Open Post · Relationships

Open Post: Why I Got Married the First Time

In the commments following my article How Female Competitiveness Ruins Male Finances, two of you asked about my first marriage, and how I even ended up getting married in the first place. This is the context:

Herkerderker asked:


Have you ever considered writing a post regarding what led you to choosing this woman initially? No pressure of course. I do think it could be quite instructive, but I get how that might make you uncomfortable.

Manuel S replied:


One of the greatest mysteries in life, and a question that pops up from time to time here.

I think it was the first time he ever mentioned being married, one user asked him how it came to happen that such legendary pussy slayer settled down, and he answered that he found a remarkable woman. My guess is that she fooled him during the dating phase and showed her true colors once married, on top of being a 9/10 or so in looks.

When looking back at episodes in your life, people tend to construe stories to make sense of their actions and their experiences. This kind of narrative construction only happens in hindsight. There is also the problem that when looking back, the most recent experiences tend to overshadow other impressions. In psychology, this is called “recency bias”. However, if your wife or girlfriend really was as horrible as she turned out to be, you probably would not have stuck around for so long or possibly even have entered a relationship in the first place.

Now that enough time has passed, let me describe in some detail how I interpret the story of my first marriage and the run up to it. First and foremost, there is a biographical detail that I have hinted at a few times. In 2009/2010 I was indeed getting laid a lot. However, my life did otherwise not go particularly well. I got by because my family sent me money every month. It was not an enormous amount but enough to keep me from having to look for any random job, something quite a few people in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis had to do. Not me, though. I even told managers in interviews that the working conditions they describe are not appealing, and left. (In London, I applied to a few jobs, got a surprising number of interviews, and sometimes didn’t even bother to proceed. The reason was that I wanted to get out of that city. Then I moved to Berlin and just didn’t want to do anything for a while.)

Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone who was an overachiever all his life who was suddenly not doing anything productive anymore. At first it’s great. If you’re a smart guy, you won’t ever get bored as there is always another book to read or another rabbit hole to go down in on the Internet. Yet, what started to get to me was that the women I met were normally fun at first but quickly turned out to be rather shallow creatures. The average PUA guru may not know about this, but every Chad is probably familiar with the feeling of having women around who are eager to meet up and you just can’t be bothered. This is a rather strange experience because people were telling me how much they envied me and all I thought was that if they were in the same situation as me, they probably would have grown frustrated a lot sooner.

It is also the case that having a bunch of women around who come and go adds a lot of chaos to your life. In fact, I could not have lived that lifestyle with a steady job anyway. Now that I did not work, had written one or two books, and a natural death was still a long way off, I needed something else to do. I had to find purpose again; on top, having a bit more money was also on my mind. Because women were such a distraction, I decided to stop racking up notches. My reasoning was that if multiple women make your life chaotic, then having one steady woman may lead to stability. This was true to some extent, actually, at least in the beginning.

The underlying theme is that I was looking for stability. Had I met my now ex-wife a few months or possibly just a few weeks before I had grown dissatisfied with my life, I don’t think I would have looked for any long-term potential that may not even really have been there anyway. Yet, it would be too simplistic to explain me looking for a long-term relationship by thinking of a dude in a boat who is lost at sea and looking for any anchor at all. That would be catnip for a psychologist but reality was a bit more complicated. Also, I do not think that my first marriage was a waste of time. To spell it out: I did achieve my goal of establishing myself. I got what I wanted. In fact, I achieved more than I had planned and I’m quite content with my station in life.

Besides my particular circumstances, the key factor in my first marriage was of course that particular woman herself. Objectively speaking, she was very good-looking. While she never purused any modeling, she got approached quite often about certain deals. For instance, the private gym she worked out at had a larger-than-life poster of her in training gear in the foyer, about eight feet tall, which was done by a professional photographer. She doesn’t have much of a business sense, so to her the deal of getting a free gym membership for a year (or was it just reduced?) sounded great. It was their first low-ball offer so she got paid in that (and in narcissistic supply). There were other such stories, but that was the most striking one.

Looks-wise she was a solid 9. She was a reasonably tall blue-eyed blonde in excellent good physical shape, and certainly a head-turner. I’d say that in a typical club, she’d be among the top 5 or top 10 hottest girls. Even in exclusive clubs that are packed with models, you may still not ignore her because she’d still give you a nice smile and pay attention to what you say. The latter was indeed something I found most fascinating — no, not that she paid attention. Instead, she had excellent social skills and was able to make people feel welcome, even if she had nothing at all in common with them. For instance, if she bumped into some frumpy looking chick who could lose a few pounds, she’d casually chat with her and for instance drop that the color of that (butt ugly) dress looked really good on her and the other person would believe it was sincere. She was simply able to make people feel good about themselves. (Article continues below.)


