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June 14, 2018 1:10 pm  #21


Re: Day 9

Okay - here is THE story. I'm sure my dh would kill me for telling it as he hates it so much because he views it through a different lens than I do.  There's a lot of background in this story, and it's longer than a freaking novel.  So proceed at your own risk.

So,..... when I went on my first date with my now husband (who I'll reference to as "O" for the rest of this story), we drove separately to the restaurant and both parked just spots from each other in the nearby parking garage.  He walked me back to my vehicle afterwards and pointed to his. It was a small pick-up truck. After a few more dates, he picked me up at my home and he was driving a different vehicle - a car.  When I asked about it, he told me that he always has two vehicles - in case one's not working well. (which is true - even today he has a nice car and an older car that he calls his "grocery getter".) When we went out to the car after the date and he started it, it was really rough starting. He said that it had been difficult starting on the way to my place, too.  This didn't seem all that unusual - it was Dec. in Chicago - cold. Any weakness in a battery will reveal itself then. O said his other vehicle (the little truck) was in the shop for sudden and mysterious engine issues, and now this vehicle was acting up, too.  I tried not to let this worry me - everyone has times like this in their life.  I was hoping it was just unusual vs. him always having older vehicles and lots of repair issues.  I knew from previous conversations that he took the train to his job, so he only drove a mile or so to the train and really only used the vehicles on the weekends, for the most part.  Anyway......

A few weeks into the relationship I'm mostly going out to his place. My MIL lived with us still, so even though my ex had moved out and I typically spent time with O when the kids were with their dad, we didn't have any privacy at my home, if you know what I mean.  ;)  Lots of times I'd drive out to his place (a good 1/2 hour / 40 minutes away) and we'd just use my mini van to go somewhere if we did that.  He'd mentioned that both his vehicles were having issues, so this was my way of reducing stress.  I didn't know that BOTH of his vehicles were now in the shop - he was walking the mile to the train everyday in the freezing cold.

AND I didn't know the real truth - that his crazy ex (henceforth referred to as "Psycho") had fallen off the deep end.  He dated her for about a year, ending the relationship in August. He and I didn't meet until the end of November.  It was now just after the new year. He broke up with her because he was just kind of dating her to pass the time. He realized at some point that her four kids had four different fathers, and she'd started to do things to send up really big red flares (vs. flags) on her psychological health. Plus her adult kids kept telling him to get away from her - she was crazy and he was a nice guy. WOW.  So he broke it off.  He asked for his apartment key back when that happened. She gave it to him.  The next day he came home from work to find that she'd had an extra key made at some point, and she'd used it to gain entrance to his place, where she took everything she'd ever given him (shirts, cards, photos, etc.). He was livid and called the police on her for essentially breaking and entering. He didn't hear from her after that until about Dec. She only lived about a mile from him, and although they hadn't spoken in months, she suddenly started sending him texts that said stuff like, "I can see you standing in your kitchen", which meant that she was a half a block away, at a very precise location where you could see through some trees and had a view to his kitchen if he was standing at the kitchen sink.  Freaky.  He wasn't too worried, though; he's a huge man (6'5"), and dwarfed her by a good foot.  He didn't think he was in any danger.  But he was more convinced than ever that he did the right thing in breaking up with her.

Turns out that unbeknownst to him, Psycho had seen him and I in his vehicle together one day around town (we hadn't seen her), and made up a scenario in her mind that he was cheating on her with me back when they were still together.  Now it was payback time.  She started out by popping the tires on his car while it was parked on the street overnight.  He didn't realize it was her who did that - again, no contact for months at this point. He takes his little pickup truck to the train. Gets back to his truck at the end of the day and two tires on that are popped.  Gets both cars towed. Then it happens AGAIN a week or so later. Now he's wondering if it's her. But of course he has no proof. Then one day he starts having engine issues on the car.  He takes it into the shop, and they tell him that someone has put a foreign, salt-like substance in the gas tank, and it's gotten all through the car's systems.  He gets that fixed - it costs over $1,600. That's when we went on our first date and he had driven the truck to the date.  Then he gets into his truck a week or so later, and starts it up and drives it to the end of his street and it starts experiencing engine issues.  Stops driving it immediately and has it towed to the shop - but it's too late - the substance had made it all the way through to the engine, and it's not worth fixing it.  So he sells the truck for parts.  That's when he showed up with the car and had issues again that evening starting it.  She'd done something to the car AGAIN.  The car is back in the shop AGAIN. Now he knows for sure that this is being done to him on purpose, and he can think of no one else who has anything against him - even though he has no idea at that point what she has against him either (since it's something she concocted in her mind).  But he figures if anyone has a vendetta, it'd be her psycho ass.

