Written by Joe Peppercorn | 27 December 2009

OK, Christmas is over. Let’s take a moment to reflect and bask in the afterglow of the gift-giving, the over-eating, the over-familying, and take stock of the gifts we received this year. Your mom gave you some wonderful gifts (mom is great). Despite being financially ruined in the aftermath of her and your father’s messy divorce eight years ago, and despite being left emotionally disheveled and spiritually frail, your mom managed to take a rather modest sum of money and turn it into some of the most thoughtful and beautiful gifts you have ever gotten. She got you a Starbucks card (and even wrote "the next eggnog latte is on me!" Your mom knows not only your favorite drinks, but also your favorite seasonal drinks). Your mom also got you a perfect fitting 60s dress she found in a second hand shop in Athens, a framed photo of the both of you from years ago, and a necklace that belonged to your great grandmother.

Let’s take inventory of what your boyfriend gave you: The Hangover on DVD (you guys watched a copy he pirated off the internet a few weeks ago and you commented that you thought it was ‘funny,’ which I guess he took to mean, please let me watch this movie over and over for the rest of my life with the option of a commentary track), two blouses that don’t fit and are both sea green (you hate green and you have told him this many times), a box of Russel Stover chocolates (which you will give to your sister since your doctor has told you to avoid sweets this holiday as you are at risk for high blood pressure), a gift card to Old Navy (you hate Old Navy), and a Rachel Ray cookbook (you kind of like this gift, but as you don’t cook, you don’t know what kind of a message your boyfriend is trying to send). He wasn’t considerate enough to give you gift receipts for this crap, but had he done so, I can assure you that the date of the receipt would have been 12/24/09 and the time would have been some time around 5. This would have explained why he was an hour late to pick you up to take you to your mom’s. It's not that your boyfriend is a procrastinator or lazy (both very forgiving offenses at 887 Chambers Rd), it’s that he is inconsiderate, selfish and stupid. Let’s juxtapose these two people in your life: your mom loves you unconditionally, has been there your whole life, knows you better than anyone else in the world and is your favorite person in the world. Your boyfriend loves you with many conditions attached, has been around for the last year, thinks he knows you better than anyone (he knows you less than your mailman does, your mailman is very nice and actually listens to you when you tell him about your day), and in your honest moments you can only manage to tell yourself that ‘he’s really not a bad guy.’

Time to give yourself the greatest Christmas gift of all (that is not the Christmas Shoes): DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND.

You want to know why Hallmark doesn’t make a shoebox greeting card that says “I’m really sorry my boyfriend got drunk at your wedding, best friend. Oh and tell your mom that I am sorry he dropped the F-bomb in front of her and tell your dad he didn’t mean to make fun of his profession. Also, how much do I owe you for the tablecloth he spilled Jack and coke all over?” Because even the Hallmark Corp. thinks you should dump your boyfriend!

Seriously, some more questions: 1. Who is this guy and 2. Where did you find him? ANSWER KEY: 1. THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD EVER 2. You met him at Bar Louie and you don’t remember how he asked you out or why you were at Bar Louie, but you think he bought you a drink at some point during the night? He picked you up for your first date in a rugby polo and painter jeans. He was an hour late. He was driving his dad’s yellow mustang. He took you to Chili’s and thought he was being charitable by putting the appetizer he wanted (an awesome blossom, which you did not touch because it is almost as disgusting as the guy who ordered it) on his half of the bill. He didn’t even buy you a drink, even though you flirtatiously asked him if he was going to do so. You and I both still don’t know why you looked the other way through all of this.

The first rule of Fight Club is you should dump your boyfriend, the second rule of Fight Club is you should dump your boyfriend. The reason you understand this reference is because he has made you sit through Fight Club eight times. You would always fall asleep right around the time Brad Pitt and Edward Norton told the convenience store clerk at gunpoint to become a vet. Your boyfriend would get mad that you fell asleep during his favorite movie and say ‘we’ll try again another time.’ You don’t know why your boyfriend started the whole movie over every time, but he did, and now you know the first half of Fight Club really well. He still refuses to even watch About a Boy with you, which is, as you tried to explain to him, a pretty good romantic comedy and the most tolerable Hugh Grant will ever be. I have to say though, I agree with your boyfriend’s decision to not watch Love Actually. I don’t know who invented film, or movies, or the concept of good movies, but if that guy had seen Love Actually, he would probably get all like the guy who invented the A-Bomb and be like ‘had I known that my creation would have unleashed this sort of misery and horror upon the world, I would have wished to have never been born’ and then would have devoted the rest of his life to trying his best to right the wrongs he brought into the world.

Your friends met him not long after your first date and he was very short and rude with them. He made a gauche and inappropriate joke about the pearl necklace your best friend was wearing (your boyfriend is not clever or witty, but he thinks he is funny, he is sort of like this guy, and also this guy. The three of them should get together and start a comedy troupe called THE LEAST FUNNY WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD EVER), and he made an even ruder joke about the dress she was wearing. Your friends try to be patient with you, but every time one of them has three Smirnoff Ice (you guys love Smirnoff Ice), they start to tell you the truth and they give you the best advice you will ever get in this lifetime: dump your boyfriend. Seriously, you should be paying your friends for advice like this, many people spend fortunes on therapy and never come upon advice this precise and true.