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Of course you can now quip and say that the reason she was well-liked was that she was good-looking. This was certainly a very important part. She could have been very stand-offish and people would still have gathered around her. That may very well have been the case. Yet, she had a personality that made people really like her. She was approachable and if a dude came up to her she found gross, she’d still get out of the situation without hurting his ego much. Basically, she could put on a persona that treats people generally well. I think she would have been excellent in fields like PR, event management or possibly even sales instead of the field she ended up going into, but that’s a different story.

Looks, personality, and my life circumstances got me into this relationship. The post could end here as it answers the question I wanted to answer. However, I wanted to add that there was a lot more to it. My ex-wife was a raging narcissist. She got on and off meds seemingly at random. I don’t want to diagnose her, but presumably the entire cluster B of personality disorders fits her. This only slowly emerged, though. I mentioned that she put on a facade. If you only interacted with her briefly, you may cynically remark that she can’t be authentic, but I don’t think many of you would have done so. Instead, you would have smiled inwardly and possibly even outwardly and thought that it was nice to meet a young, friendly, good-looking woman. I’d say there is a non-zero chance that you’d have read something into any however brief interaction with her, stalked her on social media, and sent her a contact request (the number of messages and unanswered friend requests she had on Facebook, which was the dominant platform back then, was surreal).

Her personality defects only came out if you spent more time with her. She could hold up fine for days. Then her facade would crack. She’d be a nasty bitch for a few minutes, and then go back to being her old, cheerful self. However, because the positive interactions outweighed the negative ones so extremely, you just shrugged off those brief episodes instead of viewing them as the red flags they are. As anyone who ever dealt with a bipolar woman or a raging narcissist knows, though, the nasty side is the authentic one and the cheerful, charismatic facade is fake. As your long-term relationship with such a woman progresses, you’ll get to see less and less of the facade and more and more of the reprehensible monster hiding underneath. The psychological rollercoaster such women put you on can have addictive qualities to some men because you’re essentially waiting for the next random great episode. You can read reports of guys online who tell you that all their suffering is “so worth it” because of the blissful moments they have with their significant other, not realizing that they are on the road to perdition.

The irony of my first marriage or, more precisely, the entire long-term relationship, was that I entered it partly because I wanted stability. I got this to some extent, but that was partly only in my head. Yet, as the relationship progressed, that woman became mentally more and more unstable. She would have plunged me back into chaos, and much greater chaos at that. She certainly attempted it, and had I been a much weaker man, I’d now be ruined. Yet, I managed to get off that sinking boat. A good metaphor for this relationship are “donut blocks” in the Super Mario games. These blocks have the property that they float in the air and when you jump onto them, they remain still for just a little bit before they drop down, commonly into a bottomless pit, which leads to you losing one of many lives; in the real world, though, you only have one life. I managed to jump from one donut block (slaying in Berlin) to another donut block that I thought was a solid block (first marriage).

Life with a deranged woman can literally kill you, so I’m glad I got out alive. This is not an exaggeration. She once did try to kill me, and also repeatedly threatened to kill or poison me. Here is what happened: I was sitting in her kitchen. She got her crazy eyes, hastily reached for the mortar and pestle, and threw the heavy mortar at me, presumably trying to hit me in the head from behind. This thing was made of solid, and very heavy stone. Thankfully she completely botched the murder attempt. Anyway, the moral of the story is: stay clear off narcissists, and whenever you wonder why I see red flags where some of you may not see any, it’s because I used to live with a woman who was incredibly charismatic, highly manipulative, and genuinely crazy, and it took me a while to figure out the latter two.


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28 thoughts on “Open Post: Why I Got Married the First Time

  1. I am happy that you’ve got out of your first marriage intact. I am also excited to hear that you are now with your Singaporean wife, who is superior to your former wife in many ways.

    I now I understand why Western women are so toxic. I was liked by an Italian-French girl once, but decided to not progress things further because I suspected her to be a narcissist, and not a good girl as she portrayed herself to be.

    I am a virgin, so I guess it is a bliss in disguise. I am untouched by female machination and manipulation.

    1. It’s good to see you know what we are talking about. This isn’t Asia. This is the birthplace of modern feminism. And you don’t have to be in a sexual relationship to be affected by it. Stick around, it only gets more interesting.