So unbeknownst to me, he's got no vehicle to drive  He has the shop fix his car, but it's too expensive for him to afford in his current financial position, so he tells them they'll need to wait a few weeks until he can accumulate the funds to pay them.  He explicitly tells them to NOT park the car outside, because his ex can see it out there and tamper with it again.  They promise him they won't.  He doesn't tell me any of this at the time because he really likes me and he's afraid I'll bolt if I find all this out. That I won't want to be involved with this kind of crazy situation.  And so far, he's been able to keep me completely sheltered from this drama. It hasn't touched me, so he's still okay.

We're at his place on a Sat. night, and my car is parked in the driveway next door.  O rented an apartment over a garage, and the owners not only owned the house on that property, but also the house next door, which was currently empty from renters having moved out.  So they tell him he can park in that driveway until they rent it.  With no car to park there, he tells me I can park there.  So to be clear, I'm not parked in HIS driveway, or even on the street.  I'm parked in the driveway of the house next door.  I'm baking cookies and he's in the washroom, about to take a shower. Suddenly he goes FLYING out the door past me, pulling up his pants, and yells, "I'll be right back!" It was weird, but.... okay.  I get a pan of cookies out of the oven and think, "It's like 10 degrees out there and he went out without a coat on.  WHY would he need to do that? And what's out there? His cars aren't even here (I know that his car is in the shop and that he sold the other one, but don't know more than that). I'm standing there with a perplexed look on my face, getting a sinking feeling in my gut, when he comes back inside.  He.IS.LIVID. He can barely speak. It's scaring me. I say, "Baby, what's wrong?" and go over to put my hand on his arm.  He is taking huge breaths in and out through his nose, and he says, "Someone popped your tires."  "What???" "I was in the washroom on the toilet and I heard this popping noise (there's a window in the bathroom), and then another, and I realized it was someone popping tires.  I opened the window but couldn't see anything.  I ran outside and it looks like at least 3 of your tires are popped."  He is SO angry that I need to be calm.  He lives on the cusp of the city of Chicago, so I'm thinking that it's just some random kids in the neighborhood.  I say, "It's okay, baby - I have insurance on the tires. We'll just get it fixed."  He isn't speaking.  He calls the police. We put on coats and meet them outside, where the greet him like they are familiar with him.  It had just recently snowed (just a dusting), so there are footprints all around my mini van.  The cop is making a police report, and O says to him, "Do these prints look like a woman's size 9?"  WTF??? I'm so confused.  Then the cop shines the light on my van, and both sides have been keyed from the front wheel well allllll the way to the back bumper - down to the metal. Oh god. NOW I'm starting to look overwhelmed.  We finish the police report and the cop says something like, "Okay O, we'll work on this again."  Huh?  We go inside.  I'm trying to keep myself in check because he looks like he's going to explode. He sits me down and says, "Honey, I know who did this."  "WHAT???"  "It's my ex. She's psycho."  He spills the stories. Oh God. He offers to pay the deductible on all insurance.  I tell him I'll let him.  I want to see him step up. I didn't realize that there was no way he could afford all of that in his current financial situation, but I sure as shit couldn't afford to pay it a week after the holidays, either.  I say we'll work it out.  He looks like he's going to cry.  I ask why he's so upset. He says that he's scared I'm going to break up with him, and he's livid that this TOUCHED me. It was okay when it was just him suffering, but now that it involved me, he's FURIOUS. I spend the rest of the evening calming him down.

To be clear, me having parked on the neighbor's driveway and having this done means that she would have no reason to know that the vehicle was related to O - UNLESS she was watching us.

The next day is a Sunday. The day that my extended family is going to meet O for the first time.  My sister is having both of her daughters christened, and we're going to the christening and the dinner afterwards at a restaurant local to my home. 45 minutes from where we were currently sitting with no vehicle.  This is before Uber. A cab would have cost an arm and a leg. Did you know that you can't get a rental car on a Sunday unless it's near the airport or in the city? Only two locations to do that at.  So we reserve a car in the city and take a cab there. Get the rental car, go to the christening, he meets everyone, we return the rental the following morning (had to take the day off of work), and we get my mini van towed.  I have rental insurance, so I'm able to obtain a rental that way.  They give me a car with out-of-state plates.  I can't tell if this will help make it look like it's not my car, or it it'll make it stick out like a sore thumb on his street.

