I've been a lurker most of last year, and only because I probably have one of the top 10 stories that I figured I'd drop mine in the mix. This isn't the worst I've “personally” heard by far, but I figure this might be an “interesting” first post from a former lurker.
Sorry it's long, I had to make it this way because there was so many red flags. At first I missed them because I was young (married at 22), later I ignored most of them (like a combined $48,000 Credit Card debt) for the sake of my kids, only to have them end up screwed up anyway.
Cliffs at bottom for those who want the extremely “short” version.
Anyway....
Currently the ex-wife and I will have been divorced a full year January 30th of this year. Was together for 20 years. How I found out? I came home one day as usually to an empty house (as in no one home but me) and they never came back. Well the kids did after the divorce.
In hind site I knew it was coming based on the first year of marriage, but I had nothing concrete over the years to prove it, so I decided not to sit and dwell on it. Was one of those “I shouldn't dig too deep into her past” people initially, but should have gotten out the back hoe before we ever went out once.
Met the ex while I was dating another girl. After that breakup a few friends suggested that I give the Ex a call. Decided to do one better and do the “surprise date” thing. I mean girls like surprises right? And I was a young and “stupid” 20 something who “thought” I knew what I was doing.
At first she seems distant when she arrived, but was happy once she found out that she wasn't having dinner with her friends, who had dropped her off to be on a date with me, but she got up and left the table twice. At first I didn't know why. Later (after married) I found out that she was trying to hook up with someone “else” who she also thought was cute and passed in the mall just over from us.
She had told me “I'll be right back” and left. Sat there like a fool, but at the time didn't know she what she was up to. Ex comes back, but is again distant. I think I'm a bad host and I try to cheer her up. I had been sitting for like 10 minutes and unsure of what happened at the time.
Later we decide to go see a movie, and once there she excuses herself and disappears again. It seems that someone I introduced her to in passing that night at the restaurant, someone I couldn't “stand” at the time, who instead of being polite I should have just ignored, also decided to see the same movie.
What she did was sneak off to see him at the start of the movie. Once she found where he was sitting she then made out with him for a while, all while I was waiting for her to come back. I later found this out after we were married when the ***** started bragging to everyone we knew how he screwed up my first date with her.
I could go on, but mainly she did various things like this “while” we were dating and kept me in the dark about it.
But a year and a half into our marriage everyone who was supposed to be our mutual friend, came out with stories of how either right before or right when we started dating she was the other woman to various girls boyfriends and other womens husbands. I mean she had a “really” high body count. No single guys, just guys in relationships.
She of course couldn't see what the big deal was. I got the standard, “But I married you and not the other guys” spiel when I started raging about it as I found out.
It wasn't until one guy at her job started telling everyone that he was sleeping with her at work that she changed jobs before I found out. At the time she said she changed jobs because she wanted to have a different career, but I'm pretty sure it was because of all the suspicion of her co-workers and she was worried someone might talk to me. I still found out, but never found the guy and couldn't prove anything.
Also during this time our first child was born and she stopped doing shady stuff, or at least got better at hiding it.
Then about 4 years ago she started up again. She made friends with two very opinionated women who started the whole “You shouldn't have to tell your husband “anything” about your life” thinking process, so my ex started doing weird things again. But the biggest was that she started encouraging my at the time 14 year old daughter to start dating. She even put her on birth control without saying a word to me.
When I tried to rein in my daughter who started “disappearing” without saying what she was up to, my ex and my oldest daughter started saying that I was raging and trying to control them through emotional abuse.
Then my ex decided she wanted to get into fitness. I was happy, when we first married she was 99lbs at 5'4” with a 36C chest and 22” waist, and 34” hips. After 16 years of marriage she was pushing 150 lbs and hadn't been to a gym on a regular basis longer than 2 months, and she wanted her body back from when she was 18.
I should have had a few suspicions around that, but she claimed she wanted to be a Zumba instructor and got a brand new “********” account that she just had to have to have people around her to help motivate her. But to make me “feel” better whenever she left the house she would take my oldest with her as “proof” she wasn't cheating on me. She did start to lose weight, but then her workout schedule got erratic.
She went from coming home from the gym at 6pm to coming home between 10:45 – 11:45pm. She later started leaving the house at 5am and refused to say anything beyond “I'm going past the gym”. If I asked “are you going into the gym or just past it” she would storm off after calling me names. Seems that the only reason she said I wanted to know was to control her and dominate her. Later she would say that I was pressuring her into feeling emotionally abused by even asking.
