Solving A Relationship Mystery

As a twice-divorced man due to cheating by my two ex-wives, I could never understand what was behind a very big part of the problem during the lead-up to both divorces.

I never cheated on them, and yet I was constantly being accused of doing so. In the end, the conclusion I reached was that they were projecting onto me what they were up to, and I do believe that that was a very big part of it. That is what all self-serving narcissists do. However, just today I came across a take I hadn’t dwelled on too much before.

A fellow writer on Medium, K.T.Fox, said “…my partners have always accused me of cheating when I have never cheated on a partner… their reasoning? Other men told them they found me attractive.”

That is what I am getting at in a nutshell. Because other women apparently found me attractive I was presumed to have responded by cheating when in fact I was totally innocent.

Let me say, that I have never considered myself to be attractive to women, quite the opposite. I never had a girlfriend in my teens and did not lose my virginity until I was past twenty-one years of age. If women found me attractive, I could have done with them letting me know about it when I was a lot younger and footloose and fancy-free.

Maybe, some people overthink matters. Because they find their partner attractive they think all other men or women do. Or perhaps they simply see other people admiring their partner, and from there they can begin to imagine all manner of infidelities.

My first ex, after nineteen years of marriage and three children, suddenly started to ask me, for no apparent good reason, if I had met somebody else. When I replied “No, why do you ask?” she said, “Oh, just asking.”

My second ex was even worse. Many times when we were out in the car and I had to stop at traffic lights for a pedestrian crossing, she suddenly blurted out “What have you got going with her?”

“With who?” I asked.

“You know,” she snarled accusingly, “that woman who has just gone around the corner. I saw her looking at you as if she knew you before she disappeared.” 

I had honestly never seen the woman, I was too busy looking at the traffic. I am not talking about the odd incident, I mean constantly, to the point that I became afraid to go anywhere other women might see me, even shopping or going to work.

Two memorable incidents out of far too many, for all the wrong reasons, occurred further down the line. One night I got home from work at the same time as usual. The office was less than ten minutes from my workplace. Yet she falsely accused me of being late and demanded to know who was the woman I had stopped off to see. Madness. It got even madder.

The second incident was when she attacked me in the kitchen with a pan full of boiling water. Because I had placed a teacup in what she considered was the wrong place, she hurled the piping hot water all over me. I ran out of the house to the hospital and spent four hours there waiting for treatment, which is the form for the course I’m afraid.

When I returned home with my arm all bandaged up I decided that as it was too dangerous to go inside our apartment, I would sleep in the car outside. In broad daylight, I went inside and was immediately accused of having spent the night in another woman’s bed! For that, and a whole host of other insane behaviour, her cheating began.

I suppose in many ways, it all came down to insecurity and unfounded jealousy. Things preyed on their mind to the point where they decided, “Well if he’s up to no good, I can do it as well. That’ll teach him a lesson, he’s not the only attractive one around here.” Before I knew it, nineteen years of marriage with the first and ten with the second went well and truly down the pan. 

In the bargain, I got well and truly financially fleeced and totally alienated from my four children for the rest of my life. I mean WTF! What I am talking about here is plain and simple freekin insanity.

To make matters worse, both ex-wives went ballistic when I met somebody else and did their best to ruin my new relationship. To prevent a repeat of that type of damaging behaviour I had to move country. Spain after my first divorce and Japan after my second.

I am happy to say that at last, I have found true love and happiness with wife number three. We have been together almost ten years and she has not put a foot wrong. I try not to talk too much about my past, but on the odd occasion when she has pressed me I have told her a little about what my first two ex-wives got up to. Her only comment was “It was because they loved you so much and were afraid to lose you.” And although I get where she is coming from, if that is an expression of true love, you can count me out. So far, so good, this one is a keeper for being the truly incredible woman that she is. And, of course, because I love her so much, all the way to the moon and back.