Good Material

Content Warning: The source material contains themes of alcohol misuse and food restriction.

Andy lists all the insignificant things that annoyed him about his ex-girlfriend Jen, whom he dated for four years. Small habits like picking her nails or being late annoyed him, and he didn’t get along with her family. What bothered him most was that Jen, despite knowing how much he wanted to be a father, would never talk about having children; he thinks that “she just didn’t want children with me” (6). The list concludes with Andy’s claim that she rarely showed emotion and “ruined my life” (7).

Andy stays with his mom, and Jen moves in with her sister, Miranda. Andy holds back tears on their weekly phone call as he still hasn’t entirely accepted that Jen ended their relationship. Jen’s therapist suggested that she list everything she dislikes about him to confirm why the relationship didn’t work, an exercise that Andy finds useless because he doesn’t believe that they should have ended it. Jen says that the list “will help you separate the fantasy of us from the reality of us, which I think you know deep down wasn’t working” (12).