*everything in here is based on truth, backed by evidence. this is not an attempt to crucify another, it is my story, and that is all*
I don’t want to be telling this story – it brings me great shame and guilt. I’ve held tightly onto hope (see: denial) over the last 7 months that the right thing would be done (the right thing being nothing more than a genuine apology and accountability) and this story could be left in the past but that hope (see: denial) has vanished, clarity filling in the space it once took up. That clarity has taken me some time to get to – finding out you’ve been duped will send your ego straight into denial (see: hope) and I spent quite a bit of time in this place called denial. While there, I was also watching my mother die a horrific death and dealing with that monumental loss, finding myself for the first time in my life truly alone raising my seven-year-old twins, facing corrupt systems, an abusive ex-husband, and the many other curve balls life throws at me; for the past 7 months I’ve been doing nothing more than trying to keep my own head above water. Hope (see: denial) was weighing me down, though, and as soon as I cut it loose, I have been able to swim again and I’ve made it to a tiny piece of dry land with the clearest view of that light on the horizon, reachable when I get this last monkey off of my back. In this clarity I’ve discovered it is the forced silence whether by individuals or society that causes me to become paralyzed by the weight of it all and wanting to give up. It is the fire that causes the pot to boil until that lid bursts off from the pressure. I cannot heal while carrying things inside of me that do no good hidden in the shadows. As hard as speaking up can be, carrying around this experience in silence is harder and it’s time I start putting myself and my own needs first, i.e., self-respect.
Abuse is a big word – it carries with it deep, negative connotations, ramifications, an aura of evil in the one doing it – and should not be thrown around lightly. However, I cannot deny any longer that I was abused/groomed by a man the public looks up to, who rubs elbows with congressmen, our elite military members, and princes of other countries – a man of power.
It had only been 9 months since I filed for divorce and only 2 months since my ex-husband had been arrested for crimes committed against me when I received an unsolicited direct message from him on Twitter stating that he thought we had a lot of the same opinions regarding the ideologies of “the red pill” movement and the overall themes of the masculine and feminine in general. At this point in time, I was still extremely traumatized by what had been done to me for over a decade, as well as coming to terms with the fact that my mother was dying of lung cancer; I was a vulnerable, scared, isolated woman with the fragility of a newborn kitten, desperate for safety, for normalcy. I was an absolute mess, to say the least, and it was widely known that I was – I wrote about this mess that I was and how I was attempting to overcome it and heal, those writings eventually earning me a spot alongside him and a couple of other men writing weekly emails covering all aspects of how to be the best human you can be.
And the “friendship” blossomed from there.
For the first month(ish) of knowing him, I assumed he wasn’t married. He didn’t wear a ring and not once had I heard him mention a wife or kids. It was only in one of his late-night messages to me (that were picking up in frequency), he stated he was awake because his child wouldn’t go to sleep. “You’re married?!?” I asked and he confirmed. I think I had a brief “well shit” moment, but no lines had been crossed at that point and I chalked up his messages to me as a genuine friendship and support of another human being, nothing more.
In fall of 2019, the messages changed to daily voice notes from him when I woke up containing positive platitudes about how I’m the strongest woman he knows, an inspiration, yada yada, direct messages being sent constantly throughout the day, and hours long phone calls. The friendship had shifted into a deeper one, where we were sharing our lives with each other – our struggles, our triumphs, our daily tasks. It was at this point he started opening up to me about his marriage claiming he’d found divorce papers a couple of years prior that his wife had drawn up but never filed, and that things had never been good in their marriage – insinuating and then later outright stating that his wife was mentally and physically abusive towards him, claiming he endures it “for the kids” but was miserable and hated his life. He was helping me navigate the abuse I was enduring from my ex-husband and the legal systems, making multiple promises (and at that point, showing through action) that he was going to see to it that I got the justice I deserved. There were gifts, too, unsolicited. Money, gift cards, and toys for my children were sent to me from him, and every time he sent something, I wept at what I thought was kindness. I can see now, looking back, that this is when the gaining of my trust (by telling me of his personal life) and creating a reliance on him (actively helping me with the legal and abusive situations in my life, knowing I had nobody else) started via weaponizing my good nature and vulnerabilities, my naiveté. The gifts and frequent declarations of how special of a woman I was – love bombing. All of it, classic signs of grooming that I missed because, well, I was a traumatized mess & ignorant.
[Grooming (Adult): when someone builds an emotional connection with someone they’ve targeted to earn trust with the purpose of exploitation for their own motives. Stages of grooming: target the victim, deliberately use words, promises, and actions to gain the victim’s trust, identify a need in their victim and fill it/pretend to fill it, start sexualizing the relationship, establish/maintain control over the situation often using manipulation and gaslighting techniques, and the end stage is to “ghost” or disappear on their targets.]
