Tommy Digital's Pussy Cocktails: Alimony

It's time men stop taking the fall.

We were together- presumed monogamous- for over 4 years. We had seen the worst and best of each other, and I really thought we were in love. We had even started building a family together, adopting over the years a dog, cat and even tarantula as our children. 

We lived together for roughly 2-3 years of our time as a family, and despite our rocky love, we had a good thing going. The notion of raising the pets without her was not really something I had put a lot of thought into, being She saw them as her children just as much as I did.

The time had come for us to move into a new place. Our first home was a cheap apartment in a college neighborhood; our second was a nice-sized house in the suburbs. We’d gone to both ends of the spectrum, and for a million reasons decided to move to a more traditional apartment, where utilities and things of that nature weren’t such an issue.

As cheap as it may be to rent in NE Ohio, if you’re living in a house with shitty insulation and single-pained windows, your heating bill will skyrocket in the winter if you keep your thermostat over 60F. We were looking at $450 gas bills a month, for keeping it at 63F.  Paying that much to freeze was not our idea of a good deal.

We started looking for a new place, and I found a perfect spot: a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 1,100 square foot flat, costing $700 a month, all utilities included. The complex had an indoor pool and workout room, and was on a central bus loop that is in itself a rare find anywhere in NE Ohio outside Cleveland.

We went through the motions- signed a lease, put a deposit down- and got ready to move. Less than two weeks before we were to move in, She suddenly gets weird about the whole situation. After a visit to the new apartment, where we began planning on where we’d put furniture and so forth, She tells me that the design of the apartment building will make her feel closed in. Sure, that’s how flats are- a whole bunch of boxes surrounded by other boxes- but it would have been nice for her to recognize that dread before I dropped money on the place.

Nevertheless, I was determined to make this relationship work out. I told her that if She could find a better place within a week, I’d be willing to check it out with an open mind, and if it was indeed better, then I’d walk away from my deposit at the flat, and move into a place that She liked better.

After a few tries, we settled on a small townhouse-style twinplex. Nothing fancy, just a small 2-bedroom, 800 square foot (plus basement) place to call home.

And so we moved in, her, the pets and me. Welcome to our new home!

The day after we moved in, as we were unpacking boxes, She tells me, “I’ve been thinking. This place is going to be pretty small for all of us, and it’s going to get hot in the summer without air conditioning, and I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore.”

That’s one of those statements that, no matter how you look at it, retract it or try to reword it, it serves as a pretty certain expression of your heart. And considering that we had been teetering on breaking up for a good while, I saw no point in arguing it.

However, I also saw no point in simply accepting the royal fuckover She had just handed me. Obviously, this was no new decision She had just come to; clearly, this had a lot to do with her anxiety over the flat, and something that She had been pondering for quite some time. Because of her inability to just say that She wasn’t in love with me anymore, She instead talked me into sacrificing my happiness for hers, even though She knew She was going to forsake it.

I’ve watched men get wiped out from breakups way too many times, within and without the confines of marriage. Things don’t work out for sundry reasons, but in the end, it’s the man that’s expected to take the brunt of the responsibility when it comes to things like rent, bills, and other financial obligations.

In regards to couples, our legal system is designed to protect mothers in the case of a husband bailing on the family. Unfortunately, this has been grossly abused by women who see alimony as an easy way to get back at their spouses. It really is as simple as, “you piss me off, and I’ll take half of EVERYTHING that you possess.”

Which is fine to an extent if there are children involved, and a woman who gave up her professional life and skills to be a mother and homemaker. But realistically, more than half of breakups where the man suffers financially are not the result of anything other than sheer greed on the part of the woman, and social inequality that says a man should just take it, because he is the man.

I was not about to let that happen to me. Granted, She wasn’t trying to really take anything of mine, but nevertheless She had left me in a situation where I was expected to pay for an environment that She was supposed to be a central part of. Moreover, I was now on the hook to care for the pets all on my own. While I love my pets more than life itself, I would not have amassed such a tribe if I didn’t have a girlfriend working on the unit with me. It’s a lot of work, and I never wanted to be a single father.

Then you take the fact that the flat I had picked out would have saved me a solid amount of money through the duration of a year’s lease. The twinplex was $565 a month, but then I had to pay for all my utilities. While the insulation was better then the house’s, it was still pretty shitty, and the windows were just as thin. I was once again looking at paying more than $400 a month just for heat alone, along with electric, water and so on. The only reason I had agreed to move into the twinplex was because She had said She was going to split the rent with me.

Upon realizing I wasn’t going to be able to afford to live in the place I had just signed a year’s lease for, I figured my best option was to keep things real: I asked her to pay alimony. 

OK, I’ll admit it wasn’t that simple. It was more like I threatened to sue her if She didn’t pay her half of the lease for the twinplex. I cut her a break, and only held her accountable for 9 months, which ended up being a little more than $2,500.

Of course She resisted and of course She tried to get out of it. But once I made her realize that if I sued her and won, her father would end up having to pay for it...well, She submitted. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the guilt of fucking several different guys over the course of our relationship that made her give in.

Whatever it was, I got paid in full. Now that’s a step toward real equality.