    2. I would classify sex with a hot chick who is into you as “not what it’s cracked up to be, but definitely an experience worth having.”. That said, if I lived in a part of the world with escorts who were my type, and I was flush with cash, I doubt i’d get my sexual needs met with one stand night stands, mini relationships, etc.

      Also, French girls are known for being very forward and sometimes the sexual aggressor. If you hit it and quit with a French gal, she won’t resent you for it or make your life difficult for it. Generally speaking of course.

  2. I see. You can have what you might think are good vetting techniques (I wouldn’t say I do personally at this point), but woman and people in general can be skilled at passing them. Time is the only way to properly uncover these kinds of things. I suppose I’ll avoid getting a girl pregnant until after I’ve been with her for awhile.

    What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to allow for whatever unacceptable behaviors to surface before you can conclude that a woman is safe to impregnate?

    Are you aware of any examples of men training their women out of certain unacceptable behaviors?

    1. 1) You’ll have to live with her. Otherwise, she’ll be able to fool you more or less indefinitely. Some women are very skilled at putting up a facade. There is an encounter I describe in one of my unpublished Sleazy Stories books. In a club I met a chick and her boyfriend. The guy told me how she is “the one” and that he think she would be the perfect wife and mother of his children. Yet, when he was away to get drinks, she demonstrated her deep-throating skills to me by taking my index and middle finger all the way in. She told me that she needs to get rid of her bf for the night so she can spend time with me, yet that poor sap thought he had a “good girl” that was deserving of a ring on her finger. That was after Sweden was flooded yet by another wave of immigrants, so bathroom sex was out of the question due to a massive presence of security. Earlier, though, those women would let you fuck them in the bathroom. They’d tell their bf to get something from their handbag at the coat check. Then you rush to the nearest bathroom stall and those miniskirted chicks right away pull their panties down and bend over in front of you. For you they are total sluts, yet for their boyfriends, they are worthy of expensive travels, gifts, and a life of financial servitude.

      2) If their problem is genetic, like a personality disorder, you can forget about “training” them. What you can do is find a woman from a good background that already exhibits behaviors you appreciate and encourage those.

  3. It’s crazy how narcissists come of as “better with people” than mentally healthy people. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me.

    1. Modern society, due to anonymity, implies that narcissists are at an evolutionary advantage. In the olden days, you would have gotten kicked out of a village or town if you were a menace to society. Today, a woman can ruin the lives of men for two decades and nothing will happen to her.

      On the note of social skills, it was indeed uncanny how good my ex-wife was at it. To highlight this with two more examples:
      – One time we were sitting on a subway train. Opposite of us a young woman sat down, looking subdued. My gf got up, went over to her and spoke calmly to her, asking what the matter was. Within less than thirty seconds, she was holding both her hands and the other woman was crying on her shoulder about some guy who left her. This turned into hugs but (my gf was aware of this) we had to also get off so she then spent some time building up the other girl, telling her that she’s a wonderful human being and some other platitudes. Within a total of less than five minutes, my gf managed to make a woman who looked depressed and downtrodden cry tears of joy and thank her. It was incredible.
      – Some other time I took her to a birthday party of a geeky friend of mine. There as a majority of guys around and just a few women. Most people didn’t know many others there so it felt a bit weird, like a party of autists. My gf then spontaneously took on the role of the host, brought people together to talk, based on observations about them and her ability to read them. Within about half an hour, people were talking to one another and seemed happy to be there.

      I should also add that very frequently others told me how much they enjoyed talking to my gf, men and women alike. She could win over a room of people as easily as random people. Also, it was not uncommon to go to a club with her and getting offered free entry or to go to a cafe and witness her getting stuff for free. In some clubs I got in for free because of her but in cafes the male and female waiters magnanimously announced that her drink was on them, ignoring me. Sometimes, she was asked if she wanted a piece of cake for free or got offered free drinks on odd premises (“Some other customer had ordered this but she just left. You can have it for free if you want it as I’d otherwise just pour it into the sink.”)

      I think she would have done spectacularly well in corporate sales. I know a chick who is at best a 5 or 6 and who is making good money selling cloud solutions for a big player in this field. Imagine you have a really attractive chick in that role who knows that she can make a few grand in commission for a sale. She’d use her womanly charms, and probably hint at the prospect of sex, and get them sign on the dotted line. I know how she could flirt, so I can easily see her (back then, not now that she’s in her 30s) getting guys sexually aroused, their IQs temporarily dropping 30 points, and buying some services for their employer they don’t really need. I also know how thirsty guys in those fields are, and now imagine them sitting in front of a seductively smiling sales person who tells them, “The sooner we can get this over and done with, the sooner we can celebrate with drinks.”

