I went back into the party. I probably lasted another 10 minutes, I was so anxious and embarrassed. I left and went to his moms house to wait for him.

Any time we were with his family, everything was always so good. But when it came to my family, he always had an issue. Every holiday I would go pick him up (because he didn’t have a car) and he would start an argument with me as he’d get into the car. I would tell him he didn’t have to come and he would say how that would make him look like an asshole if he didn’t. So he would come. And he would always look miserable. But he always made sure I was just as unhappy as he was.