October 2008

My name is “Sidney” and I have been sans FBF for 6 months, 1 week, and 2 days.
Everyone: “Hi Sidney.”

I met my trader FBF in a club.  It took a month of phone tag, but when we finally rearranged our busy schedules and went on our first date, the date lasted for eight hours and the chemistry was palpable.  He was the spicy mayo on my sushi, the truffles in my risotto. I had found my dream weaver.

For once, I wasn’t dating a finance guy because he had the best table at the latest hot spot, the secret phone number for Milk and Honey on speed dial, or an apartment significantly more tricked out than my own, complete with a giant plasma TV for my viewing pleasure. No, I actually preferred to spend Saturdays curled up with him on the couch watching football in his sweatpants, than shopping with his black Amex.

Almost a year ago, he realized the economy was doomed and became a workaholic overnight. Suddenly, he could always get in touch with me, but I could never get a hold of him. My phone call would go unreturned for a week. When he finally called me back, I would risk both life and limb in my dive for the phone, unashamed to answer on the first ring. I would then listen to him talk non-stop for an hour about work, the economy or whatever had him fired up that day before he abruptly hung-up the phone when he reached his next meeting. All without so much as asking how my day was!  Like A.P.’s story below, I was downgraded from girlfriend to career counselor slash personal cheerleader.

I blamed myself. Was I not pretty enough (unlikely)?  I tried my hardest to play it cool. Yet, when he called to tell me he had the flu – in a move that even Florence Nightengale would have shunned – I rerouted my cab from the Marc Jacobs show to his apartment.  I didn’t recognize myself.  Who was this shadow of a socialite I had once been?

I finally forced myself to date some analyst that I had no real interest in to take the edge off and put the moves on. I hadn’t had sex in two months.  In retrospect a Xanax prescription and a new vibrator probably would have achieved the same result minus the guilt. All the while, although never available for a face to face conversation, he was utilizing every other mode of communication he had in his arsenal to contact me and go on about work. I half expected a dancing teddy gram to show up on my doorstop to sing to me about derivatives. The relationship finally ended unceremoniously over the phone in the beginning of the summer of 08.

I am writing this because I want other DABA girls, whose relationships tanked with the economy, to know it’s not their fault and that the economy is a zero sum game. Somewhere out there, some other finance guy is raking it in right now. Have faith that if you continue to starve yourself to perfection, he will find you.

-”Sidney’s” story, as retold by the DABA Girls

Megan’s sorority sister from college, “T.S.” had been dating an i-banker, “Denny.”  From the get go it was different.  Her face lit up when she talked about him.  Their conversations flowed like Belvedere vodka at the Box.  They just clicked, this was right around the same time that I started dating Ken.  T.S. and I would get together to gush about our new FBFs.  They were the guys we had been looking for all along,  They made us laugh.  They tolerated our long-winded accounts of our days.  We liked the same movies.  We could sit on the couch and talk about nothing for hours.  The sex wasn’t half bad, and oh – did I forget to mention – they were uber successful and smart.  The sort of alpha males that could keep up with us.

So when T.S. tearily called to tell me that she and Denny had broken up via text message, I was shocked.  WTF?!?! I called an emergency DABA girl meeting chez moi.  Here’s the story:

About three months prior Denny went MIA.  He was too tired to see T.S. after work, was working every weekend, and their robust sex life, which once upon a time had gone down in every high end boutique hotel in New York City, was now non-existent.  He would call her at the end of the day but was so stressed he couldn’t muster more than a goodnight.  When they did manage to talk, the conversation was relegated to how stressful his job was.  T.S. felt she had essentially become his therapist.

Three weeks passed without Denny asking T.S. a single questions about her life.  Unexecusable considering at the time she was undergoing painful and expensive surgery to fix her teeth from a ski accident (note to self: buy dental insurance pre-Sundance).  T.S. hit her breaking point.  Knowing he could no longer be relied upon to return her phone calls in a timely fashion, she had no choice but to break-up with him via text message.  She wrote that she understood he had a lot going on but this just wasn’t a relationship. He texted back a novel. He was sooo sorry that he hadn’t been there fore her.  He regrets everything, but, at the same time, knows that nothing is going to change with his job in the near future.  And that was that.  Another one bites the dust.

-T.S.’s story, as retold by the DABA Girls

“The Dow Jones Industrial Average cut losses and ended down more than 300 points.”  NYT

Translation: send you FBF a sweet e-mail but steer clear.  Good night to have dinner with your girlfriends and do laundry.

The economic breakdown is making FBFs everywhere outright belligerent.  Ladies of the jury, the DABA Girls give you evidence A:

“My FBF has been perpetually angry ever since the mortgage meltdown; however, he took things to a whole new level last night.  World War III erupted in our shared Nolita apartment after I casually referred to a chair in our living room as white.  He INSISTED the chair was actually eggshell.”

We feel you fellow DABA girl!  Since when do men even know the difference between eggshell and white?

-A.T.’s story, as retold by the DABA Girls