“Dear Dr. Kim:
“I’m 24 years old, and I’ve been riding horses since around age 4, when I started taking lessons. When I was 10 I started helping out this girl at the stable with her horse Lady.
“When I was 12, she told me she had to sell due to time/interest and asked if me and my parents wanted to buy Lady. Luckily for me, my parents were able to buy her and she’s been mine ever since. She’s my best friend and I love her a lot.”
“When I started dating my 26-year-old boyfriend, I made sure to be upfront and honest about how much time I spend at the stables, as I was worried he’d think it was ‘too much’.
“He originally told me that he didn’t have a problem with my spending so much time there because it was important to me — but he started to change his tune as our relationship went on.
“When single I could spend three to four hours a day in the stable but as we started dating I cut this down to about three hours every other day,” she added.
“This is roughly how long it takes for me to do all the cleaning/preparing food/riding. Most of my friends are at the stable which obviously means this is also social for me.
“After about six months my boyfriend told me I spent too much time at the stable and I should prioritise my relationship more and somehow his family got involved, saying it was strange to prioritise the way I did. I wasn’t comfortable with this but I am a bit of a pushover so I agreed.
“To try to appease him, I cut down on my riding hours even more as I was worried about my boyfriend blowing up at me for taking too long: he’ll be annoyed and pissed off for days and give me the silent treatment.
“I know my horse isn’t really suffering from not being ridden as often as before but I still feel very guilty that I’m always rushing around her.
“Still annoyed by how much time I was spending at the stables, my boyfriend turned to me one night and asked me to put down my horse because ‘she’s old anyway’. He told me it was time to sell Lady. I laughed at him and asked if he was serious. He was.
“I told him no and he said I needed to start prioritising this relationship more and I said I’ve done nothing but prioritise this relationship. I was furious at this and told him that was absolutely not happening and I would never sell her.
“He said that any reasonable person would sell or put down their horse in favour of their boyfriend and the only reason I wouldn’t is because I only hang out with other insane horse people.
“Dr. Kim, what should I do?”
— Horse Lover, England
Dear Miss Horsey Person:
Let’s be absolutely clear about what’s going to happen in your near future.
Your beloved Lady is going to die at some point, and there’s no getting around it.
What you’ll be left with is the world’s biggest, most narcissistic asshole — a control freak par excellence — as well as his asshole family, who are where he got his narcissistic assholiness and control freakery from. If you think he will be a shoulder to cry on when Lady dies, he won’t.
Dump the asshole now. Do not pass GO, do not collect £200. Break up with him in the most brutal way you can — let him catch you in bed bonking another bloke, is my suggestion — but ditch him nevertheless, and then ghost him and his foul family forever. (I’m tempted to have one of my Brit friends call on him, but the murder rate in the U.K. is high enough already.)
I absolutely guarantee that your life will be better after wiping this piece of pig shit off your shoe.
There are much more worthy men out there for you, and even better, there are men who love horses as much as you do. Find one of them, because he’ll be a better choice than Mr. Euthanasia.
Invite your Boyfriend to meet you at the Stables. Make sure that Raoul and Max the Argentine Polo Instructors are around and flirting with you as they normally do. Then explain that you will be going back to your usual schedule of daily visits to the Stable and if he wants to spend more time with you he’ll need to learn to ride. Raoul can teach him — good and hard.
You’ll be free of him in a week.
…and find a friend who’s less boy and more man. .
I see this just like a chick that tells you that you need to sell your motorcycle and stop hanging with your motorcycle friends.
And put down a perfectly healthy animal because it’s old anyway?
Huge red flag.
I’m with Stencil, time to dump the child and find a man who is excited by your interests… and who you find interesting… the real issue here is NOT the horse… rather respect for your partner. Tell him to go get f’ed and move on as life is to short to waste time on this twat.
Outstanding advice again Dr Kim. Dump the chump. Instead of giving this chump a celestial exit, just give him a painful crippling wound so that he has a constant reminder of what happens when he’s an utter turd. As he gimps around he will also be an example to others. this way his putrid existence just might serve as a beneficial lesson to others.
to the lady with the horse, find someone who encourages your interests and passions, not someone who sees them as competition or a threat.
Usually I hear of guys being told to sacrifice their interests for women. Give up golf (maybe that’s not a bad idea), motorcycles, following sports with their friends, fishing, hunting, shooting sports, camping (icky bugs) etc. Nope, find a healthy compromise. In the case of the horse who needs daily care, that commitment is necessary to the animal’s well being. Mr. Beau can join you to spend time with you or he can find his own hobbies. If his hobbies include a tart then that solves your problem. It shows that he’s not willing to compromise and his values on caring for another life are not strong. Kick him to the curb quickly just for his suggestion of executing an animal due to age rather than the animal being infirm with a poor prognosis. Such a disregard for life is appalling.
JQ
A friend of mine was told by his new wife that now that they were married he’d have much less time to play golf. In fact, he should sell his clubs.
My friend told her, “That’s what my ex-wife to me.”
Very surprised, the new wife said, “You never told me you were married before!”
He replied, “I wasn’t.”
I’ve seen that exchange posted online and it is absolutely spot on.
My wife and I do many things together but she gets together with her sisters and friends from time to time and she encourages me to go to my bourbon club on my own from time to time. We enjoy doing things together. She’ll come to the range with me from time to time and I’ll do her activities with her too.
JQ
Plagiarism much?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/my-boyfriend-wants-put-down-28829976
Errrrr you haven’t been paying attention, have you? ALL these posts come from new articles. It’s called “satire”.
Oh sorry! My mistake. Thought you were CREATING [original] opinion and cultural analysis.
Yes, it is your mistake. One of many.
Well … as long as we’re going into high-school insults.
Indeed, mistakes were made, but here’re are my last two gun purchases, which I shoot on my own property. So suck it!
Much love and hugs!
Sigh … seems I can’t post pics, so can only supply words.
1. Sig P210-5 target
2. CETME LC
Married a horse crazy girl. The difference was she never had one before we were married. Had I known about all the pretty athletic girls and women at a stable when I was a teen I would have been in heaven.
Dump the boyfriend and upgrade.
Had you known as a teen you would have discovered:
They are athletic because they spend several hours a day dead lifting 70 lb bales of hay, buckets of water and Pails of oats, loading wheelbarrows full of wet manure with a pitch fork and dumping it in the back. Then for fun they jump on a 3,000 lb animal controlling them by squeezing the horse with their thighs of steel. The girls who don’t play for the other team ( maybe 50% ) or are not totally focused on the horse instead of boys do not put up with boys who are not equally into riding.
Which is why the letter above does not match my experience with the girls who also grew up on a horse farm.
Mileage must vary.
The two girls ( 20 & 27) who help me load hay don’t weigh 110 pounds apiece but the do work better than any football player that ever attempted the job and failed. The 27 year old trains mustangs to saddle.
My wife never hit 120 till she turned 70. She had no problem mucking stalls when I was away. My sister might be 110 pounds but she rides crazy thoroughbreds and runs paperchase at 63.
It maybe because your horses are so large. Most of ours run between 850-1100 pounds. The old Belgium never topped 2200 and he was for pulling not riding.
Like I said , mileage may vary.
Dr. Kim has written a prescription, take it or ignore it – it’s your life.