/lit/ - Literature

This makes sense

>"David," the friend of Charles and Nowicki, confirmed to Nowicki that Roupenian and Charles dated. This was in the conversation Nowicki had with David after Charles' death. Nowicki was pissed that Charles never told her about that when she mentioned the article to him -- she had to wait until he died to find out from his best friend. David even went into the detail about how Charles kept his old iPhone to re-read through his old text messages with Kristin Roupenian after "Cat Person" was published so Charles could forever mull over whether he was as much of a dick to her as Roupenian made him out to be.

>This story really has every plot twist imaginable. It is too good to be true.

>I agree with the other part of your theory -- Roupenian absolutely looked down on Charles' relationship with Nowicki when she discovered it after breaking up with Charles. I can see the humiliation angle here. She felt disgusted by dating Charles, so when she found out he dated someone younger than her, her mind went to that place of "imagine what a piece of shit he must have been to this person," just like all of us always do with our exes ("I feel bad for his next girlfriend!"). Finding out that someone who was shitty to us was kinder to someone else hurts worst of all, because it makes us self-question about whether we are as good a person as we think we are. What we always want to hear (or imagine) is that our shitty ex was twice as shitty to all the other people they dated as he was to us -- or that any who dates them who thinks our ex is not a piece of shit must be a naive abused doormat.