Last year, my ex-wife died. I do not know the exact cause of death, but I have reason to believe that it was due to suicide. I knew her quite well, after all. One of her biggest personality flaws was that she struggled severely with aging. For this I should add that she used to get by on looks. In school, she never really exerted herself. Then, she spent a few years as a visual artist, and partying. This is also when I met her, when she was in her early 20s. She was the kind of woman who regularly got into clubs for free simply due to her looks. On the side, she did a bit of modeling too, but she never pursued this seriously.
In hindsight, it was quite odd that she ended up in a long-term relationship with me. Obviously, there was physical attraction, and the fact that I am very tall. However, her parents, who were solidly in the upper middle-class, did not like me very much. They thought I was a total loser which, at that time, was not an entirely inaccurate assessment. I think partly she entered a relationship with me and subsequently married me in order to piss off her father. The other reason is that Swedish-style feminism and socialism takes care of the vagaries of life. Thus, some women think little of her partner making less money. If you get government-subsidized housing, rent is only a trivial expense. Salaries do not meaningfully differ anyway, meaning that at most you may get a multiple of about 2x between the bottom and the of the hierarchy. At the bottom, you have a postman or perhaps a waitress, and at the top you will find doctors. However, with a marginal tax rate of 57 percent, you cannot really acquire more than a modicum of wealth even as a doctor. Thus, it may have made sense for her to marry a guy who seemed to not have good economic prospects. Still, marriage in Sweden had been getting less and less common, which is why I am inclined to thinking that she did it as a symbolic act in order to spite her family.
This marriage eventually dissolved, primarily because she went completely off the rails. One reason was that her art gig did not really work out in the long run. Then there was the issue that she could not keep up her partying lifestyle, and she also learned that people were a lot less interested in hanging out with her now that she was no longer 21 and going wild on the dance floor four times a week. She also complained to me that she was getting less attention than she used to. Shortly after her 25th birthday, fate was particularly cruel to her. She was doing through a nursing degree program and one of her classmates was a young Danish woman, fresh out of school, who was not only a part-time model but on that month’s cover of some second-tier glossy magazine. My then-wife was no longer the prettiest girl she knew and this hit her so hard that she did not go to lectures for one or two weeks. This even led to her not being able to finish her degree on time.
One reason I married her was that I wanted some stability in my life (oh, the irony!). Well, this actually did work out for the very most part. That woman was quite easy to get along with, at least whenever she was not “splittig”. As you know, splitting behavior only gets worse, which eventually led to me spending less and less time with her. In the last one year or so of our relationship, we hardly spent any time together at all anymore. In fact, I was living a few hours away by train and my visits became rarer and rarer. This only led to her behavior getting more and more erratic, which only made me avoid her even more. In a last-ditch attempt, she surprised me by wanting to have a kid, in order to “fix our relationship”. We were not having sex anymore at that point, and I made sure that I would never again have sex with her as I was concerned, and rightfully so, that she would try to trap me with a baby.
Eventually, I simply pulled the plug and divorced her. In Sweden, this can be done without a lawyer. You only need to sign a form, pay a comparatively modest fee, and wait for the confirmation in the mail. I think the total cost was about $100, or maybe it was just $50, which is not cheap for Swedish administration, but when I compare this to what friends and acquaintances in the US, UK, or various European countries went through, this was an excellent deal.
When the divorce was finalized, my then ex-wife was not even 30 years old, yet she was such a mess that she looked a lot older without makeup. In the past, she barely used any, but she got more and more extreme in this regard. She also got fake eyelashes, natural hair-extensions, botox shots, lip fillers, and was saving up for a boob job — as she could not handle money, she made no progress and instead quickly switched to demanding that I would pay for it. She could not do her nails as she would have like due to work. In my view, this woman seemed unable to properly function anymore, and her bimbofication expressed this quite clearly.
In our last exchange, I told her, after she tried pissing me off, that she will never get a guy even remotely as desirable as me. Deep down, I am quite sure she knew I was right, and as it turned out, I was right indeed. While she was claiming that her next boyfriend would be a doctor or a lawyer, reality was not quite as pretty. She got a guy working in the same line of work, but it did not last long. In Sweden, there is also the fact that privacy does not really exist, so everybody can look up where you live, and with whom. Oftentimes, even the size of your apartment is public information. Based on this, I knew that she eventually moved back in with her parents, after living with that guy for less than a year, based on what I could deduce. It was clear that her life was not getting any better. I did not stalk her on online dating apps, of which friends informed me that she was on. At that time, I no longer used facebook and thus I did not broadcast my relationship status, which led to some interesting exchanges with a few friends and acquaintances. Two or three guys told me that my presumed wife was active on some dating sites, in the sense of, “dude, you should check this out!” After clarifying this, one of them asked me if I would mind if he tried his luck with her, which made me laugh.
When I heard of the death of my wife, but was not given any details, I quickly concluded that she likely killed herself. I do not think it was the vaxx as there was no vaxx mandate in Sweden and there was no psy-ops going on either. Also, as a nurse, she had access to the entire hospital medicine storage. In the past, she told me that colleagues of her stole certain drugs, but this struck me as a variation of the “asking for a friend” meme. Thus, she could easily have gotten some drug that got the job done. Suicidal ideation was something she engaged in when splitting, even telling me how she would kill herself.
Looking back, I am glad that I now have closure. I never shared this with anybody, not even my wife, but my ex-wife reached out to me two our three time after our divorce, openly threatening me. I always had it in the back of my mind that one day she could stand in front of my house and do something stupid. She tried to physically hurt me in the past and if she had been stronger and better coordinated, she could have killed me. My scenarios were along the line that she could attack either me or my wife with a knife, or go completely bonkers and kill herself in front of me. This was indeed something she had threatened to do, “so that you never forgive yourself for what you have done to me”. I was close to reporting her to the police. Her place would have been in a psychiatric ward.
