An Open Letter To My Friend’s Loser Boyfriend

Hey.

Look, I’m not going to mince words here, because I know you have the attention span of a 12-year-old boy screaming at people on Xbox, covered in Cheeto dust and Mountain Dew, but we need to talk. It’s been a while that you’ve somehow wormed your utterly mediocre pancake ass into the presence of someone as fabulous and perfect as my friend, and this just simply won’t do. You know you treat her like crap, I know you treat her like crap — everyone is pretty much aware of the dynamics of this relationship except for her, apparently. This is not okay.

She may tolerate the excruciating expanses of time between your text messages and your general tendency to ignore her whenever the possibility of a “bro chill” presents itself on the distant horizon, but that shit does not escape me. There is a reason it is palpably odd when the three of us are together, and it is because I hate you the way a neat freak hates a spot that won’t come off her kitchen counter. If your assumption is that, when asked my advice by your girlfriend, I tell her in the most delicate way possible that she could do better than you, you are right. In fact, it’s all I can do not to be constantly in the process of soliciting unwarranted advice about how best to get rid of you. I only refrain from doing so because I don’t want to upset her.

And do you know why I am so adamant that she find someone that isn’t so openly indifferent towards her as a human being? Because I know how wonderful she is. I know that she is funny, that she is bright, that she is as complex and interesting as you think she is simple and one-dimensional. I have stayed up all night drinking and laughing and watching stupid videos on the internet with her and had a better time than I bet you could possibly imagine having with a romantic partner. Because to you, a girlfriend is someone who exists on the periphery of your actual life, there to fuck and quell your loneliness and stroke your ego. But she is so much more than that, deserving of a partner and lover and everything she somehow imagines you are in spite of complete lack of supporting evidence.

She accepts living in this limbo because she loves you for some incomprehensible reason, because she chooses to embrace you despite no reciprocation. Every time you toss her a bone in the form of a bit of affection in between all of your other, more important daily activities, she acts as though she is the most lucky woman on the entire planet. She thinks that this is romance. She thinks that this is love. I don’t know if she ever knew better, or if she would recognize it so easily as insufficient if she were standing outside of it, but right now she is too heavily involved in the situation to see it for what it is. For now, she is willing to tolerate your flagrant disinterest and even reward it with compassion and affection.

But just so we’re clear: she is hot. Hotter than you. She is smart. Smarter than you. She is desired — much more than you. When she goes out, people notice her. She is animated and interesting and, most notably, empathetic. She is a compassionate human being that is capable of caring for someone other than herself and her own immediate interests. This is something that people respond to, that makes them fall in love without even really knowing someone, that draws them in immediately and makes them want to stay. Other people express interest in her, they tell her she is wonderful, they want to get to know her. And for now, she declines. She saves all of her best for you, keeps it hidden away out of a twisted notion of respect and honor for someone who is capable of neither.

One day, though, she is going to see you for the enormous zit on the ass cheek of humanity that you are. She is going to realize that all of these people around her who could offer her so much more — or even the dignified independence of single-hood — are preferable to being treated like a well-worn doormat with breasts. And when that day comes, I am going to laugh at you until my esophagus gives out, because you deserve nothing short of mockery. You are taking a delicate little flower and attempting to crush it slowly between your rough, uncoordinated hands. And let’s be honest, you aren’t even worthy of pulling weeds.

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