This is a quick one. After my workout today, I met a regular from my gym in the locker room. He’s fairly short but has a very beefy physique. Hearty, manly guy. Him and I usually engage in all sorts of lighthearted gym and diet talk, today was kind of different though.

I noticed that he shredded a few pounds of fat, to which I instinctively congratulated him right of the bat. It wasn’t voluntary though...“, he answered, to which I naturally assumed he had gotten a cold or some minor injury. Made sense as I hadn’t seen him in about two weeks.

He appeared a bit sad to me, which is why I genuinely asked how he was doing and why he had not lifted in the past two weeks. His answer really took me back a notch:

„My girlfriend left me.“

Of course. Honestly, I wasn‘t quite sure what to say to that, so I said the first thing that popped into my mind: „Your girlfriend left you and you couldn‘t find anything better to do than to stop lifting?“

He continued to tell me on how hard it hit him and what the backstory was, so here it goes:

  • Him and his „girlfriend“ had been together for a whopping six months. Break-up utterly destroyed him, he said.

  • After such a tremendous amount of time, they did the logical thing and planned moving in a new appartment together

  • The girlfriend HAS A KID

  • She apparently flaked last minute and hadn‘t talked to him in two weeks

  • When we were talking, he was nervously checking his phone, until it rang and he picked up RIGHT AWAY. Of course it was her. She left him without notice for two weeks and he picked that shit up on the first ring. Can‘t make this stuff up.

  • When he got back, he told me she wanted to meet and talk things over.

  • Now for the caveat: he told me that „his girl“ ran back to her abusive ex-husband, the father of her child, with whome she had been married for approx. 20 years, as soon as they were ready to move in together. Apparently, the ex was very abusive, kicked her shit in on the regular and even knocked a few teeth out. He on the other hand, treated her like his fragile princess. Told me he had given her everything a woman could possibly desire. Would have given his all to her.

  • Additionaly, he told me how stressed out he is now, since he can barely afford the appartment, which he renovated on his own dime.

  • After all that, he told me that he will never understand women. Bet.

  • „You know how it is when you are in love man...“ - ugh.

  • I told him to keep his head high and that better times are bound to come. No point in talking sense to him.

AWALT