i have learned of 3 more divorces quite recently and as glad as i am to be participating in a very lengthy one, i’m still sad when someone else’s dreams of that fallacious disney happy ending have died along with mine. so, in the interest of public service, i would like to share my great wisdom with the young ones out there who are considering volunteering for The Life Sentence, and, maybe together, we can prevent forest fires. here are some of the proverbial Red Flags (or load of bricks on the head), i would have been prudent to consider prior to signing on for my indentured servitude and thinking, “it will be different when we are married.” all in my opinion, of course. any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental…
signs you should not marry the jackass, not necessarily in chronological order, if:
1. you, the current girlfriend, are not only not invited to your boyfriend’s college graduation party, but asked not to come while the most recent ex-girlfriend is.
2. you ditch your friends on your 21st birthday to be with your boyfriend (for which they will never forgive you) and he gets “a headache” and you stay home all night listening to him whine instead of doing shots with your bffs & snogging random dudes in a sleazy college bar.
3. it is a regular occurrence that your boyfriend is MIA for hours and ignores your phone calls even though you had a date because, he “was sleeping and didn’t hear the phone.”
4. he wears sneakers with velcro on them and he is over 20 years old.
5. he is so obsessed with a suckass band, that his rule for deciding if he will marry you one day is if you will go see that band with him at least once and it would help if you liked it.
6. when your californian cousin that you hardly ever get to see (or insert any one of your relatives or friends) comes to visit and you plan to go into NY to party for the evening (or insert any event) and he comes down with “a migraine” that lands him in bed for the evening. well, at least you go without him.
7. your boyfriend’s parents buy his ex-girlfriend a birthday present after you have already been dating him for a year, because they are still friends with her and “still care for her a great deal.”
8. your boyfriend’s sister says, ” i always thought you were going to marry (insert ex-gf’s name),” in front of you.
9. your boyfriend of approximately 2.5 years breaks up with you when you opt to visit your mother in the hospital after her hysterectomy rather than going to watch him kung-foo fight, saying, “she’s fine. you didn’t really need to be there. you were the only girlfriend who wasn’t there. i just can’t be with someone like that.” (also, you will forever hate yourself when you beg him to take you back after 24 hours. trust me.)
10. he EVER speaks ill of his mother. or your mother.
11. tells you that you embarrass him in front of his friends.
12. thinks pestering you to the point of making you cry is fun.
13. punches a hole in the wall right next to your head during a conversation about his crappy behavior, because he is just “so upset he hurt you.”
14. refuses to marry you unless you live with him first.
15. right before you plan to move in with him (because you gave in against the entire world’s advice), he goes with his parents to buy couches without you. hideous couches you will spend the better part of the next decade trying to get rid of.
16. he allegedly tries to get you stoned every night so you don’t notice what a jackass he is.
17. has a tantrum because the new sheets you bought are “scratchy” and refuses to sleep in your bed until you wash them, so he sleeps on the floor.
18. asks you to pick the zits on his head like you are grooming an ape & tells you you’re “selfish” when you refuse to out of disgust.
19. your father comes to you weeks before your wedding and tells you you “don’t have to go through with it. i don’t care about the money”
20. he allegedly asks you to hide his pot from him in a lock box and then threatens to harm you & cracks the code anyway when you refuse to give it to him.
21. you have one single, tiny, iota of doubt.
okay, so you didn’t listen to me or, more importantly, your own nagging fears (which you swallowed down the night before the wedding) and you married the jackass anyway (because, the wedding is all planned, you are already living with him, and you have invested way too much time in him to leave). here are signs that he will most likely be your “first husband.”
signs your marriage may not be going well, not necessarily in chronological order, if:
1. your husband does nothing for your birthday, which also happens to be on passover, in favor of going to a concert of a band he has seen approximately 59 times.
2. he takes your $25.00 hanukah check from your grandmother and puts it in the joint account.
3. he does not acknowledge your family members when they are in your home.
4. his idea of dressing up is wearing the button down concert t-shirt instead of the regular concert tee and therefore refuses to go anywhere requiring big boy clothes.
5. when you are visiting international relatives for the holidays and he works in a concert 48 of said awful band and leaves you and the children in the hotel room alone while he does so. oh, and he also leaves his wedding band in the bathroom. hmmm.
6. while you are in the aforementioned hotel room, you unintentionally find his alleged porn websites on his computer because he wasn’t smart enough to erase the browser history and what you find is so sick it horrifies you. you also find the alleged craig’s list prostitute ads he was allegedly perusing in towns when he was “on tour” with his crappy band and most of them appear to be from allegedly under-aged girls.
7. refuses to sit down to a home cooked dinner at night, citing, ” i can’t be expected to sit down to dinner every night. you are trying to control me,” even though he usually gets home before most people leave work for the day.
8. isn’t excited about your first pregnancy because when you told him he was “still mad at you from the fight this morning.” and barely even acknowledges the second one.
9. hates all of your friends.
10. does not have sex with you on your wedding night because he is too tired from counting up all the checks.
12. you are vomiting uncontrollably before you have to leave for your flight for the honeymoon & he doesn’t even give enough of a shit to get you a plastic bag because he is going to hawaii with or without you, dammit.
13. he has an all out screaming, crying, flailing tantrum on the floor one morning before work because the cat barfed on his favorite rug. the one with the pretty animals on it.
14. he considers owning a porn collection to be his scared right & your objection to it to be “unsupportive of his needs.”
15. he allegedly smokes pot your entire marriage and refuses to quit even after you have kids because you are “trying to take something away from” him that “he loves” & you are “trying control him.”
16. tries to convince you that you are crazy, and says you need anti-depressants & blood work to prove to him you’re not at his mother’s suggestion.
17. throws the fact around that he was there at the hospital when you had a lump removed from your breast as a reason why you should be more sympathetic when his back hurts.
18. he allegedly uses you as a drug mule for his pot by hiding it in your suitcase on a flight to new orleans and tells you just as you are walking past the drug sniffing dogs. his reason, “well, i have a [broker's] license.” which, to him, makes perfect sense since you are only the children’s mother and they won’t miss you while you’re in jail.
19. he allegedly hides pot somewhere in the car you are driving over the canadian border, without your knowledge, but thinks its a good time to tell you after your car has been searched. ditto that on another night coming home from nyc after being stopped by the po po at a parkway rest stop.
20. freaks out if someone parks on his side of the driveway & blocks his entry into the garage.
21. throws the coffee table across the room, damaging it, because you rearranged the furniture again and he doesn’t like it.
22. pretends not to hear when you or his kids are speaking to him.
23. he allegedly takes all of your painkillers for recreational use after you have agonizing wisdom tooth removal so you do not have them when you are writhing in pain and actually need them.
24. hits a deer & wrecks the car the night you return home form your honeymoon, but gets mad at you “for being upset about the deer” and not “supporting” him.
25. thinks it’s fine for you to take the garbage out when you are 8 months preggers. at night.
26. you suspect at any time your husband might allegedly be a sociopath or at the very least a mental patient.
25. treats you like anything less than his beloved & treasured partner in life.
oh, i could go on, for pages, but i think that covers most of your basic warning signs.
but, i’m not bitter. really. 
