This isn’t a very long post, but I have learned a little about boundaries today. I broke up with someone named Phil this afternoon because her lifestyle is chaotic. The woman wasn’t an alcoholic. I’m not even sure she had a personality disorder. I suppose it is possible. But her life is chaotic. It is hard not to call her a chaos magnet. I really did not like doing this, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I mean, I could have kept my mouth shut. She would be here right now. We’d make love tonight and i’ll miss that. But it was the right and honest thing to do.
Breaking Boundaries In Her Apartment
In a nutshell, she was a dog sitter and a computer programmer. The dog sitting was the issue. She was never at home. Her house was a very big mess, not just clutter but actual unhealthy mess. She’d pick up dog shit from the floor and not wipe under it. Her kitchen was downright unhealthy looking. Dirty laundry was mixed with clean laundry and couldn’t be discerned. She apparently had not cleaned the bathrooms in a long time. Crud and debris blanketed them. The bed stank.
In retrospect, it reminded me of an episode of Friends. Yes, her apartment really did look a little like this – less food garbage but overall the appearance was the same.
Dog Sitting
She couldn’t keep hold of her keys, phone, and wallet when she left the house. She had to pay a locksmith to drill out a customer’s front door lock because of her chaos. Losing keys is a way of life for her. This ate up whatever profit there might have been in that dog sitting job.
But the dog sitting itself was the big problem. She’d always want me to go over her dog sitting clients’ houses. She’d want me to sleep over sometimes. These houses were dirty for the most part, stinking of dogs and with floors covered with crud. One person allowed dogs to shit on their floor, with an office chair mat with a wee-wee pad atop it. This for a dog that is about 5 years old. The dog would constantly miss the pad and mat and leave a pile of turds on the carpet. Once again, pick up, don’t bother cleaning it up. So the whole carpet is covered with dog feces residue. Ugh. This is totally disgusting.
She expected me to hang out in these places and be a sideline to her work. This exceeded my boundaries. I am more important than that, and the conditions are bad enough that it was unbearable. I hated seeing her at the end. Even getting laid with someone I thought pretty didn’t make up for the awfulness. The disgusting, dirty houses and the dog shit and her constant forgetting of everything.
But, I learned a lesson about boundaries. I need to establish boundaries with everyone. Otherwise, they will creep into my space and put me in bad situations. Hope I do better next time.
