Almost a year ago on January 2, 2023, I started working on a team that did inventory at all the Timewise convenience stores. This job was posted on one of the apps I was doing retail audits on. I applied for it a few times in 2022, but didn’t get it until a year ago. I had done inventory through that app with Hallmark in October of 2022, but Hallmark terminated the contract only a week into my time there. As a result of that, I kept expecting the Timewise thing to end abruptly, but it didn’t- until the end of June. It lasted a whole six months. It was just beginning to look like it would never end, and then it did. It kept me really busy too- all the Timewise stores were on a month long rotation. I would work a lot of hours every three weeks and then have about a week off every month.
When it ended in late June, I frustratingly took off to Phoenix, Arizona where my boyfriend is. When trying to think about how long me and him had been together, I think it’s been just under ten years. We were pretty much best friends since the tenth grade- then got reunited on Facebook in 2009. Then when his wife left him for someone else, he told me he’d always had a crush on me. We kept getting together and every time we did, we would break up due to distance. Then I got into retail audits, and I started challenging myself to “do them all the way there” and he and I pretty much ended up in a “long distance relationship.”
My whole life, I have been heavily pressured to not be in any kind of relationship with a man. I was always pressured just to be happy single and be an independent woman. It was literally always to the point of getting in trouble or getting harassed if I did have a man in my life. I can’t explain it other than to say basically it’s always been some form of “relationship = bad” in my life. Sometimes when people casually mentioned their husband or wife in casual conversation, I would wonder how they got away with that. I still kind of wonder how so many people are married or in relationships. To me it just seems like something that is looked down on.
This is the main reason why the distance between me and him didn’t bother me. If being with a man is somehow undesirable, or I’m supposed to just be happy single and independent, then the fact that he’s a little over a thousand miles away was helpful. If someone ever dragged me for being with a man like they used to drag me, then in my mind I could just brush it off as “well I’m not really with him-with him, he’s in another state.” With him in particular though, many were against it because he was a single parent. 7 years ago when I was 38 years old, I was told that the fact that he was divorced with children was a red flag. I said, but I’m also divorce with a child. I was married and divorced by the time he was even married, and my kid is older. When I brought that up, it was just poo pooed like, well that’s different because he’s a man or whatever. At the time as I was approaching 40 I was like, am I supposed to be looking for some 40 year old virgin? Because most people that age are going to have some history. Unless I want to be some kind of tiger with a younger man or something. But who wants a younger man who might want kids in the future etc? Of course the answer to my retorts was always, you just shouldn’t want any man at all. Marry your job. Who needs a man.
Another thing most people expected me to believe about having a long distance relationship was that he must have another woman that I don’t know about. This was the point of contention for many arguments between me and him. I would think he did, but only because I was pressured to think that. He’d get mad and accuse me of accusing him. It was pointless, because there was never any proof that he did or didn’t. In the end I was just like, if he does, who cares? I’m not supposed to “depend on a man” anyway, why would it even matter if he had someone else? I never said this part out loud though, because I couldn’t really say it without sounding like I’m ok with cheating. I’m not. But if all you’re supposed to want in life is cats and a career then who cares if the man in your life is seeing someone else? I started to wish that he would- because at least then I would just be rid of him and stop worrying about the handful of dilemmas my relationship with him caused.
He was very financially tied to his parents- he worked at their business and they owned his house. I always call it “having him by the balls”. They do. And they also had him convinced that without them, he was nothing and could never be anything. Honestly I would have been in that situation myself if my parents had been business owners. Luckily they always worked for other people, so I had to as well. His parents also didn’t want him in a relationship. So whenever I was there, we’d have to keep it on the down low, and if anyone else in my life found out that we had to keep it on the DL, they’d say it’s because he must have a girlfriend or even a wife. (Sigh).
