Forgive me for using this journal for whiny diatribe. I wanted this out there where it could be found but not so public a thing as other medium. Someone would have to know, to care, and work to search for this. As it should be.

Skip this if nothing I said above means anything to you.









It was a week or so into January when she told me that I was no longer loved.

I spoke reason in reasonable tones to not give up so quickly. To find hope. We were married for three of the ten years we were together. To through all of that away without really seeking help, without trying to find a different way? She seemed to listen, but her demeanor over the next few days was cold. I felt more alone than at any point in my life.



Within those three days, the finality of her words and actions hit. I asked if she truly meant it, if she had given up and was just waiting for a chance to leave. “Yes, I’m done. I have been for a while. I have already seen a lawyer, some time ago. It’s what I want.”

When she asked if she should go, I said yes.

She called a friend, gathered a few things; told me “I love you, I care for you, and I’m sorry to do this to you. But this isn’t working for me. And I can’t be the only thing you love about your life.”

When she was gone I screamed. I screamed at anything and nothing about all I had just lost. Every hope I had for a future, every dream that meant anything to me. I screamed and cried “I am not okay!” Walls and furniture make for poor audience. They may prop you up when you wish repose, but offer cold comfort to any real need.

I spent the next week in a bean bag chair; unmindful of day or night.

A dark wall in a dark room was stimulation enough. I slept where I laid and didn’t bother to rise when woken. I neither ate nor drank more than was needed.

I lost 25lbs over the next five days.

In that time I saw a doctor, I sought a prescription and, though I am weaned from it now, am probably still around because of it.

Finally, I needed to know. I wanted to make sure she was well, that she was okay, that this was all real: rather than some delusion or hallucination. I fiddled around on the computer and logged into a find-my-phone app associated with apple devices. She was at an apartment complex in Scottsdale, a seemingly nice one.

She called once in those days; to let me know she had found a room with two women that had worked corporate purchasing for a clothing store. People that, as she would put it later, “made real money.”

At the time, that stung but wasn’t inaccurate: I made shit for in exchange for inordinate effort and stress.

My parents arrived to console me after a week post-separation. I was forced into a shower and into work on a timely basis while they made the best they could as a cleaning crew to reassemble my house into a home.

While my parents were in town, they called her. They wanted to know what happened and to offer to pay for a lawyer to help us both through the legalities of the whole separation process; as opposed to representing either one of us. This was “not fair” according to her, one of the few phrases I could hear over the phone, from several feet away.

I would find out why from my parents a few moments later who kindly informed me that she claimed me to be a rapist and an abusive partner.

This from a woman with whom I had never raised my voice or hand. A woman I always thought lovingly of, though also somewhat erratic and emotional and prone to manic lapses of seasonal depression and sociable gaiety: but these were the things which I found absolutely endearing. From a woman for whom sex with some “of my size” was painful ever since her surgeries relate to “non-distinct abdominal pain.” It does not take long to hate yourself in those conditions. I came to despise sex. I abstained from even all but the most provocative enticements to “come to bed.”

Whatever her needs, I could not supply them; I hated the pain I would cause her and I hated my weakness, my weight, and myself.

I had not ‘come to bed’ for months, I was rarely in the mood and was only invited once or twice. Then, one night she came to the office door bereft of clothing and languished in doorway: “I look good, don’t I?”

I came to bed then. Though, surprisingly, to a somewhat lukewarm reception of “ok” and an abbreviated termination as her abdominal pain flared and I was asked to finish. This was on New Year ’s Day; I had abstained for 3 to four months prior.

That was that last time we were intimate in any way, shape, or form. My part in it was dutiful and perfunctional at best; it was not something I wanted anymore and I was just filling a role that she wanted. It was awful.

I don’t know what she said on the phone, not the specifics, but there could be only one time in recent memory she would refer to. Was I a monster? The woman I trusted more than my own senses, my own mind had said it was so: it must be true, right? She could have said the sky was a faint shade of neon green and gravity would stop working tomorrow. I would have believed her.

Later, my father would ask if it were true that “was she in pain?” I said “yes.”

I failed to mention so much more. I didn’t say that I abhorred it all: the pain she felt, that I caused it with my failure to control my middle-age bloating, that I was so guilty and ashamed of working a shit job for shit pay and had not provided her with any fine thing in life. I didn’t say she instigated almost all pairings because I was so guilty and ashamed that my weight was such a painful impediment for her.

I didn’t say that I was never asked to stop, that I did not ever force myself upon her, and that I was not told ‘no.’

That what she was saying was false. Absolutely and positively. But then, I trusted her more than my own mind. How could I be sure I wasn’t the monster she claimed? That thought would give me nightmares every night for a long time.