In summer of 2020, he told me he loved me. We’d spent all that spring growing even closer emotionally and supporting each other’s endeavors. His support for my dreams was using his growing audience online to retweet my artwork for the masses to see, and it helped – I was finally starting to get noticed and my art was selling. My support of him was of course silent and occurred behind the scenes, watching as he grew in popularity and listening to his stories of the grand opportunities his career and sudden popularity had provided him. I was also his therapist – him dumping more and more on me about the emotional and mental turmoil he was going through regarding his marriage. It was also during this time he became a sort of (unasked for but welcomed) advisor on my divorce and the criminal case that got botched, often telling me what to say and how to say it when dealing with the players in my life. Again, looking back, I now see these not as acts of kindness and friendship, but as a means to keep me dependent on him and his knowledge/help – and he did a really good job at this – me becoming trained to go to him any time an issue arose in my own life and letting him tell me how to handle it.
We had grown close enough that I was starting to witness, via phone, the dynamic in his marriage and by all appearances, it did seem as though the marriage was not well. Of course, this could have been carefully constructed by him to make me think things were over, regardless, I believed him. I believed him when he said he loved me and would be filing for divorce. I believed him that he was being abused. I believed him that “I was the other half to his soul”, “he’s never loved another like me”, “he was going to do right by me and his family”, “the universe had put us together”.
Oh dear gawd, that was nauseating to type out.
However, nothing changed, which started to really upset me. I had spoken to him numerous times about the guilt I felt regarding us and that I didn’t like this setup at all. There were times I even encouraged him to continue working on his marriage, stating him and I could remain friends and I was ok with this. Each of these hesitancies in me would usually cause him to double down on the love-bombing and words, all of the words that any broken, vulnerable woman would want to hear when she’s questioning the validity of a human being she cares a great deal for. The promises flowed like water from his lips.
Summer gave way to fall gave way to winter. I was growing more resentful towards him but wanted to believe what he said with every fiber in my being, justifying it all to myself by saying “there’s no way he would be lying to you and using you – he knows the most intimate details of what you’ve endured – only a psychopath would do that to someone”, so, I kept trusting him and on Thanksgiving of 2020 I received a message from him that it was over there (the marriage). He went on giving me an elaborate account of a fight that occurred between his wife and him at Thanksgiving dinner in which she pushed him and threw her wedding ring at him. Of course, captain save everyone (me) went full empath and quickly became his baby blanket – bending over backwards to do anything I could for him (and by extension his children) get back to a healthy place in his life and make him happy. In the weeks following that Thanksgiving story, I was told by him that he’d sat her down and told her that the marriage was over and that he was going to be moving out by January 1st, 2021.
Guess what happened January 1st, 2021?
I’m (justifiably) angry by now (at both him and me), feeling like I’ve been strung along with empty words and not only that, but I am emotionally invested by now. I was legit concerned for the safety of him and his children after the things he would tell me, and I would voice this to him, and I could not for the life of me understand why he would stay with someone he claimed was abusing him. I spent hours, hours, consoling him, empathizing with him, being that goddamn baby blankie for him, neglecting my own intuition in favor of taking care of this man who says he loves me. My needs and wants don’t matter, right? Not when I have this man begging me not to leave him, crying that he needs me, screaming he might as well kill himself, and so on. Women don’t desert someone that needs them – we’ve been taught this since youth – and boy, did he know how to play this up.
My patience, grace, and empathy only lasted so long, though. By February 2021, I was done, and I told him so. The back-to-back phone calls started, the pleadings from him, tears and all, and then he says he’s found an apartment. Motherfucker hooked me back in with that one – I was proud of him, thinking he was finally doing the right thing for his kids and himself.
Except, there was no apartment, just more excuses. “I’m scared to leave the kids there” “I’m trying to get finances in order” – plausible excuses had I not been told these same ones over and over for the past year and given hours’ worth of academic journal worthy advice on all thing’s separation, abuse, divorce, trauma bonding etc on my own time for his well-being for it only to be disregarded.
It was May 2021 when he ghosted me for the first time. This is when that little voice in me started speaking up to where I could finally hear her. He was still living at home but by now claimed to have moved to the basement, going overboard to make sure I knew he was sleeping down there by video calling me nightly from a bed on the floor (again, who knows if this was real or not; I believe in my heart he went to this extreme to cover his ass and then would go back upstairs and get into bed with this woman he portrayed as a monster). I was still practicing patience, forgiveness, and believing his words (the actions had stopped by now), but barely. The inconsistencies were becoming more common than not, and that freaking lightbulb finally went off (thanks r/theotherwoman) where I realized that he was getting all his needs fulfilled via either me or his wife, with me barely getting any of my own needs met and I’m sure his wife was in the same boat, as well. And that made me pretty angry, you know, when I added it all up. I was really starting to doubt my own reality and ability to discern what was normal and what wasn’t, and I was growing angrier and angrier every day. His methods of reassuring me in the past no longer worked, as I’d quickly remind him of the hundreds of broken promises made during those times and where there were once tears and begs from him, he now would grow sullen and talk poorly about himself when I questioned him and his intentions.