    2. A lot of the escorts I had sex with were female psychopaths/narcissists I think.
      The could fake emotions very easily for a few hours.
      They had all the dark-triad traits: Machiavellian, narcissists, solipsistic, superficial charm.
      Some of them did it so well that even while I was aware that they are acting… it still worked on me.

    3. @Aaron: I made this other thread about rising of psychopathy due to our modern anonymous society. what do you think about it?

    4. I briefly replied to this elsewhere in the comments to this post. In short, I agree with you.

    5. @Aaron: I also had an escort once and she was also in sales.
      She did exactly what you described here, using her looks & charm to get guys horny and sign contracts they otherwise would not sign.

    6. Another thing I’ve noticed is that when people (especially women) smile with both rows of teeth showing its a red flag. It’s aesthetically pleasing, but usually the person is a complete fucking phony and a backstabber. If only the top row shows it’s more of a natural, genuine smile. At least in my experience.

    7. Another thing I’ve noticed is that when people (especially women) smile with both rows of teeth showing its a red flag. It’s aesthetically pleasing, but usually the person is a complete fucking phony and a backstabber. If only the top row shows it’s more of a natural, genuine smile. At least in my experience.

      Great observation. Now that you bring it up, I can concur that every person I’ve known to smile with both rows showing has been a hidden a psychopath (the kind that shows their psychopathic tendencies after you know then for 2-3 years).

    8. Thanks Alek. Yes, the people I’ve known like this, Iv’e known for years. A couple are in my immediate family.

  4. I can’t say I’ve encountered a narcissistic woman, but if you imagine a spectrum with “narcissist” at one end (purely focused on themselves) and “empath” on the other hand (no real sense of self; completely absorbed in the emotions of other people), my most recent ex fell into the latter camp. I often described her as an empath, but this was a polite way of saying that she had Borderline Personality Disorder.

    There’s something about women with BPD that tends to pull them into me. I’ve dated two women with a diagnosis of BPD, and this ex, while not diagnosed, had a family history of it, a psychiatrist who suggested she might have it, and, knowing her mental health history and the diagnostic criteria for the disorder, it was painfully obvious to me.

    As with other Cluster B disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, there is indeed a facade that slowly peels away. These relationships can be quite intoxicating. She told me on the third date she loved me, but the feelings of love were obvious to both of us on the second date. We had an instant connection to each other, and it was probably the most intimate relationship I ever had.

    But, having dealt with these kinds of women before, I spotted all the red flags, and knew it was only a matter of time before the facade slipped away. One thing I encountered with her and other women with BPD is that they’d almost act embarrassed to be around me in public. Not embarrassed that they had a hot boyfriend, but embarrassed because I was “rude” to the person ringing up my groceries, or the waitstaff at a restaurant, by doing something like bringing my own drink to a restaurant at which we were about to spend $50. I also felt like I had to constantly monitor what I said out of fear of upsetting her (“walking on eggshells”), and that she was basically always trying to read my mind.

    We only got into a few fights throughout the course of our relationship, but her behavior got more extreme each time we had one, and I finally had to get rid of her. I ended that relationship with an overwhelming sense of guilt, and was afraid she may have actually committed suicide due to the end of the relationship. This is actually a pretty common way people with BPD get their partners to stay with them.

    It’s easy to get carried away with the feelings of love with someone like this. A lot of people seem to have the belief that “if you love someone, then you should stay with them indefinitely.” I disagree with this proposition, and in fact think love prevents people from seeing someone as they really are.

    Like I said, I was able to spot this disorder due to experiences with other women with BPD. Another thing that helped is that I have my own history with the mental health system, and had one therapist in the past who was an expert in BPD and helped me through a relationship with a different woman with the disorder. But I’ll say that probably the biggest red flag of all would be, unfortunately, that wonderful, instant connection you feel with someone – the overwhelming feeling of love felt so early on. There are so many fictional stories depicting love this way, but talk to any guy that’s been divorced, and he’ll talk about how quickly his partner changed once they get married. I can say that my relationships that have worked best moved at a much slower pace . But maybe there are some old, happily married dudes who do believe in “love at first sight.”

