A Shared Custody Agreement Over Your Boyfriend

To whom it may concern (the girl dating the guy I’m in love with),

I’m proposing this very legal and very formal shared custody agreement over time spent with your boyfriend. I’m thinking this could easily work as a 30/70 time split — with you, obviously, getting the larger percentage of time spent with him. Because he’s your boyfriend. I’m just in love with him.

Starting (insert effective date of agreement), I don’t think it would be completely unreasonable to demand the following:

1. I am awarded the majority of your boyfriend’s emotional baggage, which I will hold onto and suppress into the deepest layers of my brain until I inevitably begin to resent him. You will, however, be allowed to give him your emotional baggage and I will not discuss mine at all. I am legally allowed to bring some of it up in passing, in a feeble attempt to establish a deep emotional connection with him, but he legally has to ignore almost every word I say.

2. I am allowed one (1) mental breakdown per month (excluding February) to my close friends. Legally, after said mental breakdown, my friends have to tell me to stop trying to interfere in your relationship with your boyfriend. I will reevaluate my priorities for exactly two (2) hours and then change nothing about myself.

3. Under law, I must have Tinder permanently downloaded onto my phone as a constant reminder that I am still not properly dating your boyfriend. You are dating your boyfriend. Ugh.

4. I can feel morally sound talking to your boyfriend during all work hours and early evening hours during the week. I am also allowed to send him good wishes on the following holidays: birthdays, Fourth of July, Christmas (but after 1pm on Christmas Day), any Friday the 13th’s. Absolutely no communication may transpire on: Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving Day, any other major bank holidays. I can post one (1) hot photo of myself on Halloween in a very blatant cry for superficial attention. No talking on weekends. (I really, really want weekends.)

5. I shall obtain a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 personal secrets from your boyfriend. Only 5-7 of them can be things he’s never told you. They can only be revealed under the following circumstances: we both accidentally got drunk after work, we were FaceTiming after midnight, I figured them out by reading his Twitter and then asking him very specific questions tailored around the information that I was specifically seeking.

6. The only meal your boyfriend and I are allowed to eat alone together is lunch. Coffee runs are also allowed, although frowned upon. Venmo transaction captions can’t be funny.

7. It is under your boyfriend’s best interests if he lives significantly closer to you than he does to me (I guess). I will either be A) in a different borough of New York City or B) across the country in an entirely different city with no plans to move to the city you two live in. But I will actively be in love with him via the internet.

I would appreciate setting up a more formal custody calendar to better optimize both of our times with your boyfriend. Feel free to send me your Gmail address.

Looking forward to us both resenting each other in very passive aggressive ways — while your boyfriend remains somewhat oblivious to everything — until we all die.