BROKEN GIRLS

And the embarrassing ways we all try to get love as proof

I was recently psycho-dialing my German ex-boyfriend, Bruno, on WhatsApp, and he wasn’t picking up.

I hate when he does that. I only call him once or twice a year, and when I do, I expect him to drop what he’s doing and immediately answer.

Granted, whenever I do call, it’s usually about something dumb. I also never hesitate long enough to calculate the time change. Regardless of whether it’s two in the afternoon or two in the morning, I feel like Bruno should be thrilled to hear from me.

This time, I needed help finding a summer camp for my son in Germany. Bruno doesn’t have children of his own. Possibly because he never got over me. Nor does he hang out with people who have kids. Perhaps because they would remind him of me. Nevertheless, he was my first call.

He ignored me.

Eventually, I had to ask others for assistance, including his brother. I tried Bruno again a few weeks later, when it finally dawned on me during a hot yoga class that he never called back.

“Bruno! Are you serious?!! I know it’s been over twenty-five years since we were together, but that doesn’t mean you get to have a FREE LIFE and just flat-out not answer me!” I typed, adding a crying-laughing emoji, even though I was totally serious.

Bruno texted back an equally absurd face.

“It’s been a shit week. My life is falling apart. My girlfriend and I broke up, and I’m just trying to put myself back together. I really thought she was the one. This whole thing feels like déjà vu,” he wrote.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry. Do you want to talk?” I wrote.

I’d heard Bruno was dating a much younger girl and was half looking forward to hiring her as my personal assistant when I got to Europe in August. While it did put a wrench in my plans, I wasn’t surprised to hear things with the girl had gone south. Of course this relationship was going to blow up in Bruno’s face. That’s what relationships with twenty-four-year-olds are supposed to do.

For some reason, Bruno was in shock.

“Sure. Yes. Let’s talk later,” he wrote. “I’ll send you some context beforehand, so you have it.”

I’d be lying if I said offering to listen to Bruno’s sob story was completely altruistic. I was excited to come to his rescue, but I was equally excited to feel a sense of superiority about where I was in my life compared to him.

When we got on the phone, Bruno talked about his ex like she was a doll he’d spent the last three years assembling. One day, after sending her to therapy and teaching her how to self-advocate, she told him she was no longer in love with him.

Classic.

Bruno was distraught as he parsed through their final six months as a couple. He questioned if he’d pushed her away by acting too much like her father, and he worried that perhaps the disparity in their careers was more than her fragile ego could handle. He talked about her leaky gut, her aversion to Berlin nightlife, and her post college internship abroad like they were all major obligations preventing them from building a life together.

“She would tell me she was too busy to talk,” he said, still stunned. “Too overwhelmed with her career to see me. But how overwhelmed could she be? I mean, she was twenty-four.”

This was the first thing he said that made any fucking sense.