My PhD in Failed Relationships

Bingo! These perceptions of his proved that his mindset was bizarre enough for me to choose him as my first serious boyfriend. The fact that my parents liked him and encouraged our relationship made it a certainty that I’d earn high marks for tragedy with him.

The ‘Gullible Girlfriend’ course was an easy one for me compared to my 'Disastrous Daughter’ course, taking just over a year to complete.  But that wasn’t the case with my next failed relationship ─ ‘Worthless Wife’.  That endorsement necessitated almost twenty years of effort and an entirely different man to bestow.

This third Failed Relationship also entailed meticulous training. Yet, I managed a GPA of 4.0 in classes such as, Failure to Cook the Way His Mother Cooks, Failure to Impress His Friends, and Failure at Understanding His Needs.  And I got a B in the one-night-a-month lab course, Failure to Sexually Stimulate.  Unfortunately, I only earned a C- in the extra credit weekend courses of Failing to Fold His Socks Properly, and Failure to Become Proficient in Demotic Greek. 

But at long last, with our divorce decree in hand, and my new status of Worthless Wife, combined with my completed assignments of Disastrous Daughter and Gullible Girlfriend, I was finally rewarded with what I believe was my well-deserved Masters in Failed Relationships.

An MFR is a remarkable achievement, as most who’ve been through the same training would agree, but I did not stop there.  Since earning my MFR more than nine years ago, I have gone on to be worthy of what is beyond the reach of most ─ a Doctorate in Failed Relationships. 

I earned this honor of DFR because I took and passed the additional, compulsory, 72 full-time study credits in:  Complete Financial Ineptitude, Crushing Betrayal by Best Friend, Failure to Maintain Thighs Like Cindy Crawford's, and the summer-session course, Failure to Clarify U.S. Foreign Policy to Someone Who Only Watches FOX News.

Even with these grueling classes under my belt, I still found writing my final thesis for my DFR the most excruciating of all my assignments. The title of it was