I started dating a girl about 7 years ago. When we met she was getting up on her feet and trying to find her way in life. I let my imagination take over and started envisioning her potential and what kind of life we would have together. I had never had the feeling of disarmed punch-drunk love that I had for her, and that probably clouded my judgement.
Throughout our time together she would reach out and ask for money for things… repairing a car, paying a bill, etc. We were getting closer the longer we dated, and I would always help her assuming that I was making an investment in both of our lives by helping her through a period of instability. In all I probably gave her about $15K.
After about 4 years of this I finally popped the question. She accepted and we were married after a brief engagement.
About 6 months into our marriage she told me she had been having car trouble and needed about $2K for the repair. This struck me as a bit odd…. By that time I was more than familiar with her vehicle and knew her explanation for what the issue was didn’t make sense. One evening after she went to sleep I went and had a look at the part of the car she had said was faulty. No issue. This set off alarms.
I grabbed her phone and, on a hunch, typed in the amount she had asked for and it returned a text message with a guy she had previously dated. Apparently he had reached out and asked for help repairing his car, and lo and behold he had asked for the same amount she had requested from me.
My stomach turned as the thought entered my mind that maybe I had subsidized other of this guy’s expenses across the time I had dated my wife. As I read through the messages further I realized that this guy was the Lester Diamond to my Sam Rothstein, and I had been played like a fool. (Look up that reference if you’re not familiar.)
I had spent my entire relationship as a proxy sugar daddy.
I thought on this for a few weeks and tried to figure out what to do next. These sacrifices were not insignificant to me… I had been working as a surgical resident for much of our courtship making very little money and working long hours to form a strong, solid foundation for our future. This was devastating, and I realized that I couldn’t reconcile the situation.
Once I had cooled down I waited for an evening my wife went to bed early and I got into her phone. I caught up on the most recent messages she and her paramour had sent one another. Then I initiated a conversation with him. I posed as her and told him she had been drinking (she is a recovering alcoholic) and that she needed to get some things off her chest.
I didn’t go overboard, but I did send messages to the effect that she was not over him and that her affections had grown since marrying me. I all-but tee’d him up to move in for a relationship with her.
I then abruptly ended the chat and asked that we not talk about the conversation again in order to avoid furthering her relapse, but that we both keep in mind what we had spoken about and see if we could make a life together work.
I then deleted the texts from her phone and hoped the two would proceed forward together. They did.
I kept an eye on the texts for the next few months and progressively saw things heat up between them until it looked like she was committed to leaving me.
We didn’t have many assets together at the time as I was still finishing a surgical residency, so I knew the divorce would be quick and painless and that we would go our separate ways and she would start a new life with the guy whose underachievements I had been funding.
So I filed for divorce and had her served papers. I was generous with the $10K in assets between us in order to make the split as quick as possible and went on our ways to begin life anew.
And you’d think that is the end of the story, right? Oh no, friend… you see, Mama didn’t raise a cuck.
In our state, not only are assets separated upon marital severance, but so are debts. And medical school is f**king expensive… really expensive… a quarter of a million dollars expensive.
So, the B*tch ended up with a parting gift of about $125,000 of my student loans.
And guess who she shotgun-married two months after our divorce?
Fortunately for her she’ll only have to pay half of that amount, because if history does indeed repeat itself, he’ll be paying the other half once their marriage ends as well.
It was all I could do to not send them a piggy bank as a wedding gift.
Best $15K I ever spent.