My first boyfriend was so awful that no one else quite achieved his level of absolute assholery. We’re talking habitually lying, cheating on me, stealing (from his mom and his workplace, the latter of which got him arrested for grand theft—they made him bring all the shit he still had back to the store and led him out in handcuffs), and antagonizing my dad (including egging the house and setting off firecrackers in the mailbox—while I was still living there, of course). But that relationship and the rebound that followed were at least eye-opening. These fuckers might’ve been bad at relationships, but they taught me important life lessons, including:
You cannot contract chlamydia from kissing. And getting an STI from the same partner, twice, means that partner is fucking someone else (assuming you aren’t). Granted, he’d admitted to cheating (with someone I worked with, to make it even more awkward), but claimed there was no sex, only kissing, and that the doctor told him that’s how he’d contracted it and passed it along to me. In my defense, it was the ’90s, before the Internet was a real resource. But you know what they say—fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice… The second time it happened, I told him we needed a break.
