Dear Date Wrecks,
This is so, so stupid, but I don’t know how else to interpret this. Last night, I found a tampon in my boyfriend’s bedroom (in a damn shoe!). Now, that shouldn’t be too weird, since I spend a lot of time there and I sometimes menstruate, but it wasn’t mine. I don’t generally use the kind without an applicator and although I have some at home, I looked at those today and they are not the same brand. (Jeez, I’m getting all worked up over a mysterious tampon.) He assured me he hasn’t had any girls in his room but me since he moved in several months ago, but I don’t see how a tampon could make its way that far into his room. He says it was probably mixed in a box of bathroom stuff from when he moved this summer, since he had a female roommate until about a month ago (and she still stays there much of the time with one of his dude roommates) and he was the only one who packed anything up (this is true — she wasn’t around for the move and she didn’t do shit beforehand). That seems like a stretch to me, though. I know he just threw stuff in boxes, but a loose tampon? I’ve never even seen that kind of tampon in their bathroom(s) and I know he’s worn those shoes since he moved, since I went with him to buy a new pair. I feel all unreasonable and paranoid, but I’m totally convinced he’s lying. He got really angry when he realized how upset this was making me and we got in a fight last night. I mean, it’s a goddamn tampon for fuck’s sake, but finding something another woman left behind is really traumatic. He thinks it’s a stretch that a tampon could fall out of a girl’s purse, but, being a girl who carries tampons in her purse, it seems totally plausible to me. I hope I’m just being paranoid and psycho. This sucks. I kind of wanted to accept his marriage proposal…
All right, make fun at will,
Threatened by a Tampon
PS: It wasn’t used! Just to make that clear. Ew
Dear Threatened by a Tampon,
Alright you’ve got two choices here: you can either just swallow your suspicions and trust the dude or you can trust your gut and kick him to the curb. I don’t know how long you’ve been together or if you have a history of being cheated on, but once you’ve been cheated on, your sensors are much more sensitive to stuff like lady razors in the shower, mascara found under his dresser, and tampons in his shoes. This is either because once we get cheated on, we become hyper sensitive emotional nutjobs or because our internal gauges are recalibrated and we’re more keen to spotting bullshit earlier.
My last long term relationship ended when, after more than a year of suspicions on my part, I finally busted him. In addition to the year+ that I wasted with him, that year really took a toll on me emotionally. Every time I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, I had to dismiss the thought — You’re being crazy. Nothing is wrong. Blah de blah. When the shit finally hit the fan, I realized how much I had been placating myself to stay with him. I mean, it was CLEAR long before I ended things with him that I should have bailed on the relationship. Red flags all over the god damn place. But that’s what hindsight teaches you. When I should have been listening to my gut, I was listening to him instead.
You really know what you want to do right now — the last sentence of your letter makes it pretty clear to me. You want to be with this dude — you want to accept his marriage proposal. That’s okay. Just don’t marry him because you want to be married. If your gut is telling you something isn’t right about this situation, then you’re probably right.
It’s a lot harder to walk away from a situation when you don’t have solid, firm evidence of infidelity. But the only options you’ve got are to just dismiss the thought from your mind and stay the course or bail. I mean, there’s a third option, but you don’t want to become the obsessive crazy girlfriend who is always belly crawling through his apartment searching for lady things. If you can’t find a way to believe him, then that’s your gut telling you to bail.
Take solace in the fact that this (allegedly) skanky whore probably bled through her white jeans because she (allegedly) dropped her purse stash in your boyfriend’s shoe when they were (allegedly) having period sex. I think it’s pretty clear who the winner is here, babe. Here’s a hint: it’s the person who doesn’t smell like uterine lining.
Love,
DW