    1. During my time at university, I had a girlfriend who threatened to kill herself multiple times when I tried to break up with her. The first time was roughly a year after my roommate had hung himself on my ceiling fan. You’re right that it is disturbingly common. I know other men this has happened to. Revolting. If I knew a guy who did that, I’d probably never hang out with him ever again.

    2. I’m glad you had an expert on BPD to guide you. I was stuck in a relationship with a covert narcissist and if I had a therapist, I might have left sooner. I managed to find information on psych forums and even reddit that helped me find a way out. That initial strong feeling of love you are describing is referred to as love-bombing and is a classic tactic used by narcissists. Like you, now I’m very skeptical of that ‘in love ‘ feeling, and hope to avoid it lest my judgement be clouded.

      The addiction to highs and lows Aaron mentioned and the intoxication you described are referred to as the trauma bond. Breaking up with these women is like getting over a physical addiction. At least for me it was and I suffered waves of anxiety. Looking back, I ended up losing my job and good deal of money during my chaotic relationship, but I consider myself fortunate I didn’t have kids/alimony/child support to deal with.

    3. Looking back, I ended up losing my job and good deal of money during my chaotic relationship, but I consider myself fortunate I didn’t have kids/alimony/child support to deal with.

      You got lucky. Meeting the wrong woman can wreck your life completely. I know of guys who have to share an apartment or live in dingy studio apartments in their 40s because they lost more than half their assets during divorce, had to pay expensive lawyers, and now have to pay alimony. A friend of mine is only holding up well because his family is very comfortable. If they didn’t have his back, he’d be screwed. In all honesty, if this would happen to you, i.e. a hostile woman trying to destroy your life and yanking your chain by taking the kids away and moving to a different state so that it’s much more difficult to visit them, you’d be much better off going full scorched earth, e.g. by moving to some second or third world country and starting over. On that note, I’ve moved internationally before. My ex-wife wanted to trick me into getting her pregnant and I said to her that I didn’t want to have kids with her, and if she were to get pregnant, I would not only insist on paternity testing, with the potential of humiliating her, but also just disappear. She took that seriously. On top, I stopped having sex with her, which made her very uncomfortable. I think she may have planned to get knocked up by somebody, anybody, and pin it on me, even if it wasn’t my kid, and use that as leverage to make me stick around.

    4. Hanged… hanging… hang out… there is a black joke in there somewhere. 🙂

      Joking aside, I know exactly what you are talking about. I also had a GF like that. I dont think she ever used the “will kill myself” line, but she did go for the “I’m pregnant” one when I finally dumped her.

    5. Yeah that’s a pretty dark joke @Yarara. Gotta be honest, idk if I could have withstood the “I’m pregnant” line. Thanks for sharing. Gotta get some balls. When you’re in the moment, oftentimes, you can forget how fucked up women are. Especially, if you’re coming off a dry spell of sorts.

    6. The “I’m pregnant” line did not have much of ann effect on me because I had been careful and I knew she was lying. Out of a year-long relationship, the second half had been something close to a personal hell, so I had been more careful not tu fuck her without a condom, even though she was taking pills.

      The scary part is during the first 6 months we did fuck without condoms cuz she was taking the pill. How naive of me. The worst part is, my father had warned me about women tricking guys into getting them pregnant to tie them down, but at the time I did not believe him, and thought he had old fashioned ideas.

      Since then I have met guys who have fallen for this. I mentioned this on the blog before, but its a cautionary tale that bears repeating: the worst offender that I know is a guy (not a close friend, but part of my wider social circle), he got his already-ex-GF pregnant TWICE in a row a decade ago. She now lives rent free in one of his apartments (he owns a few, which he rents) while he is living with his parents.

      A few years ago, he got more successful with some business he started and started making more money…. all of a sudden, his girlfriend of several years “accidentally” gets pregnant with twins.

      His own mother told me, in private, “yeah, we should have had that talk with him when he was younger”.

      PS: now I always check condoms integrity after sex (fill with water and check for leaks before discarding). It may sound excessive, but the mental tranquility you get is priceless, next time a girl comes saying her period is late, you know it was not you. A girl I picked up for an ONS once saw me do this and remarked, with admiration: “I see you really are a pro” 🙂

    7. You can bet that the girl you mentioned really knew what’s up. Also, it’s good practice to never use any condoms she offers. I had some really bizarre encounters where the chick pulled out some condoms and when I told her I didn’t like those, she readily offered that I can do her raw. What you should do is bring your own. This is also relevant if your dick is bigger than average and standard condoms are uncomfortable for you. Also, you can rest assured that the condoms are safe whereas any condoms she provides she could have pricked with a needle.

