VICTORIA, BC – Tired of her friends’ relationship conversations dominating group outings, local copywriter Ashley Tanner, 25, recently invented a distant and generally disappointing significant other.
“My actual dating stories were so boring, no one even listened,” Tanner explained while knitting herself a poncho. “So then I made up Paul. I was just tired of being alone, I guess.”
Having never been in an actual long-term relationship, Tanner found difficulty making Paul believable–let alone getting her friends’ attention–until she began to draw inspiration from her parents, including elements of emotional manipulation and empty promises.
“Talking about Paul started out really great,” Tanner said. “I don’t want you to think he was always like this. But then my friends started making big life changes like getting engaged, and I had to up the ante.”
In the beginning, Paul’s shitty boyfriend antics included never calling, calling when he shouldn’t call, forgetting to call when he said he would, and calling too much. But recently, they took a turn for the worse with such red flags as: telling Tanner she’s just like her mother, telling Tanner she’s starting to look like her mother, telling Tanner she’ll end up like her mother, and talking about Tanner to her mother behind Tanner’s back.
Tanner’s cousin and close friend, Lacey Faulkner, expressed concern about the relationship. “It’s just really sad to see Ash like this,” she said. “We all know Paul isn’t real, but we don’t want to embarrass her. We keep encouraging her to break up with him, but she just can’t let go of the idea. She’s like, addicted to this loser.”
When asked why she doesn’t end the imaginary relationship and invent a healthier one instead, Tanner is vague. “He needs me, he couldn’t exist without me,” she explained while texting herself ‘ur beautiful, im sorry about last nite’ on the second phone she bought on her and Paul’s “Couple’s Plan”.
“Sometimes you just need the idea of a warm body with a troubling backstory next to you at night, you know? Plus Lacey’s getting married in a month, so I think I might be pregnant.”
