I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve been married to my wife Diana for only two years. But I already know our marriage is over, and it’s because of a dog, a video, and a temper I should have never ignored. Diana has always had a short fuse. Her family told me that’s just how she is, but I convinced myself she’d grow out of it.
She was perfect in every other way, so I let it slide. That was my first mistake. We weren’t financially stable when we decided to get a puppy. I worked retail and went to trade school on the side, and we struggled to pay rent most months.
But I did the math, cut our luxuries, and thought we could make it work. For the first three months, we did. Then Diana started going to Starbucks again, even though we agreed to cut it out. I picked up overtime to cover the difference without saying much.
Looking back, I was just enabling her. The real trouble started when she lost her job. She got fired after letting her temper explode in front of a customer. For two weeks, she applied for jobs every day, and I helped her as much as I could.
Then she started slacking off. I told her she had to keep pushing, but she didn’t listen. Two months later, she found a part-time job that barely paid anything. I sat down with the numbers and realized we couldn’t keep our dog, Buster, no matter how much we cut back.
I brought up rehoming him, and she exploded. She called me heartless. I told her it wasn’t easy for me either, but we didn’t have a choice. I gave her weeks to find something better.
She didn’t. So I told her I was going to rehome Buster whether she liked it or not. She said she’d never forgive me. I asked her to come up with another solution, but she just blamed me for punishing her for losing her job.
I put an ad online and found a nice family within a week. I kept Diana informed the whole time, but she still acted shocked when the day came. She walked out to the car, saw Buster was gone, and lost it completely. She screamed every name she could think of and stormed out of the house without telling me where she was going.
I didn’t hear from her for an hour. Then my phone buzzed. It was a video of her, naked, lying on a bed with some older guy on top of her. She was moaning and making sure I saw everything.
She had left the house to cheat on me, and she filmed it just to hurt me. My chest burned. Rehoming Buster hurt me too, but she acted like I was the only one who could feel pain. I didn’t sleep that night.
I watched the whole video, hoping it was some kind of sick joke. It wasn’t. When she came back the next morning, she looked scared. I screamed at her, asking why she did it.
She whispered that she was sorry, but those words meant nothing. I told her I was filing for divorce. I told her that the ease with which she cheated probably meant she’d done it before. She tried to defend herself, said she tried to delete the video, but it didn’t matter.
I told her she could have just not cheated in the first place. I moved out the same day, left her with the apartment and the rent she couldn’t afford. I got a cheap divorce lawyer and had her served. The divorce took months, but it’s finally over.
She wanted alimony, but I didn’t pay her a cent. She kept the apartment, even though she couldn’t afford it. I got the furniture I wanted and walked away. But I wasn’t done.
I was petty, and I knew it. I went to the store where she used to work and found a woman Diana always hated. I flirted with her, took her to bed, and asked if she’d let me record it. She agreed, especially because she couldn’t stand Diana either.
I sent the video to Diana the same night. She recognized the tattoo on the woman’s neck and lost her mind. She called me immature, called me petty, but she had no right to complain. I was only giving her a taste of what she did to me.
She kept screaming at me until I hung up and blocked her on everything. Buster is doing great with his new family. I still want to see him, just to know he’s okay. If there’s any lesson in all of this, it’s to watch the red flags.
Don’t expect people to change. Don’t ignore the signs. And don’t think a short temper is something you can outlast, because eventually, it’ll destroy everything you thought you had.