      Also note that women are discussing online how to make condoms break:
      https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080503013346AAsVYaH
      You’ll similarly find countless threads where women discuss how to trick men into getting them pregnant.

      It’s a dangerous world out there for men, which may explain where there is a consistently high and possibly increasing interest in vasectomies.

  5. Is narcissism more common in women than in men? What do you guys think? That French-Italian girl who liked me (to the point where she confessed to a friend of mine to let him tell me indirectly) slept with a club promoter who later turned into a big event organizer, and that guy was also a narcistic. His friends told me that he had no empathy for others.

    Sometimes, I just look at the kind of guys a girl date to adjust my judgment. If she dates and sleeps with tons of troublesome men, it is not worth letting yourself be her prey.

    1. The current ZeitGeist & culture pretty much rewards women for being narcissists. So I would expect much more women than men narcissists at the moment.

      But also without this, the female biological nature is much more solipsistic, (exception is when they have children), while the male nature is more sacrificial.

      The reason is simple: A woman has value just by existing because she can make babies, the value a man provides is always his work & skills & protection.

  6. Man, the number of replies from members of this blog shows that the number of narcistic women is not small. Their figures ought to be large and are apt to multiply.

  7. Aaron,

    Your experience resonates so much to mine. I dated this girl who had BPD and it was hell. I couldn’t make sense of her behaviour until years later.

    Did you develop any PTSD from this experience after you left the relationship? If you did, how did you manage the break up? I’ve often seen that women who exhibit some form of personality disorder are very emotionally abusive.

    1. I’m not sure I developed full-blown PTSD. During her worst episodes, I was certainly not unaffected. Going by the list of symptoms by Mayo Clinic (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967), trouble sleeping and concentrating were certainly issues. At her worst, she actually had the rather unpleasant habit of waking me up if she couldn’t sleep — not that I would have slept particularly well otherwise — and if you go through this for a few days, in addition to outburst during the day and the feeling that you have to walk on eggshells, you’ll start feeling like a zombie. I don’t want to claim that I had full-blown PTSD, though. One real-life consequence of this relationship was that my hair started to grey. At least that’s how I view it.

      I managed to get out of this by playing a long game. I got to the point where I became emotionally distant. We didn’t even live together at that point and I treated the relationship almost like some kind of a live experiment that allowed me to better understand a genuinely crazy woman. This gave me an entirely new appreciation of her evil machinations, including behaviors I would have glossed over when I was still emotionally invested in that relationship. It was mind-blowing. For instance, I noticed trying to gaslight me and called her out on it. Previously, I may have thought that that’s nothing worth fighting over and that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, so I didn’t push back. This behavior of making excuses for your partner’s behavior is also quite common, as I later learned.

      That phase of the relationship was very educational but at times quite dangerous, too. I mentioned one incident already. I also got suicide threats from her, i.e. if I left her, she’d kill herself. Also, I became really weary of her. For instance, I would not walk next to train tracks or a river with her, or drive a car with her in the vehicle, or get in a car she was driving. I considered it entirely possible that she would suddenly blow up and grab the steering wheel, for instance. At one point, I even stopped eating her food. That was after she had told me that if I didn’t get in line, she will slowly poison me or add something into the food that would give me a stroke. She really turned into a demon whenever the mask fell off. That was at the very end of the relationship when I more or less decided every day if I wanted to continue to see how crazy she would get versus me pulling out the divorce papers. Note that her threats were credible because she was a nurse and had access to medication. She also once told me that people seem to steel a lot. She alleged that some of her colleagues were stealing thyroid medication as it is apparently very effective for losing or maintaining weight (come to think of it, she may have done that as well).

      My ex-wife once even faked a suicide by sending me grainy pictures of what was supposed to be a slit wrist submerged in water that was turning red. The more distant I got, the crazier she became. I got out relatively abruptlyl when there was a good way of doing so. It took about two months of almost daily psycho-terror (that’s easy to survive if you just ignore her calls and emails) and then she was finally gone. I presume it took her that long to find a new guy who, presumably, quickly left her. One of the last messages she sent me was to tell me that she was about to go on a date with a doctor who was “younger, more handsome, and financially better off” than me. I didn’t think that this was true. Instead, it was more likely an attempt to arouse jealousy in me and when that didn’t work, she finally gave up.

      I have to admit that for a few months I was wondering if she’d show up at work or in front of my building and make a big scene. It would have taken her a few hours to travel to the place I was living at but that kind of reaction would have been entirely possible.

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