I think there was nobody who knew my ex-wife as well as I did, not even her family. I knew her darkest sides. Her parents certainly were not completely blind to this but she was, until the end, really adept at putting on an act. The problem was that she could not keep this act up for long, and the older she got, the less she was able to pretend to be someone else. May she rest in peace. It may sound cold, but I am glad that she is dead. It surely is also better for her, considering that she could no longer control her demons. I did learn a lot from her about women and in particular about cluster-B personality disorders, though. Obviously, I had absolutely no idea about what I was getting into. I am now in a very happy relationship, and partly I have to credit my failed first marriage for this as it made me aware of important qualities in women which I used to overlook.
My ex-wife also had a variant of what AlekNovy termed “hallucinated rejections”:
https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2023/12/24/guest-post-hallucinated-rejections-by-alek-novy/
In a particularly deranged message, she said that I cannot come back to her because she does not want to see me again (note: she reached out to me, after complete radio silence for months if not more than a year). However, if I ended up breaking into her apartment, she would bring down the full force of the law on me, even pasting some Swedish laws, and was looking forward to seeing me getting locked up for years. This woman was clearly mentally ill. The implication for AlekNovy’s article, though, is whether women engaging in any variant of these mental gymnastics should likewise be considered insane. I am tempted to say that they are because there is a really obvious disconnect between reality and what these women perceive reality to be.
Is “splitting” another way if saying “cutting?” Anyone who would do that has massive personality problems and is very self-destructive.
No, splitting is related to split personalities. Here is a modern spin on the topic:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-ptsd/202209/splitting-in-borderline-personality-disorder
In my view, the reality is a lot darker, i.e. these people are genuinely evil and when they act out, they come across as if they are possessed by demons. It was impossible to talk to my ex-wife when she got off the deep end, going as far as to throw herself on the floor like a toddler throwing a tantrum or arbitrarily destroying something. She was also generally really nasty in this state, and as the relationship progressed or disintegrated, the split personality became the much more dominant one.
I think there is a connection between self-harming behavior and splitting. My wife once banged her head repeatedly against the wall, which was one of those instances where I thought that she now surely classifies as being clinically insane, and I also wondered why I did not cut her off sooner. It is quite likely that such people also end up cutting themselves. Also, assuming that my hypothesis that she committed suicide is correct, she most certainly did it while splitting.
Nope, it means “split personality”. “Splitting” refers to the instances when the person abruptly shifts from one personality to the other.
“She was also generally really nasty in this state, and as the relationship progressed or disintegrated, the split personality became the much more dominant one.”
Oh, wow, sounds really awful. Are there signs to watch out for so men can avoid these train wrecks?
You probably want to cut off any woman who ever throws a tantrum, no matter how hard she tries making it up to you afterwards.
Aaron,
“You probably want to cut off any woman who ever throws a tantrum, no matter how hard she tries making it up to you afterwards.”
Practically every woman throws some kind of tantrum, or displays some kind of neurotic behavior. Women in general are not good at managing there emotions. So, what is the solution? Finding a woman who knows how to manage her emotions and not flare up in anger seems quite insurmountable.
I was talking about actual tantrums, similar to a toddler, i.e. they completely lose control over themselves, as if possessed by a demon. This can entail shouting, screaming, physically attacking you or grabbing random items to throw them on the ground or against the wall. I agree that a lot of women find it difficult to manage their emotions, but this quite a wide spectrum. For a serious relationship, you probably want to look for a woman who exhibits a high level of maturity.
“I agree that a lot of women find it difficult to manage their emotions, but this quite a wide spectrum. For a serious relationship, you probably want to look for a woman who exhibits a high level of maturity.”
Would it be wise to subject her to some kind of social experiment to see how she reacts to stressful situations in the relationship to see if she’s capable of managing her emotions, and is able to display a high level of maturity?
There should be plenty of opportunities for her to lose her cool. Even engaging in similar activities for a few weeks will suffice as the underlying principle is that as she is getting more comfortable around you, she will increasingly show her true colors. In case you want to speed up the process, going on a day-trip or even a short vacation will teach you a lot about her.
>It may sound cold, but I am glad that she is dead.
I don’t blame you whatsoever for feeling that way. If I had somebody like this in my life,I would definitely be relieved myself should I learn that it will no longer be possible for them to cause me any harm. My condolences that you had to go through that.
To be honest,I think I did run into a chick that had the potential to become like this in my life back when I was in college. I am thankful it fell through early on enough due to several factors outside our control. Its very possible that she is secretly stalking me somehow,but I don’t concern myself over it since she’ll almost certainly never be a part of my life again. (Not that I would allow her to,unless maybe she turned over a new leaf,but crazies almost never change,do they? in fact,they just seem to get worse over time.)
If you are from the US or Canada, it is also important to point out that nursing does not quite have the same standing in Europe as over there. While nursing can be a very lucrative career in those countries, in Europe the pay is shockingly low. If I recall correctly, the entry-level salary of my ex-wife was below $2,000/month but that was a few years ago.
Interestingly, there are related jobs that require strength, which are normally paid significantly better. There is a separate job profile, which could be described as “elderly-care nurse”, but it is not a specialization as the training is separate. These people can get up to the level of entry-level doctor pay. Of course, doctors are also paid less than in the US, so this is also less money than you may think. Still, it is more than double than what many nurses make.
Were there any early red flags that you now recognise? Like really early on, things that she said that made you do a mental double take?
This woman was a very good manipulator. I should have been wary at the beginning, when she seemed too good to be true. Look into BPDs and love-bombing, and keep in mind that merely reading about it may not be sufficient to recognize this behavior in the real world the first time you encounter it.