Tomorrow night I’m (f, SoPo) having dinner with some friends and friends of friends. It’s a girls night (ages range from mid 40’s to mid 60s). Most of the people are great but few are in open relationships. As is common on girls nights featuring a quorum of straight women, the subject of dating / relationships and the associated gender dynamics often comes up. Ok, so far no problem. I sometimes enjoy discussing that stuff.

But… There is this one woman who will be there who has a constant need to make obnoxious comments about how she could never [Thing someone else is doing in their relationship]. Once it was that someone was trusting her husband to go on a trip for a week without her because affair. Another time it was a woman who was, with her husband, taking in the teenage daughter of a good friend when the friend died - how could she trust her husband alone with a literal child. Once it was a woman taking a trip to Turkey which was mostly just an exercise in Islamaphobia.

She’s objectively stupid. And ignorantly judgemental. Her world is tiny. Probably not much bigger than whatever device she uses to stream BritBox and read drivel. Utter drivel. She has also “I could never”ed several of the books people have mentioned (Octavia Butler sounds "too complicated," I mean sure, if operating a microwave oven is a bit beyond your cognitive capacity).

Mostly she gets a pass because everybody knows she couldn’t out think a box of hammers so she seems harmless, and is obviously lonely. And she is performatively helpful, including in her conviction that your husband travelling without you means he will 100% stick his dick into something, that adhering to the promise you made to your dying friend to take in her teenage daughter instead of abandoning the kid to whatever else might happen to them means the child will definitely corrupt your precious angel children, and try to bang your husband or accuse him of pedophilia.

Tomorrow night, I know a couple of people are going to want to ask me about something with BF (married, M) because two that I’m closer to always ask about how things are going without skepticism. They all already know the poly situation. I’m sure some of these folks are skeptical but are comfortable keeping that to themselves.

But I know this idiot is going to make a comment. Last time it was repeatedly saying “I could never share” and “I need to be my husband’s everything.” And I managed to bite my tongue because I’d already told her as a mandatory reporter, if she’s sure her husband cannot be alone in a room with a teenage girl without “something happening” she needs to prepare herself to report that to the police if he’s ever in that situation. And then asked how she could possibly stay married to someone who she is so confident was a pedophile and whether he should ever be alone with their daughters.

It wasn’t pretty, but it shut her up about the motherless teenager.

I’ve seen this woman with her husband. They hate each other. They may be each other’s everything, but it’s their everything bad. No matter what has gone wrong in their lives, it's the other's fault. They snipe at each other with pretty humiliating barbs. They have each insulted the other's family. He talks to her like she's six, which i can understand because she's so stupid. She corrects him behind his back.

So I just want to either get through this night without saying, "I mean, I know I'm not anyone's everything, but at least I'm not anyone's everything bad like you and your husband are to each other…" Or something in that vein. Or… go bigger. Darker.

Or whatever.

Friends, help me rein it in or truely let it loose…