Lose the bitch. And let me tell you why - grab a chair and a beer, you'll be here a while:
I spent the better part of my young life with one...I'll use the term woman about as loosely as it can be used here. To be fair, I really did love her. She was 21, I was 23 and we got along well. We met in Charleston, South Carolina in 1990.
It didn't take long for the lying to start. She'd lie about anything and everything. She would lie when there was absolutely no reason to lie. She was, in the end, a pathological liar.
For years, I tolerated it. Every time she'd do something stupid and lie about it and I eventually find out about it, we'd argue, she'd promise to never do it again, and we'd move on...only to wind up right back where we started from a few months later.
This went on for fucking years. Friends told me to lose her. I was an idiot and didn't listen. I just couldn't at the time imagine a life without her in it. When I moved back to Atlanta in 1994, part of me was hoping she'd just stay in Charleston. She didn't. She came with me. I figured, OK...maybe the change will do us good.
We got married in September of 1996. I thought at the time that things were looking up.
Then, it happened.
One day, I came home from work on a Thursday afternoon in August of 1997 to find a note on the computer from her. It stated that she had Friday off from work and had gone to stay the weekend with a friend from work, that she needed to think about things and that she'd be home Sunday afternoon around 1PM and we'd talk then. It stated it wasn't me it was her and not to be upset.
Needless to say, I was gutted. But I figured we'd see Sunday what was actually going on. I figured she was with her good friend Emmy that she went on girl's night out with all the time, so I wasn't really terribly worried at the time.
Until the next morning.
Her boss called me at work looking for her. My boss had gotten my wife that job (and it was a GOOD ONE), so when Shirley called me asking where the hell Rebecca was, I was stunned.
I told her about the note. She said, "No, no, no. That's bullshit. She came in here dressed to kill yesterday but started complaining about how sick she felt. I told her to go home and get some rest and I'd see her today if she felt better. She said she'd give me a call and when I didn't hear anything from her I got worried that maybe she was really sick."
So I asked Shirley to talk to Emmy (about staying with her as the note suggested) and I called a few folks we knew as well.
Nobody knew a god damned thing. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.
I was such a nervous wreck I took the rest of the day off and went home to try to call everybody I knew to find out where she was. I was worried sick.
Eventually, I had to call her parents who lived in South Carolina. They were shocked as well and knew nothing. They were decently well-to-do people and didn't want the rest of their family to know about it, so they asked me to keep quite about it, wait 'till Sunday and see what Rebecca said when she got home on Sunday.
Sunday came, no Rebecca. She never showed.
So, first thing Monday morning, I called the police. I told them everything. They came out to the house, filed a report and left. They told me most people that disappear do so on their own and that eventually she'd turn up, but that a detective would be in touch with me within the next 48 hours.
So two days later, my boss comes back to tell me there's a few men in suits up front to speak to me. It was the detective and two men from the GBI. (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) They took me down the street to a station to "interview" me.
They had her purse and asked if I recognized it. I of course said yes. They said they found it hidden behind a chest in my closet. More shit like that went down. I was getting very, very nervous. It became very clear to me they were looking at me about her disappearance.
That afternoon, the bills started to appear. Rebecca had accused me of "controlling" her by doing all the bills, etc. So I had let her take over doing it.
Worst mistake I ever made. Nothing had been paid. Nothing. Even the rent was late. I spent hours on the phone calling everybody from Georgia Power to AT&T making payment arrangements for bills that were months past due.
I was simply devastated at this point...and that's when the credit card bills started rolling in. THOUSANDS of dollars.
Nearly two weeks went by before they found her car abandoned, unlocked at the airport.
It was days later that the detective showed up with an assistant and a ton of phone equipment. Turns out they tracked my phone and a cell phone she had that I knew nothing about (I didn't even have one as they were RIDICULOUSLY expensive at the time...this is 1997 we're talking about)
The skinny of this is that it turns out she had been having internet affairs with at least 7 guys. There were several she had called and visited using my credit cards to purchase tickets and gifts for them with. (Her credit was ruined, so she didn't have any of her own.)
So the detective set up a recording device and added his phone in line so he could listen in, and we started calling people.
One guy was married with two kids. He had seen Rebecca just a few days before with some young guy from the Navy. That told the detective immediately who she was with.
The next call was to that young man's parents. His mother answered the phone. According to her Rebecca was:
- 21 years old (She was 28 at the time)
- Single (She was married to me)
- Lived in Chicago (where she's originally from)
- Worked at a health care center (she worked at BWI Fords Holmatic - they made machines that packaged food.)
The woman simply couldn't believe I was who I said I was. She didn't believe the detective either when he started talking...until he had the Cook County Sheriff's department knock on her door while we were talking to her.
Turns out my wife had been carrying on affairs for years. She'd tell me she was going on a weekend retreat with Emmy, but go see one of her men. She'd say she was going to girl's night out, but sit in her car on a cell phone talking to guys all over the Eastern U.S.
I had of course reported all my credit cards stolen by then. It was three days later (she had been missing for nearly a month at this point) that she called.
She was with the 20 year old Navy guy that had just gotten out on leave. She had flown up to Newport News to be with him for the weekend, and figured if all went well, she'd just stay with him and if it didn't she could come back home to me.
That, my friend, is your future. It's going to end very, very badly. There is nothing on this planet that is going to stop it.
Get the fuck out right now.
I know it hurts. It is pain you think nobody else can possibly imagine. You're wrong. I can. This is only part of the story. There's a whole lot of heart breaking other shit in all of it, but that's not the point.
You're thinking right now that you're vested...that you have to stick it out to see if it can be fixed. You're thinking you'll never find somebody else, that nobody else will ever want you, that you'll end up alone. You're thinking life wont be worth living without her in it.
IT
IS
ALL
BULLSHIT
I had her shit packed and the divorce paperwork filled out by the time she got back to Atlanta. I drove us down to the courthouse where I had her sign the papers and it was notarized right there by the clerk of court. She got her clothes and personal items. I kept everything else. Fuck her.
I even drove her and her new boyfriend to the Marta station so they could get back to the airport in her car. (I would sell it a few weeks later to help pay off the 16,000 dollars of dept she racked up.)
I was gutted.
February of 1999, just a year later, I met my wife. She's Russian and was (and still is) a corporate controller. She's gorgeous. She's 9 years younger than I am, but acts 10 years older. We got married in February of 2000, had a daughter a year later, and a son in 2012.
We've been through several surgeries for me (neck, cancer, etc.) and with it all we're still going strong. We've had our ups and downs, but it's been a great life. I wouldn't trade it for quite literally anything in the world.
Anything.
Drop the bitch now. It's going to end inevitably based on what I'm reading from you. You're doing what I did: hanging on in desperation because you just don't know what else to do.
Lose her. Move on. Take care of yourself for a while. Then, one afternoon you're going to run into somebody like the total klutz you are, apologize emphatically for it, wind up buying her lunch to make up for it, and the rest will be something you look back on 20 years from now with nothing but a smile on your face.
Life's too short, man. Start living it.