O has decided that since his lease is up the next month, he needs to move.  His daughter is 16 at that point, and he doesn't like the thought of this crazy woman doing something dangerous.  She's texting him constantly at this point, saying things like, "Now you know what it feels like to suffer", and threatening to put his young daughter's private medical condition on the web for everyone to see. She's calling him at work, too.  She won't admit to anything, but it's obvious she's done this and while she won't use language to incriminate herself, she makes it known that she's having it done to him. He says, "You're costing me so much money! You've ruined both my vehicles, and now I have to pay the deductible on her car for all the damage you've caused her!"  She says, "Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about that - I can get rid of her if you want." Da Fuq?!? He has the conversation recorded, but it's ambiguous enough that the police say it's not enough to hold up in court. They do, however, go to her house and tell her that they know it's her, and that they're watching her now, and to cut it out or they're going to arrest her.

Y'all still with me on this story?  I told you it was long!!!

I come out to my rental vehicle one day after visiting him, and it's scratched all the hell up on the driver's side! WTF?!?? O looks at it, but isn't sure that it's a new scratch, or necessarily by her.  How could she know it was even mine? Because she's WATCHING us, you dope! I know it's her.  I leave to go home and start driving on the highway. It's 2 am. I don't know why, but I've got a coat on and nothing else - no gloves, hat or scarf. My phone is almost dead.  And while I can text just fine, I can't make calls - it's broken.  I can make the call and the other person can hear me, but I can't hear them at ALL.  I'm driving, and suddenly, my tire blows out.  Like.... BOOM! It's flying all over the highway in shreds. I pull over to the shoulder and sit there for a moment, thinking about what to do. I figure I can change the tire.  But I also know that O is waiting up for me to tell him I got home okay.  He's going to need to know what's happening or he'll be freaking out if I take too long.  I go out to the trunk to get the spare tire out.  SHIT it's cold out! Then I go to the glove compartment to get the owner's manual, because I can't find the damned jack to save my life.  And I want to review the instructions on where to place the jack so I don't screw this up. It's too cold out to be out there for long. No.Freaking.Owners.Manual. I look in the trunk and find a power cord for charging my phone. Yay!  I plug that in and can at least text now. I tell O what's going on. I tell him that I can't call anyone because I can't hear them. He texts back, "Don't do ANYthing - sit in the car. Lock the doors. I will come to you."  How's he going to come to me? He has no vehicle! I tell him no - that's okay - I'm going to change the tire myself. I'll let him know when I'm done.  He texts back in ALL CAPS.  "NO. STAY IN THE CAR. TALK TO NO ONE. KEEP THE CAR RUNNING FOR WARMTH." Okay!  Jeez.

I'm in the car about a half hour when a police vehicle shows up behind me and asks if I need an emergency roadside vehicle to help me.  I say yes.  They say they'll call one, but it may take up to an hour to get to me.  Okay.  Cop pulls away.  CAB pulls up behind me.  I get out.  It's O. It's the same.damned.cab driver that took us to the city a week earlier to get our rental car!  He's looking at us like we're freaking crazy. Lol. O gets out of the back seat of the cab. He says, "Hold this", and hands me a huge freaking flashlight. He pulls on a stocking cap, puts on a pair of gloves, and he opens the cab trunk and pulls out a pneumatic jack and the biggest freaking tire iron I've ever seen.  As he starts striding toward me to get to my car, I say to myself, "I am GOING to freaking.marry.this.man." As he approaches my rental car he sees the the tire that I pulled out.  He says, "I told you to do nothing! Why is the tire out?!?" I yell at him that I did that before I even texted him. He changes the tire in four and a half minutes (at least that's what it seemed like).  Then we get into the car and we drive another half-hour to my place.  It's FOUR o'clock in the morning.  He drops me off and then drives the 45 minutes back to his place.  He comes out and gets me the following day to give me the car back.  O doesn't think that Psycho popped my tire - because it would have blown apart right away, not 12 minutes into the highway part of the trip.  I think it's all too coincidental, but whatever - we'll never know.

O saw this entire scenario as big drama that no normal woman would ever want to be involved with. I saw it as him being a man who would protect and take care of me at all costs.  His ex had tried to cause chaos (which she did), but she also unknowingly put him in a position to prove to me the kind of man he was.  And he won my heart through that trial.  It was literally a month into our relationship.  He was amazed that I'd stick by him through all of that.  I told him that I loved him, that he wasn't responsible for any of this, and that we were going to get through it together as a team.