That ghosting in May, turned out, was because his in-laws had come to town, and they had all gone to a baseball tournament together. Of course, he wasn’t the one to tell me, I found out while scouring facebook trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened. He returned that Monday, tapping into his emotions and through tears tells me he didn’t know his in-laws were coming and he didn’t know what to do. “So, you just leave me alone wondering if you’re dead? Wondering what has happened? Losing sleep and not eating, my mind racing, thinking I’ve done something horrible and racking my brain for any clues? You let the woman you madly love become emotionally traumatized because you didn’t know what to do?” I’m not sure if I said this out loud, but I thought it and that’s when my self-abuse started – because I stayed, just like he knew I would. Although, in the month following I did start talking to other men, met with jealousy and tears from him, telling me it would kill him if I started dating someone and to trust him. Good ‘ol abuse right there.
After that May ghosting, the love-bombing and promises got turned up to eleven, while communication and that friendship we once shared was close to zero. He would still call and whatnot at our set times, but the in-between had disappeared – I’d become this thing that was scheduled and needed when it was convenient for them, a thing that had lost herself, believing she was doing a good thing by being patient and gracious with this man at the expense of herself. It was the lowest point I’d been in a long time… because the person doing it to me knew my story, and that was so incredibly hard for me to reconcile.
It was last November, November 2021, when his wife overheard us fighting on the phone. Mind you, this was what he told me, so who knows what’s real. I received a message from him that stated, “she heard us, and I told her the truth”. I told him I was here when he was ready/could talk and he thanked me, told me he loved me, and called the next morning. He said that they’d spent the night talking and he told her he was in love with me, that divorce was inevitable, and that she agreed with this decision. It was also around this time I could tell my mother was getting sicker and I voiced to him my fear she was going to die worried that I was all alone, and he urged me to tell her about him – that it would be an honor that she knew he loved her daughter. And so, I did just that – gathered the courage and told my dying mother about this man who loved his daughter, and she was ecstatic for me, considering all I’d been through.
To this day, I still question what happened, but after that night his wife supposedly heard us fighting and he declared his love for me, he started pulling away more than ever. Texts were short, phone calls even shorter, promises to visit me were replaced with visits to others, even forgetting my birthday - always followed by a day or two’s worth of intense love bombing when I’d question what in the hell was going on. I had zero self-esteem at this point and was being gaslit like a motherfucker. On Christmas I got a video message first thing in the morning that he couldn't wait for the day it’s me he spends Christmas with and how much he loves me and by January 5th, he's telling me he’s done after days of hardly any communication. That span of ten-ish days haunts me, for I have no idea what happened.
I know that I was lied to, over and over, and accepted it until I didn’t, but when I didn’t I got emotionally manipulated into staying, and then love bombed when he could tell I was done. I know that I was used for someone else’s own needs, despite requesting my own needs be met, as well. I know that I was vulnerable and made horrible choices, leading to two women being abused – myself and his wife. For one cannot carry out an intense affair without lying, manipulating, gaslighting, stonewalling, insert any abusive tactic here, to either the spouse or the other person, most likely both simultaneously. I know that his sudden declaration of the finality of this “thing”, after all I’d put up with for him has left me with more rage than I’ve ever known. I know that my mother died thinking this man loved her daughter, not knowing just a month prior, without warning, had discarded her and vanished into thin air, leaving her daughter traumatized, heartbroken, enraged, feeling worthless, and unlovable, while watching her die. I know he couldn’t even send condolences when she did die – this woman he’d grown to know through me over the years, of our relationship as mother and daughter, all she had done for me. I know that his pay has risen drastically while mine falls, steadily, due to him deciding for the both of us, out of the blue, that we no longer existed to each other therefor my art was done being supported by him, and as of late to add insult to injury, he’s watching as a bystander as his new girlfriend/groupie bully’s me online to their followers, many mutuals we share, calling me crazy and any other wretched slur you can think of, for no damn reason other than I exist. I know that he goes online and out into his community, growing and prospering, while I am still paralyzed and in shock at what has happened to me, still trying to find that one missing puzzle piece that will explain it in any way other than I was preyed on, targeted and used by a man that knew the pain I was already in and the horror I was trying to overcome, who cared not one thing about me, as a human being, as a mother, a daughter, a friend, who in turn, has made me feel unworthy of basic human respect. I know he made my kids suffer, by extension, because he retraumatized their mother, except this time it was worse. Way worse. I know he stole 2 years of my life, knowingly, after a decade had already been stolen from me. I know I'll never get that apology I deserve. I know that the logistician came close to killing me by doing what he did. I know he has made it harder than it ever needed to be for me to live, to go on, to take care of my family by doing what I love to do - art, to exist, to love. I know he made me afraid of my own shadow and question if there are any good people left in this world. I know he’s a coward full of demons.
And I hope all of that stays on his conscience for the rest of his life.