My father and I have not been the same, since. To this day, when I look in his eyes I see wariness and doubt that had never been there before. Are duty and appearance all he has left, or am I paranoid?

I have been considering skipping the holidays and vacations to the homestead: siting work, injury, illness, a mild case of death as excuse.

While I love them all, I do not think I am much liked in return.

in the end, I think she was their favorite thing about me.

She called me directly the day after that conversation with my parents, she wanted money. Money from the house that I still hadn’t finished paying down the fees for; money for her student loans: “at least half,” money for putting up with me for the last 10 years. But there wasn’t any money, there simply was no equity in the house. Nothing in savings. Nothing in a dead end job. I said as much. No surprise, she was not happy, and accused directly of being a rapist. I said I was sorry she felt that way but it was not how I remembered it. She went on to say that her life was better, that she had been to the top of the Tempe towers for yoga, associated with people of money, and was no longer plagued by her chronic indistinct pain in her stomach.

I said I loved her, she said goodbye and we ended the call.

I would later look up indistinct stomach pain and find ‘somatoform disorder’: something that would finally explain the puzzled look on every doctor’s face post-surgery.

My parents were adamant about getting a lawyer. With their help, and my aunt and Uncle’s recommendations, I retained a family and divorce lawyer. She very quickly told me something that is common knowledge to any lawyer: in a separation or divorce student loans belong solely to the student. It didn’t hit me later why she was so adamant that I not talk to a lawyer: it would have been on the recommendation of her own council to forestall that outcome. Should it occur, there would be no way to bully me into accepting that debt.

Funny thing is that up till that point, I was quite fine with shouldering that burden.

In retrospect I cannot determine why I would have ever needed to. The bulk of it came from her undergraduate activities; paying for her living. Some remainder came from summers when she refused to work in favor of attending a dig for two or three weeks. These loans were used to provide for her living situation: renting an apartment, renting a house, going out to eat (many times without me), entertaining friends, etc. Frivolous activities that less and less frequently involved me. In the end, when her money ran out, she dipped into the joint account to which she was supplied a few hundred dollars per month. This is the account into which five of every six dollars I made ended up. A fund for house, home, and food. The remaining 300 dollars I was allowed to keep must entertain us, clothe us, and pay for gas and repairs. I never checked what she did with them money till the end when I down loaded the account activity to streamline our finances. Up till that point I had never even looked at the finances, I was given a scope and my budget and that was all. She paid the bills and kept an eye on expenditures.

Or so I thought.

When I examined the account that previous December, she had spent three grand in those last two months of November and December… But not on bills, not on gas, not on grocery… Not any of the myriad things that are part of the house hold or joint activities. That figure was solely used for café’s, restaurants, activities, and fun things that I had never been a part of. A completely mysterious life she had while I was working late hours.

I would later determine that she had been using the joint account to fund her dates with Alan, but at the time i had no clue and would not until six month after.

A few days later: my parents left and I carried on. One day was the same as the last. Focus on the work, eat better and cheaply, see my psychologist weekly, return to the gym. When I was away, she came back to the house in the company of someone the neighbors did not recognize. A tall thin man. She took a few things: guns I had bought her, books, a shower curtain, vacuum, linens, cleaning supplies, tools, some more clothes. Stuff I didn’t need and wasn’t put out that I didn’t have. I was a little freaked out that she’s brought someone no one knew to the house. When I called, I asked who he was: it was her roommate and the two girls were no longer there. I asked her to select from the group of friends we shared to chaperon her next time. I was doing my best to convince people that she was still a good person, that whatever her reasons for leaving were, they were not nefarious. But, in the end, I was just ignorant and naive: I still didn’t suspect anything and wouldn’t for several more months.

Over the next 4 months, I was on autopilot. I would answer the lawyer’s basic questions and let her do whatever she thought was best. I didn’t really care about the results, they simply did not register to me.

I was still, in those days, wondering: what was the delusion, the lie, the path that ended up to where we were? What had gone wrong, and how had it all ended up that way, what steps would have created a brighter path for us? Was I a monster and just not realized it? Would someone tell me if I was? The world needed fewer monsters, not more. I didn’t want to add to the wrong side of the equation. I would cry myself to sleep, dragged to my nightmares by copious amounts of drugs.



The Revelation

I wouldn’t find out about Dalton until 6 months later. It was a shock, a complete about-face of everything I knew. A mild slip of the tongue she gave in an interview about how she was being forced from her PhD program, albeit politely, by being refused funding. A small blip regarding when she and he had started dating; a time from that overlapped the date of our separation by 4 to 6 months. It was also then that I learned she was pregnant and had been for three months; conception by the end of March; a month and a half after we had separated.

And so I began to look backwards.