So on about the first of July of this year, I took off west and this was the last time I saw him. Of course I did audit apps all the way there and made it to El Paso on the Fourth of July. I checked into a motel there and actually stayed three nights. While holed up in that motel room, I refreshed my Indeed profile, applied to a bunch of jobs, and started writing my book. It was 110 at the time in El Paso, and I kept my thermostat at 67-69 in the room. At night, I put it up to about 71-72 and had my good blanket. It was nice. I only left the room to do a Walmart run, where I got frozen egg rolls and pizza rolls to heat and eat. I kept it simple and stayed on the laptop the whole time doing those things. On the fourth day I checked out and headed to my boyfriend only about six hour away from El Paso. While I was driving through Eloy, Arizona which is only the last 30 mile stretch on I-10 to his house, the company I work for now called me for an interview. This was on Friday July 7th, and they wanted to interview me on Monday the tenth at 10:00 am. If I wasn’t so close to my boyfriend already I would have turned around and gone back. So I called him and said “I have to leave in the morning, someone wants to interview me Monday morning.” To make a long story short, I did make it back to Houston by Sunday evening and they hired me the next day to work with the 91 year old woman I am caring for to this day. But that was the last time I saw my Arizona boyfriend. We do still keep in touch. But after that, I started doing something that when I was surprised at myself for.
I started sending cute and funny cat memes to the man who ran timewise inventory. Essentially, my former boss. He was never married and has no kids- I knew because I had asked in conversation while working with him. The way he said “Nah!” Made me think, ok he’s also one of those that is sort of anti relationship. And I developed a small crush on him by about my fourth day working for him back in January. In July, after I’d started working for this caregiver company, I sent him cat memes at first because he’s a cat person. He’s basically the male version of the crazy cat lady that never got married. So I just really thought there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that anything would ever come of my flirtations. But it did. One day, he texted me, “I’m going to call you at X time on X day” and sure enough he did like clockwork. And we have been dating since then. We started dating in September and became official in December first.
He is 12 years older than me. I’m 45 and he’s 57. In my experience, age gap relationships are FORBIDDEN AS ALL HELL. But apparently? When you get to middle age, no one cares. It’s also forbidden as all hell to date your boss, but he’s not my boss anymore. So I’m not exactly sure where my relationship stands as far as the forbiddenness. Technically, if I’m supposed to not want a man and just be independent, then it will be “not ok” no matter what kind of relationship I am ever in. If we had met 20 years ago when I was 25 and he was 37, there would have been all kinds of hell and he may have even gotten into trouble. I don’t know. I’m afraid he’ll get into trouble at work since he still works for that company on their other accounts.
My Arizona former boyfriend knows all about him and has from the beginning. In the beginning, he made jokes about his age. Lots of “jealous male” jokes. Then when we became official on 12/1, he started acting the same way he did when his dog died. (Sad and Mopey). I’m tempted to feel bad, but he was always so adamant that there was this distance he wanted to keep. There was no way we could have ended up together-together, but at the time that was ok with me because I didn’t believe it was ever ok for me to have anyone anyway. I still sort of fear that, it’s just that no one has found out yet about me being with my old boss now. My best friend who is also my cousin knows- but she’s cool with it. Ever since she herself found Mr. Right, she started pushing the “feminism is all about choice” thing, whereas before she was like the rest of my family that a woman shouldn’t need/want a man. My mom also knows and is trying to appear supportive although deep down I can tell she wants to bitch about it.
The final straw with Arizona guy was when I bought his 13 year old daughter the “unbrush” that’s advertised all over TikTok. She is autistic and struggling immensely with grooming her hair. To make a long story short, I sent her one, and it pretty much fixed her hair issue. She no longer has to fight with her dad or her shitty therapist over it. The unbrush saved the day. When he sent me a pic from thanksgiving, I was like oh my god she has normal hair now! It looks nice! It doesn’t look like this big clump of oil shit now. Her father seemed to feel undermined that I solved a problem in his household with his kids. He is THAT against the idea of having a life partner. I was kind of perturbed. Like you know what, you’re welcome for helping your kid. I think of that every time he seems mopey to me now. We don’t talk nearly as much as we used to. I kind of think he thinks that It won’t work out with my old boss and I’ll go crawling back to him. I know that’s a possibility, but it is something I would like to prevent from happening even if this really didn’t work out.
I’m not exactly sure how this new relationship will play out. I’m not sure what kind of shit will hit the fan if people find out. Do people even have to find out? I’m actually kind of wondering how many hate comments I’ll get in these comments of this post. I’m just so used to it not being ok to have a man. And this is a real actual local relationship. It’s funny how for so many years, I was so expected to believe my Arizona boyfriend had someone else and then I myself ended up with someone else. Yeah he’s never been married and never had kids, which is the beef that people had with my last relationship, but he’s also my former boss and 12 years older than me. So he comes with new beefs. I guess we’ll see.
