I got in touch with a friend I had lost contact with. A random email of hers had popped up on an email account I rarely check, and I was a bit mystified about what she was doing with her life…she seemed to be going to a very intensive specialty school (at age 45) and wasn’t seeing her family over Christmas…mentioned where the kids were, but didn’t mention her husband at all. They were “that” couple…the ones who seemed perfect, who got through downturns in careers with imagination and teamwork, who seemed to be the two happiest people on the planet when they were together, and miserable when they were apart. When I was part of her life, I knew their sex life was the envy of the neighborhood.
Turns out that while on a business trip to Russia, he had met some 20-something girl who bowled him over. The girl convinced him that he was the father of her baby-to-be (despite the fact that he had had a vasectomy many years before, and a follow-up further procedure after that…my friend says there is no WAY that man is fertile, he’s been tested out the whazoo). The girl would not let him come back to the US for his child’s college graduation…his words, “she won’t let me come home, sorry”…nor to be with his dying mother, or to attend her funeral. His wife cared for his mother in those final weeks and never told her what her son had done. His entire family is furious with him for turning his back on his wife, his kids, his dying mom…but he doesn’t care. When the baby was born (really early, and big for a preemie), and had red hair…he dyed his hair red so that people who “be sure they knew it was his child”. His wife, my friend, took the events so badly that she started drinking, and is struggling to overcome that now.
This was a man who I respected with all my heart. He was thoughtful, sensible, a good soldier and a fine leader of men. He even counseled my ex-husband when the ex was drinking and cheating on me, trying to get him to see that he was destroying not only his own future but his family. I would have voted for this man for any office in the land, if he had chosen that path. Now I see him as nothing more than a fool, who threw everything away (including, I fear, his job) for some gold-digging opportunist who thought he was a rich, gullible American…well, I guess she KNEW he was gullible… my friend tells me that when the divorce dust cleared, and the new honey realized he really didn’t have all that much money left, and might not have a job to return to, that she was NOT pleased. But she had told her family he was the baby’s daddy,and she needed to maintain that fiction.
I just cannot understand how someone can go so completely off the rails like that. At least with my husband, there were plenty of warning signs.
I hope your friend goes home early and kicks his butt out before he and his new honey clean out everything from their house and bank accounts.