Jeremy

“Jeremy spoke at werr herr herr herrk today.”

“Jeremy” is a guy I work with. He hired on approximately six months ago or so. He’s in his mid-to-late 30’s or maybe even his early 40’s. I’m not sure exactly as I don’t remember, but I do know that he told me his age at one point. He’s got receding hair, wears glasses, and when he’s not in the company uniform, he dresses pretty much like the next guy. He’s got quite the beer gut on him, and for the most part, he’s pretty forgettable. Basically he’s a textbook definition of an average frustrated chump.

“Jeremy” and I had a talk a while ago while on route. This was shortly after he had hired on. Plot synopsis: He moved here from wherever it was that he had lived previously. While he was living where ever it was that he lived, he had been seeing a gal that’s around his age, maybe even a couple years older than him. She’s got two kids from a prior relationship, a teenage daughter and a son that’s around 10 or so.

Their relationship was volatile and they were on again/off again. During one of their off again stages, she decided to move on and smoke another man’s pole. It just so happened to be “Jeremy’s” brother’s pole. Jeremy found this out from both his brother and from her when they tried to be “on again.”

Jeremy ended up moving to Utah and left the woman behind. He got himself a small apartment and got himself a job. Now if the story ended here, it wouldn’t be such a tragic comedy. But it doesn’t end there. Not by a long shot.

Almost a year later, ex-woman and Jeremy are still talking. Ex-woman decides to move out to Utah. Jeremy decides to “take her back.” Problem is, his one bedroom apartment isn’t big enough. Not enough for her, him, and her two kids. So Jeremy and woman get a joint lease and get a larger, more expensive place.

They move in together and everything is happily-ever-after. Right? No. It’s not.

Jeremy is sleeping on the couch. All of his stuff, other than his clothes, is still in boxes. The teenage daughter has the second bedroom while Mom/woman has the master bedroom. I can’t remember where the boy is sleeping, but it’s somewhere in this apartment. And Jeremy is paying for the privilege of sleeping on the couch. Half the rent to be exact. Half or more of the utilities too. If memory serves me correctly, he’s buying most of the groceries too. That’s how he ended up working at my job. More pay to finance someone else’s lifestyle. I don’t even want to guess how often these two have sex.

Jeremy has talked about leaving. He’s waiting for the lease to be up. Which happened as of January 1st of this year. He’s still there as of this writing. All of this backstory, everything that I’m writing about up until now, was told to me several months ago. Why didn’t he just leave her months ago? “Because I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to leave her hanging.” Fuck it, I would have taken the credit hit, after finding another place of my own and gotten my shit out of there. Everything is still in boxes, so it would be easy as hell to move. Block her number and/or change my phone number to boot. That’s if I would have gotten myself into this particular mess to begin with.

Jeremy is a “promise keeper.” Rollo has talked about it in at least one article of his own. I’m not going to go into that particular definition except to say that Jeremy is white knighting a woman who is fucking him over because he allows it. He also has the whole “relational equity” thing going on as well.

A couple of days ago, Jeremy came to work in a bad mood. He gave me some story that wasn’t the story, it was an analogy. I just remember something along the lines of, “Why can’t people just accept me for who I am? Why do I have to change?” So Jeremy has some covert contracts going on too. He wants credit for his burden of performance. He wants her to love him the way he loves her. He has certain expectations of her that he hasn’t told her, and since she isn’t doing any of it, he’s pissed and bitter about it. Mostly bitter.

This whole thing is a nightmare in the works. It’s a nightmare of his own creation.

Do I feel sorry for him? Not really. He could leave at any time. He chooses to remain for some misguided idealism in his head that he created for himself.

What’s the point of this post besides showing how fucked up a man’s life can get?

Know what you want.

Jeremy has no clue what he wants. He knows what he doesn’t want, but not what he wants. I know this because I asked him directly. I got the “deer in the headlights” look.

Guys, you can cruise on autopilot for your whole life. God knows, I did it for a long time. You can just “go with the flow” and see where it takes you. Don’t be surprised when it takes you to places you didn’t want to go. Have an idea of where you want to be and where you want to end up, otherwise you’re going to end up at someone else’s destination like Jeremy did. At some point he’s going to have to take charge of his life, own up to his shit, and decide exactly what he wants to do. Until then he’ll keep paying for the privilege of minimal to no sex and sleeping on the couch. He’s not her boyfriend. He’s her employee.

Does Jeremy get to burn? You better believe it.

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