Apron Strings Made Of Steel

My ex-friend decided to bemoan his fate to me, and I learned that TV drama has nothing on reality. [Ex-Friend] has a mommy complex so deep that I’m pretty sure therapists could make a case study out of him. It was Mom this and Mom that just about every day, so when I found him sulking, I figured his mom was hurt or something. 

The true story turned out to be much worse.

You see, my friend happened to be married to him. Unfortunately. [Friend] got into a car accident involving the other driver being blackout drunk. Her car was totaled, and she spent a little under twelve hours in the hospital for observation and stitches.

[Ex-Friend] got the call telling him about it and which hospital she was being transported to.

Except he didn’t show up. 

Why didn’t he drop everything and rush to the hospital? [Ex-Friend] said his mom had an “emergency.”

[Friend] got out of the hospital the next morning. It “wasn’t a convenient time” for [Ex-Friend] to abandon his mother, so he asked her — through text — to call someone else to help her out. She had to get a ride from her father-in-law. She got in touch with a lawyer for divorce as soon as she got home. 

[Ex-Friend] got home late that day to find his wife gone, some of her clothes gone, and a pile of divorce papers on the table waiting for him. She was going to be staying at her own parents’ house for a little while.

[Ex-Friend] flipped out, only to be ripped to shreds by both fathers. He was informed in many ways how he had failed as a man, as a husband, and as a decent person.

What was the “emergency” his mom was experiencing, you may wonder? The most reasonable thing would be a medical emergency, as well. It would at least be understandable that your brain freaks out about two loved ones having medical emergencies at the same time. 

But no.

His mother’s “emergency” was that she couldn’t find the TV remote, and she desperately needed her son’s help to find it. Except it wasn’t lost! It was where she kept it: on a table near the TV. But she needed his company! And she was such an amazing, kind, and loving woman that he just had to console his mother for the scare! Overnight.

The divorce went smoothly, but [Ex-Friend] refuses to get therapy.