We got my minivan back about a week after the tire blowout. O paid the $500 deductible.  We returned the rental car and miraculously, they never noticed or contacted us regarding the scratched driver's side.  The car shop that promised to not put O's car outside after it was fixed didn't follow through on their word - they put it outside, but O didn't know that. His psycho ex used the opportunity to put more junk in the gas tank, and a day after getting it back, it crapped out again.  He had to sell IT for parts, too.  He had no vehicle for a while at all. O's lease was up Feb. 1st. His landlord was being a stickler about the date, and O was nervous to stay any longer lest he put me or his daughter in danger.  He started looking for a place closer to me (which was coincidentally the town next to where his daughter lived with his ex), and he wanted to be able to rent something for super cheap so he could help me with my rent to help the kids and I stay afloat.  My ex's mom had decided that she was going to leave on April 1st and go move in with her son (my ex).  We could NOT find anything cheap enough for O to pay both his rent and help me with mine.  The alternative was for me to pull my kids out of our rental home, out of their neighborhood and into a much less safe area, put us in an apartment, and put them in a school district that wasn't nearly as good.  Since I had two kids with IEP's, it didn't seem like a good idea.  They'd just had their father move out, then their grandmother move out.  I wanted to minimize change to their life.  O looked for something to rent for just a few month - Feb. and March.  We found nothing and were getting dangerously close to moving day.  His ex wife (his daughter's mother) had heard what was going on (he had to tell her for their daughter's safety), and she had a spare bedroom in her rented home.  She promised him that he could come and go as he pleased, and that it was really fine with her.  They'd been divorced for a good 10 years at that point.  He came back to me, and to his great surprise, I said yes.  I trusted him implicityly, and if anything was going to happen with his ex, it would have happened long ago.  So he lived there for two months with all his stuff in storage.  Then on April 1st - two days after my divorce was final, he moved into my rental house with the kids and I, and we combined resources to pay rent and expenses.  He still had no car for several months.  (I got up early every morning to drop him off at the train since he needed to go in much earlier than me).  A few months after that we bought him an older vehicle (it's like 20 years old now). He's since gotten a newer nice vehicle, but we kept the junker all along.  For six years. It's sitting on the driveway right now with sale signs on it.

And that, my friends, was the beginning of the relationship that led to my current marriage.  Everything eventually settled down and started working the way it should between two normal, healthy people with four kids.  Ha ha.

THE.END. 

Kel

Last edited by Kel (June 14, 2018 3:43 pm)


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

June 14, 2018 7:34 pm  #22


Re: Day 9

Uhhhhh.  This dating thing didn't go so well for me at all.  I didn't believe that he really liked me and wasn't doing my sister a favor by taking me out (He's a friend of hers,.she set us up) even though he's told me before that it wasn't the case.   SELF WORTH ISSUES!  TRUST ISSUES!  We slept together again Monday night and Tuesday I woke up feeling like a prostitute.  So I told him that and that I quit this FWB game if that's what it is.  I'm sure he'll never call me again although I apologized.  I"M COMPLETELY PSYCHO after being mind-fucked so bad.  I was convinced he couldn't be into me and seeing other people.  He wasn't. His parting words:  Relax. Enjoy Life.   MIne:  Whatever.   I could never expect any guy to understand what I've been through.  More lonely months ahead. 


WTF
 

June 15, 2018 10:03 am  #23


Re: Day 9

Wondering -

Yeah, I wish we could have nailed her, too.  Because who knows who she moved onto to do this to after him, ya know? It would have been nice to teach her that she can't just be crazy and get away with it.  But I think she's psycho enough to know how to cover her tracks - she's probably got decades of experience by now.

I do know that some men seem to have a whole slew of "crazy ex's" in their past, and that usually means that he's been a douche to them and they're acting out on that.  But I was able to see her texts to him, and you could tell something was off-kilter in her thinking even by how she was texting.  She'd have one sentence where she'd tell him to burn in hell (for what, breaking up with her?), and then the next she'd offer to come over and do that thing in the bedroom that she thought he liked so much.  Then she'd go insane over describing ME to a tee, and tell him how she's following me. That ain't sane but just angry.  That's psycho.

We've fantasized about doing something to get her back.  We joke about it about once a year.  But it's been six years now - it's clear we're never going to do anything if we haven't already.  And we're both clear on the fact that she isn't worth getting in trouble for.  Lol.

Thanks for the compliment on the writing.

Kel
 


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

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