I don’t know if I told you all how this list came into existence, but better now than never. The top reasons for normals to not date supers started when I was still working at the coffee shop. I think it was a really slow Sunday (all Sundays are slow when you open at 7am in Union Square) and we had all been up since 4am and were on our 3rd or 4th cups of coffee/espresso when I just said, out of the blue.

“You know why I would never date a superhero? Because ________” and then it just exploded and we kept adding more and more reasons until we had thirty. I pestered customers about it, and went to Forbidden Planet and asked some of the employees there what they thought.

And there you have it, the genesis of the top 30 reasons to not date supers. And now,

[In no particular order, except for number one because that’s my #1]

Note: This piece will be written using gender neutral pronouns (ze instead of he/she and hir instead of she/he and him/her) in order to make this non-heteronormative.

27) Evil Doppelganger/Imposter

So, you come home from work, it’s been a long day, and you just want to see that the dishes have been done and the laundry is started. Is it really too much to ask for? Instead, the house is in chaos, there might be an actual fucking bomb on the kitchen table, and your partner is passed out in the recliner, an empty 24 pack of beer on the floor next to hir.

You might just lose it a little, only a little.

The next thing you know you’re pushed up against a wall and that glint in hir eye doesn’t look playful. Ze has become an official brooding asshole, hir personality takes a complete 180 and you are confused as hell. It’s not until three weeks, half a decimated city, and trauma that will require thousands of hours of therapy later that you realize the reason why it feels like your lover has been replaced by an alien is because ze has been.

Then there are the regular old imposters who run around the city defaming and smearing your partner’s name with their own idiotic vendettas. Problematic. People start whispering around you. No one believes you when you say it’s not your superhero(ine) and the fucking media begins yet another campaign against your lover. So, now your superhero(ine) has to go hunt the imposter down which causes untold stress. Ze is never around, ze won’t spend the night anymore, and the shame/anger is too much to deal with. When ordinary people, like yourself, have their identities stolen all they have to worry about is massive credit card bills and a shit ton of paperwork.

Also, what the fuck do you do if you like the doppelganger/imposter better….or ze fucks better?