broke up with a guy ten years ago, his wife contacted me a week ago

broke up with a guy ten years ago, his wife contacted me a week ago

We dated when I was in college. It was long distance the entire time. He was a soldier in Afghanistan when we met up again and 'started dating'. We'd know each other since grade school and reconnected.

Once he came back home, I'd fly down to his base once a month to visit. After about a year and a half of that, I'd flown down and we'd gone to the lake for a day. There'd been one girl acting weird and later that night a message had popped up while he was in the shower. He had been saying he wanted to marry her.

Cool, made that easy for him and I ended it and flew back home. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

Last week, I got a message on Facebook from his wife. She asked me if she could ask me something woman to woman. I said sure.

She asked why we broke up ten years ago. He had told her I cheated. He had been the one cheating.

She asked me about things he told her I had made him do.

Things like checking his receipts from restaurants to make sure he wasn't drinking. Told her I would leave notes for waitresses when they didn't treat him right for being military.

All this time, he'd been basically using me to gaslight her. Using me as this evil ex girlfriend to keep her in line, to keep her from questioning his behaviors too closely, because she didn't want to be like me did she?

They have small kids and shes divorcing him because is doing the same things he did to me, cheating and lying. It's weird but I'd assumed he'd grown up and matured, been a good person to them. It made me sad he wasn't.

I'm glad I was able to give her information that helped her feel like her choice was the best one , but I hated that someone like me, who hasn't really been intertwined in her life, had those answers.

Not sure why I'm saying anything but I feel so strongly about being there for other women and even though this really isn't the type of support I thought we'd need to give, its still important.

#reddit #TwoXChromosomes #tts