I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway

This book would not exist without Andy Mcnicol, Alan Rautbort, Nancy Miller, and Hope Innelli—each of whom has gifted me with their encouragement, professionalism, guidance, and expertise. Special thanks to Jill Soloway, who blessed me with the best three words of advice a writer could ever hear (“be more you”) and has mentored me in the funniest and most generous way. Thanks also to Kevin Falls, Diablo Cody, Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec, Scott Rosenberg, Nancy Josephson, Tom Wellington, Margaret Mendelson, Jennifer Grisanti, Ava Greenfield, Jaclyn Lafer, Dana Calvo, Amy Turner, Mishna Wolff, and the writing staffs of
Journeyman, Life on Mars,
and
The United States of Tara,
for proving that Hollywood is filled with good people.

Deep gratitude goes to the friends and loved ones who have given my life shape and meaning: my foster family for teaching me love and trust; my great friends Katie, Mary, David, Tracy Renee, Jane R., JoAnna, Karin, Joe, Stacey, Bevin, Chala, and Susie; all the beautiful souls at Saturday Night Atwater for their unfailing love
and support; my son’s stepmother for her cooperation and caring; and most especially my son’s dad and grandparents, who truly have been family to me.

To Jon, Anil, Carla, Wynne, and Norma at the Casbah for the coffee and camaraderie, not to mention the necessary distractions. You guys are truly in this book.

And most of all, to my son, whom I love beyond words just for being himself.

Introduction

I LIKE TO THINK I’M NORMAL.
I’m from the Midwest, I’m a mom, and I drive a Toyota.

But I’m not. Aside from my big hair and my ADD, there are two major facts that separate me from the average chick. 1) My dad was a pimp and a drug dealer and is doing twenty-three years in a federal prison as we speak. And, 2) I’ve been married three times.

This book is about the connection between those events.

If it were a math equation, it might look like this:

Pimp ≤ Womanizer + [Sex
³] + Incarceration

Daughter ÷ Daddy – Security + Foster Homes
¹²

MAN ISSUES

So how, more precisely, does one define Man Issues? Well, the story of my three marriages is a pretty compelling place to start. In my defense, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. There were thirteen
years between my first marriage and my second one. And five years between my second marriage and my third. Sometimes I think I married the boyfriends whom other, better-parented girls would have had the good sense just to cohabit with.

In any case, it’s obvious I didn’t learn
everything
I needed to know in kindergarten. I think I must have been absent the day they covered “Topics in Serial Monogamy: From Mayhem to Matrimony,” because my man-ventory also includes:

Four live-in lovers
Five guys I was “in love with” but who wouldn’t have sex with me
More depressives than you can hook up with at a poets’ convention
1.5 agoraphobics (one of whom was considered half-functional because he at least had a job)
A host of other assorted addicts, whose dependencies included but were not limited to work, food, sex, heroin, and, um, motorcycles

Then, of course, there were those long stretches with no man at all, though not in a good way.

But the thing that truly convinces me that I have Man Issues and not just man problems (a difference similar to that between weather and climate—one is a cold spell, the other is Greenland) is this little paradox: at heart I’m totally conservative!

I know what you’re thinking right now.
How can she
possibly
think she’s conservative when she’s a three-time divorcée?
It’s a question I’ve had to ask myself. And here is the answer: because at my core, all I’ve ever wanted is to be in a committed relationship with one man. Who else do you know, without a burka, who has “settled down” at age seventeen? While my peers were out sowing their wild oats, racking up conquests, and sampling one, two, even three flavors of man
each month, I was packing lunch for my husband. And loving it!

What’s more, I have never
ever
had any interest in casual sex. (Not even in France! Or on ecstasy!) It’s not a moral thing—on the contrary, more than once over the years I have
wished
I had the capacity for no-strings, uncommitted fun. Then I could have explored the whole subset of super-hot guys who’ve never met a string without a “G” attached to it. Alas. It’s just not my temperament. Maybe it’s nature—I’m one of those people who go to the same restaurant twice a week and order the exact same thing every time. Or maybe it’s nurture, and I’m just an emotional wreck from too much childhood. Either way, I’m in total agreement with my gay friend Mark-David, who says, “No ring, no ding, honey.”

It’s all about the relationship for me.

Which is why I’ve spent months, nay,
years
on the phone with cauliflower-eared girlfriends—fleshing out scenarios, detailing facial expressions, recounting exact bits of dialogue—trying to figure out if he likes me, what he’s thinking, when he’s going to call, or if not, why not. And that’s
before
the relationship starts. Once it’s going, it’s all about getting him to 1) stop doing what he’s doing, and 2) start doing what I want him to do, or if that’s not an issue, wondering 3) if he’s going to leave or 4) whether I should stay.

And my dad Freddie’s in all of it. Way up in it.

Not like that’s a new thought. Any chick old enough to have acquired a Diet Coke habit has heard that your relationships with men will be based—one way or another—on the one you had with your father. But I arrogantly dismissed this as the kind of folk “wisdom” you get at the nail salon between the polish and the top coat. So trite, so clichéd, so lowest-common-denominator. Helloooo, what about free will? Women have choices. We’re not just programmed to seek out Daddy 2.0. At least that’s what I thought. But three wedding dresses later (a tea-length, a two-piece, and a big traditional white, in that order), I’m here to say that I’m not that special. It did, indeed, all come down to Daddy.

So this is my story. It’s about how a girl from Minneapolis whose dad was obsessed with women became a woman obsessed with men. How having a pimp for a dad taught me to love men, leave them, fear them, fuck them, and yes, marry them. Over and over. Until I met “the one.” The one who went wrong in exactly the right way, making it possible for me to finally see who I had been emotionally wrangling with all along: my dad. It’s a story about a father and a daughter who managed to love each other despite one of them spending thirty years behind bars. And about how raising a son taught me everything I
really
needed to know about loving men.

Maybe you’ll relate.

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