Dalton Alexander; a quick search on google turned up an active dating profile. Listed in Scottsdale, he was 41, loved jet skiing, was pursuing his psychology doctorate, and had been a corporate purchaser for a clothing store; an occupation that struck as all too familiar. What would be the coincidence that her three roommates would have had the same job?

A bit more searching and his address was found to be the same apartment into which Ashley’s apple devices had pinged her less than a week from leaving. That he had lived there for quite some time.

A little more digging turned up his real name of Alan Richard Warner, recently of Chicago.

An undergraduate in the psychology department.

With domestic violence on his record.

When I asked my friends, they mentioned he and she had turned up at an annual function. That they had known he existed, but only after the fact and did not know that she had cheated. She had unfriended them all and ceased interaction with any of them.

Her daughter was born in December, a little less than a year since our separation.

Some months later I found Dalton had recently been involved in a stabbing: as an accomplice to the act. Years later, recently in fact, I would find that a friend and acquaintance had represented him as a lawyer. The same friend that has recently begun to try and ostracize me from the small group of friends I have: it seems likely that he believes the lies she told and sat across the table from a man he believed was a monster and broken bread, talked amicably, and laughed as though nothing was wrong.

Sometime after learning of the stabbing, I would find out that she and Alan had separated in an extreme manner: something to do with attempted murder, kidnapping, assault with intent; a menagerie of violence. That she had turned to the same group of friends she had excised from her life and found burned bridges hard to cross. A search through police records showed Alan had been arrested on those charges and more: he had been forcibly committed.

The Pieces Fit

When I laid it out, all in order, the pieces painted a picture. One that made sense.

She was out all night, from a job and a place that when I called did not know where she was. She was on a date; one of many. The only thing more expensive than a child is dating someone with expensive tastes. A former purchasing agent that stank of prior success? Three grand over two months would have been a pittance even for the woman’s side of the equation.

It took only a few days for her to move into his apartment as shown by that one time search for her phone.

The lie was a cover that suited so many of her needs:

She wanted to keep our friends and ally them to her. She needed to look in the mirror and not see a monster. She needed me out of the picture: dead or shrunken into catatonic ball. She needed to alienate me from my family who would and did provide a lawyer that would reveal her plans for financial sabotage.

These Days?

She now resides comfortably in the Tempe Towers, nestled into an doctoral engineering program, funded by mooching from between the bed-sheets of god-only-knows whom.

I myself have resettled into the house, made some changes to it and the way it works. I’ve gotten a new job that affords a much better salary and more opportunity than I ever had. I’ve been to the gym religiously, hoping to peel back the layers of years and poor food choices to the person I was; fifty pounds down and another thirty to go. I’ve refocused on hobbies that I had let languish in my grief, finding that my absence having sharpened some of them.

I’ve tried dating, once or twice, but found it to be a forced exercise. I could not find even the smallest of emotion or attraction stirring for these people. In theory, coupling should bring greater joy to my life. It’s in all the books and fables told to us since before we climbed from the womb.

But do not misunderstand: the prospect and idea of finding love in either a temporary or enduring sense is exciting and filled with hope: pretty pictures and fantasies. But when face to face, I don’t see a person anymore: I see the knife they are only waiting to plunge into my back. I see my past failure and their future and inevitable betrayal. I look around and see pasted on masks of smug self-satisfaction and envy these creatures their ease among a glittering forest of knives in the hands of grinning monsters. Then I see a pretty girl smile, find a bit of human warmth and hope stirring. I squash it down. No good can come of it. It would be like trying to fix a broken plate by banging them into another plate. So I go to gym, see my friends on occasion, indulge in hobbies, and try to find excitement. Day in and day out, the same. Time heals, and I hope it will.

I never found out whether her lie was a calculated and manipulative one intended to estrange my parents and I for monetary gain by preventing me from seeking legal aid.

Or was it a lie she could tell herself? A delusion that would enable her to look in the mirror and not see a monstrous caricature of every evil she had ascribed to her hated mother.

I imagine it is a little of both.

And the friend? Representing her new beau in his initial troubles? Well, favors are something you give to friends. No one makes friends with monsters. But a sociopath is a monster that camouflages so well with everyone else. A sociopath makes friends easily and frequently: able to make anyone feel the center of attention with their manic zeal; recognizing the tactical advantage that having allies. That friend still has value to her. With her convincing, he likely believed her and likely still does. He is an in to a close and likely sorely missed group of friends.

So now, is he merely trying to distance himself after two years? Or, when I was convinced by a different friend to ask out one of their mutual associates, did he spread that lie in a misguided attempt to protect her? It would explain the complete lack of response despite the other friend’s assurance that this woman was ‘into me.’ Did he then begin spreading it to anyone who would listen? Is he the one that gave my exe the advice to destroy me before I could seek council?

Is he now trying to finish what my exe could not?

These thoughts keep me up most of the nights.