There’s Just No Use in Saying, ‘I Told You So’

She’d barely got the words, “Hi, how are you?” out of her mouth when out came, “Please don’t say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

This was fine with me, hanging on the telephone the other day, because when this particular friend of mine says something like, “Don’t say, ‘I told you so,’ ” I know she’s already told herself so.

So I braced for an unhappy tale.

My friend was hurt. She was angry. She was absolutely flabbergasted about the latest crisis of love and confidence sabotaging her relationship with a man I am not overly fond of, to say the least.

This is a man who likes too many choices. Two, three women at once; they should all be there for him.

Only the women don’t know about any of that. Only this man knows about that. He is the one who does all the choosing.

I have told my friend all this in the past, and even though I wasn’t about to remind her of it yet again, the specter of I told you so nonetheless hung heavy on the phone line between us.

“Ummmmm,” I said when she told me about the letters, the ones she wasn’t supposed to see, the ones that compared her, and unfavorably at that, to another.

I told you so .

“Are you kidding?” I said when I heard about yet another woman, an older woman with a great job and who knows what else.

I told you so .

“Oh, God,” I repeated several times when my friend told me about the lies and the phony concern and his plans, already in the works, to line up the next woman of his choice.

I told you so .

“Well, you can imagine how I felt,” my friend said by way of an addendum to her sad story of love whirling slowly down the drain.

“Oh, God, yes,” I think I said. “I can imagine.”

There was really nothing more to say, not to my friend at least, not when she didn’t want to hear it.

She already knew what the words would sound like. They would sound harsh, and mean, and a bit condescending, from me at least.

I am married, with kids. I haven’t dated--is that what it’s still called?--for years. I hope I don’t have to anymore. I don’t remember it as being all that much fun.

So I held my tongue. My mind, however, raced on to a rather smug “I saw through that creep long ago.”

And even though I didn’t tell my friend so, I have told my husband this. More than once.

I worry about so-and-so, is what I tell my husband. She has no self-confidence, no sense of self-worth. She looks terrific, I’ve said, and she’s got so much going for her. She’s smart and kind, with a great sense of humor.

So why does she keep getting involved with such creeps? Anybody can see right through them.

Except, apparently, my friend. For she loves this particular creep, or she loved him, for years.

But he used her and he hurt her and maybe he even loved her. In his way.

For what it’s worth.

In any case, my friend says it is over between them. She says she realizes, now, that it wasn’t right and that she’s better off without him.

Or maybe she didn’t say “better off.” Better off sounds like something that I’ve told her she is. Better off is something that I have judged her to be.

And better off still hurts.

My friend is now righteously alone. It might feel good while the torch is still in your hands, but what happens when the fire grows cold and you put the damn thing aside and sit down at the kitchen table for yet another microwaved chicken divan?

The answer is, you start looking again. Righteous or not, alone often doesn’t work very well. Principles don’t give off much warmth.

Not at our age, at least. That is what my friend, and others--all women, bright, attractive and alone--say time and again.

Our age is for going out to dinner with couples you have known for years and dragging out your kids’ pictures at the office and renting videos at home and just throwing on a sweat shirt when you feel like it because, Lord knows, everybody’s seen you look worse.

Our age is for settling in.

And when you can’t, somehow the rest of the world seems like an ill fit.

I saw my friend the other day. She looked great, and she said she was feeling OK. She had started seeing another man, who had sounded too good to be true, and in the end it turned out that he was.

That hurt too.

“I tell myself that maybe this wouldn’t be happening if I were blonde and thin and beautiful,” my friend says.

Then she makes a face, because she is brunette and well-proportioned and doesn’t believe that she is as beautiful as she is.

I still think that she is better off. But I’ve stopped telling her that. Who am I to judge?