She told me she’d been thinking about how she would end our children’s lives with a butcher’s knife, bathe in their blood, and then kill herself. I was standing in our bedroom doorway, and I felt the floor drop out from under me. My first instinct wasn’t anger. It was to hold her, to tell her we would get help together.
I called our pastor, and he came over constantly, sending sisters from the church to pray with her and help around the house. That was April 2022. By May 2023, she was a different person. She was working out more, dressing better, getting her nails done, going out with her sister and friends.
On the evening of May 19, she said she was going to get her nails done with her sister-in-law. She left at 9 p. m. , and I gave her the keys to the sports car without thinking much of it.
But she never drove at night. Thirty minutes later, I called to check on her. Straight to voicemail. I called three more times.
Nothing. I checked the car’s GPS and saw it parked in the Civic Center park. I texted her, asking why the car was in the park late at night with over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of networking equipment in the trunk. When she started typing back, I called her.
She answered, and I could hear a loud exhaust in the background—a muscle car, like a Mustang or a Charger. She said she was on her way to her sister-in-law’s house. The next day, she told me she’d just been smoking weed and driving around the city. All my alarms went off.
I told her plainly: if she was cheating, she could leave without a fight. Just tell me, because I didn’t want another STD in my life. On June 2, 2023, she came to me out of nowhere and said she had applied for a job and wanted a divorce or a break. I cried for the first time in my life.
I couldn’t process it. I sat in our bedroom and wept for two or three hours. Finally, I told her I could give her one month of a break, but no more. I lasted one day outside the house before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I had to kiss my kids good morning, be welcomed home by them, tuck them in at night. So I came back, and I started overcompensating. I gave her a week-long cruise to try to revive our marriage. I bought her clothes, makeup, shoes.
I got her and her sister and sister-in-law concert tickets in San Diego, with a nice hotel stay. I was dimming myself trying to win her back. On June 9, the night before the concert, I asked her for her phone to update the tickets on Apple Pay. She handed it over.
Something was off—she didn’t have Messenger installed, even though she’d sent me a shopping list on it just hours before. I installed it. Boom. She was talking to about five different men.
She’d been sitting right next to me the whole time. I found her talking trash about me, saying she longed for some of those men. But the worst part: she had sent photos of our four daughters, ages nine and seven and a half, and our little one-and-a-half-year-old son, with GPS coordinates of our house, to a man in Pakistan. She was exposing our children to a potential predator on the other side of the world.
I grabbed my phone and started taking pictures of her screen. She snatched the phone away, ran to our bedroom, and locked herself in. She deleted everything, but I had a few screenshots. Everything changed for me in that moment.
I stopped seeking her approval. I was angry. I had pity for her. For a few days, I held onto a sliver of hope that she’d been manipulated somehow, that it was just a mistake.
That lasted until Father’s Day, June 19, 2023. After dinner, she said it all out loud. There was another man. He’d always been there, since we first started dating.
She was never happy with me. She’d been in contact with him after every pregnancy. She was ready to leave with him because he had just finished his studies. Something broke inside me.
I felt actual physical pain in my chest. All my good feelings for her died in an instant. I didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She wasn’t the caring mother.
She wasn’t my partner. She was just another girl who deserved nothing from me. That night, I started sleeping in my son’s room. No more asking, no more waiting, no more intimacy.
A cold determination filled my chest. I decided I would protect my children at all costs and make no mistakes. I wouldn’t give her any ammunition against me. She filed for divorce on August 1, and I received the summons on August 3.
After filing, she became more open. She left Friday afternoons and came back Sunday afternoons. She demanded money for gas for her minivan, for her nails, for her belly dancing classes, for the cleaning lady. I decided to maintain the status quo but stop funding her lifestyle.
I told her she needed to get a job. I became methodical, calculating, careful. I didn’t leave the house, though she demanded it almost every day. I got my divorce settlement in May 2024 after four hearings where we both represented ourselves.
She did everything she could to delay, trying to keep the house, the sports car, and the minivan, and leave me broke on the street, allowing me to see my kids every other weekend. On March 29, after our final hearing, she left for a week-long vacation in Mexico with her lover. I used that week to pack my things and move myself and my children into my parents’ house. I got 50/50 custody, week on, week off, $132 in child support, and $900 in spousal support for 32 months.
I sold the sports car and my two-seater daily driver to buy a new Tahoe so I could transport my kids properly. I also requested a court-ordered DNA test on all my children, since she’d been in contact with her lover our whole relationship. They’re all mine, thank God. The 50/50 arrangement went fine until August 4, when she texted me that she wouldn’t be handing the kids over anymore.
She picked them up from school and didn’t tell me where they were. I couldn’t see my children for over two months. When I texted my older daughters, they said they missed me. Sometimes they said they were scared of me.
It was my ex pretending to be my kids. I filed police reports every week for contempt of court. I didn’t respond to her harassment until I hired a family law attorney—not just any attorney, but the best and most ruthless one in the country. They got me emergency custody.
On October 8, the judge granted the emergency order. That afternoon, after a three-hour wait with four police officers and the bailiff at her apartment, I finally saw my children again. At the first hearing on the emergency order, she showed up with a friend for moral support and no legal representation. I had my attorney and a mountain of evidence of her contempt.
The judge and my lawyer tore her apart. My attorney requested her psychological, medical, and financial records to understand her motives for hiding the children. The judge granted everything. That’s how I learned the full truth.
I found out that the friend who came with her to court is the one who introduced her to ayahuasca and toad venom, while her affair partner got her into weed, THC, and cocaine. I got her psychological records, and everything came out. She caught her lover having sex with her best friend in her apartment. That caused a panic attack that led her to hide the kids.
Her lover left her after realizing she hadn’t kept the house, the cars, or much money, but not before he spent all the money from the marital home. She wanted to make me angry so I would react badly and end up in jail or with a restraining order. Her lover and friend got her stuck on drugs. Now she experiments with ayahuasca, toad venom, cocaine, weed, THC, gummies, and vapes.
She’s already spent 95% of the proceeds from the marital home—almost $70,000 since September 2024. She manipulated our children into being afraid of me. I also discovered she’d been thinking about harming our children since 2019 because she saw them as an obstacle to being with her affair partner. This doesn’t make me angry anymore.
I feel pity and compassion for her. She risked everything for someone who dropped her like a brick at the first opportunity. To this day, I’m still waiting for the final court hearing. I’m fairly confident I’ll get full custody because of the requested drug hair test and the overwhelming evidence.
But I know my kids need their mother. I recently bought each of my children a piece of land, and I’ll buy a new house soon. Hearing that my entire marriage was one giant lie is the hardest part. I learned to love someone’s soul and accept their flaws, while the other person was painting me black.
The most beautiful moments of my life are now stained by a lie. Doubting the paternity of my own children was crushing—so much so that I never want another relationship with a woman again. Regardless of the pain, I keep moving forward, for my kids.