This Christmas break, you asked your boyfriend to do you a huge favor. Your college friends were all going to be in town and you wanted to have a girls’ night out like you used to. You wanted to go to Applebee’s and bring your boyfriend along to be the DD so that the rest of you could cut loose on Long Island Iced Teas and Mudslides and shots of Washington Apple. He complained, then agreed to do it, then forgot he had agreed and made other plans and said ‘sorry babe, maybe next time.’ This is especially egregious as you were the DD for eight straight weeks this year when he would get together with his friends at BW3 for Monday Night Football and amateur Beerfest For Dummies. You sat through awful four-hour football games watching your boyfriend and his friends cover their faces with Blazin’ sauce and held back your vomit as you watched them down anywhere between four and six 24 oz. Bud Selects. You did this because you learned from your mom how to love somebody unconditionally. Unfortunately, your father took your lifetime savings and bought a motorcycle and jet ski when you were 13, leaving you confused, with no life savings, and making it inevitable that you would be attracted to guys like your current boyfriend. SERIOUSLY, YOU SHOULD DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND.

It really shouldn’t have come to this though, and I partially blame myself. We should have had this conversation back in September. Do you remember what happened in September? It was a Friday, you got a call from your best friend. She had just been dumped by HER awful boyfriend, and this was two days before he was supposed to help her move into her new apartment. She was not only devastated by being dumped without any sort of harbinger or foresight, but she also was stuck trying to move all of her furniture with only you, her sister, and her Jetta (her boyfriend had a giant pickup truck they were planning on using).

Your boyfriend also has a giant pickup truck and you asked him that Friday: “Sandra’s boyfriend dumped her and she has nobody to help him move. Do you think that maybe this Sunday you could help her move and let us use your truck?” Your boyfriend is awful and responded to you that he could not be of any help. His reason being that he is a big Steelers fan and according to him , the Steelers were playing a HUGE game that Sunday and he couldn’t miss it. You were sensitive to his ‘needs’ even though you should have been sensitive to what he was really saying (please punch me in the groin, dump me and then tell my parents what a horrible job they did in raising me). You said to him: ‘what if I DVR the game, get you a giant order of all your favorite flavors of chicken wing, and get a case of your favorite beer, and then not judge you for being a slob while you watch the game with me?’ You did this because he does not deserve you. He of course said no and left you with no choice but to move your friend on your own.

So you and your friend rented a U-Haul and had a hellish day in which she put $200 worth of damage into the walls of her apartment when she dropped her armoire (the armoire was also damaged severely), cut her hand open (you guys lucked out, it looked like stitches, but it healed just fine with a butterfly bandage), and your back was sore for a week. Your boyfriend even had the nerve to crack jokes when he saw you later that night about how you were not looking your best after moving all of your friend’s furniture. Seriously, we know you can do so much better, any Wednesday night at the Treehouse we have guys singing songs about how they are looking for a girl. They seem like nice guys, they seem like your type, why don’t you come out and let them buy you a drink?

You should dump your boyfriend, and by you I mean you, reader, we all know you should DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND.

You think that he will change, you think that it’s a phase and that there is this goodness inside of him that you saw the first month you were dating. What you saw was actually him behaving for selfish reasons and is no indication of any goodness. There is no goodness in your boyfriend, he is awful, and you should dump him.

Your boyfriend thinks he has great taste in music. He loves Kings of Leon and makes fun of you for listening to Lady Gaga. We all know that Lady Gaga is much more fun and more catchy than Kings of Leon and that you are right to be listening to her instead of Kings of Leon. Your boyfriend also still insists that Dave Matthews Band is actually really good because:

“DMB are all really good musicians, and its too bad most bands today can’t play like that. I went and saw a local band and they sucked. They were at the Treehouse and all of their songs were really simple and could have been played by anyone. That’s not talent, anyone can do that. I am sick of people not being able to play their instruments, look at John Mayer, you can knock him all you want for writing some love songs, but the dude can shred on the guitar, and I’ll take that any day of some pretentious arty crap. Dude gets so much tail too.”

-Your Boyfriend, Professor of Musicology Ph.D

“Your boyfriend has awful taste in music and is a terrible person, you should probably dump him.”

-George Jones

Your boyfriend does the same thing with movies and TV. He makes fun of you for watching Titanic every year and watching Lifetime Movies, even though he saw both Transformer movies ON OPENING DAY, paid full price to see Crank 2, waited in line for tickets to I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (he even made you watch it with him) and has a DVD collection that looks like the Clearance cart of previously viewed DVDs at Blockbuster (seriously, Space Cowboys? Starsky and Hutch? Scooby Doo the Movie? Backdraft? The Love Guru? Click? Who owns these movies? Your boyfriend owns these movies). And though you insist he’ll probably like Mad Men, he refuses to watch it with you, and tells you that CSI is the only show worth watching on TV other than EVERY NFL GAME (your boyfriend made you get the NFL Network and told you he would pay for it, of course, he bought you dinner one night and decided that it made things even). Your boyfriend also thinks the Jeff Dunham show is rad.

Your mom knows it, your sister knows it, your brother knows it, your friends know it, your gay friends know it, your co-workers know it (they met him at the office Christmas party and the one time he came by to pick you up for lunch), your boss knows it, your hairdresser knows it (and is vocal about it), your therapist knows it, your bartender knows it, your barista knows it, the girl checking you out at Giant Eagle knows it, the mailman knows it, God knows it, your dog knows it, your Aunt knows it, your cousins know it, and we at the Treehouse know it: DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND.

The world is going to end in three years. You should enjoy the time you have left with someone who is not as horrible as your boyfriend. New Year’s Resolution? DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND

I would like to open up the comments section for everyone to tell you why you should dump your boyfriend. Readers, please tell this girl why she needs to dump her boyfriend, why her boyfriend is awful and what you have seen him do. Keep it clean, my parents read this blog and my mom cries when I use curse words.

If we do not see each other again before New Year's, Happy 2010, hope it is without your horrible boyfriend. Oh yeah, message from the Treehouse: HEY WE ARE OPEN NEW YEAR'S! NO COVER!