“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.