Sometimes when she returned home after her 5am jaunt out to the gym and she would come home and rush past me into the shower. She always locked the door so I couldn't check her clothes and then would put them in the washer and stand there and wait until it filled up with water before she moved away.
She didn't always do this, but when she did she claimed it was because she was sweaty and needed a shower before she got ready to take the kids to school, but she didn't always shower before taking the kids to school.
Looking back I'm sure I knew, but for the sake of the kids and trying to make sure they had a stable home I tried to ride it out. I even went with her to counseling, but that was a waste of our time. She made it apparent she didn't want to be there because they wouldn't side with her that a married woman disappearing at all hours of the day and night, while claiming she wasn't out cheating, still looked like she was out cheating.
But the major thing was that one day she called me to say that we were short and needed to borrow against my life insurance policy to meet bills.
Big mistake. She had the agent give us $6000 against my policy. Since what was done was done and I wanted to pay off the two credit cards I was aware of to get them out of the way. But before we could do that in two days she spent all the money and refused to tell me where it went. So I decided to do the bills for a month.
Once I started doing the bills I found out that she wasn't depositing any of her paychecks into our joint account. Not one nickel. We were so far in the red because we were trying to raise a family of 5 solely on my paycheck, but we lived like a two income family. I wasn't happy about that. I never could get a straight answer an I was pissed, but for the sake of the kids tried to find a resolution to find peace.
I got us on debt consolidation and found that I we had to disclose all our outstanding debt. Color me surprised when I found out that she had 9 secret CC's that were all maxed out. And that included a maxed out “Victoria Secrets” CC for items I had never seen, and according to what I found out she had quite a few “items” I had never seen. I was livid that I found out we owed over $48,000 in credit card debt.
At least she waited until I made the first payment, then a week later I came home to an empty house.
While trying to figure out what was going on I found out a few things: My ex had been cheating on me for I don't know how long, and my oldest daughter had been helping her do it because I wouldn't let her see her boyfriend. When she and her mother left the house they would go their own way and do their own thing.
Also during the divorce my Ex purchased a new car and told the court she couldn't afford to pay for it and that she needed it for child care. She had just purchased a new van 2 years before and we were still paying on that, and I had a car, so in addition to having to pay all the monthly bills, the CC bills, and lawyers, I also had two new car payments.
Also it was through the middle child that I found my Ex left me for someone she had been seeing. I'm not sure where she thought it was going, because he was married with 3 kids of his own, but I guess she thought they would have a life together. She thought wrong he was just in it for the sex. In the mean time the two youngest kids are traumatized by their mother's actions (I'm still taking them to therapy to this day)
Two weeks before the divorce is granted she breaks up with this guy for some reason and suddenly wants to be friends and tries to call me on the phone “just to talk”. No thank you Jeff, I just want out now that it's all over and done with.
Now I'm still stuck with 80% of the bills because I made 79.21% of the household income, even though I could prove (and ex even admitted in open court) that I only racked up 5% of the debt, including her maxed out Victoria Secrets CC. Someone got to enjoy that crap, but it certainty wasn't me.
The oldest (who I'm not really caring if I ever see her again) refuses to see me. She's so rotten that she even sat down with the Ex, downloaded the divorce forms for her mother from the state website, and helped my Ex fill them out.
The middle child lives with me. She disgusted by her mother's actions and refuses to have more than the minimum to do with her. And my son who's 7 tells both of us that he wants to live with me, but his mother makes him live with her 50% of the time.
So, anyone able to top this story so far? Trust me when I say there is far “far” more to it, but this is a tiny bit of the highlights of what happened.
Cliff notes:
- Found out right after marriage that Ex is “major” Sloot, but I wasn't made aware by any of our mutual friends who knew what she was like until well “after” we married. Before me she only dated married men or guys with girl friends.
- Apparently Ex never quit slooting around while we were married, but was very good at covering her tracks.
- For sake of kids I didn't dig too deep or do something like pay for a PI to get the goods. Really should have, but later couldn't afford it.
- Oldest daughter helped ex cheat on me and is currently well on her way to becoming a major sloot herself
- Ex racked up $48,000 of Credit card debt and state of Indiana stuck me with 80% of it because my earning potential is far greater than hers.
- Traumatized the two youngest kids who are still in therapy today because she took them with her when she left to go be with another “married” man.
- Her and other man are no longer dating and she currently believes in her mind that we're friends.
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