Divorced and All Good

This is going to be deeply personal. I haven't updated here in a while. Suffice it to say the last year has been quite challenging. My ex-wife left me end of last May (May 2023) and the divorce finalized last month (early August 2024). We had a lot of conflict, mainly stemming from the following contrary views:

#	My View	Her View
1	You should work for your money.	The man takes care of me! As long as one of us is making enough money, the other spouse doesn't need to go and work.
2	Everyone should know how to drive by the time they're 28 and if not, they should learn. They shouldn't be dependent on someone else for transporation.	Husband and my parents should be responsible for driving me around. I don't need to learn how to drive since my family (including my husband) should be able to drive me around. They should understand that I am scared of driving and let me take my time to learn.
3	I am not required to buy you expensive gifts or clothes because that is the expected thing to do for a spouse. I will do it on your birthday or special holidays but otherwise I feel no obligation to do so. If you want something special, we can go experience something for free.	Boyfriends and husbands are supposed to take care of their girlfriends or wives by buying them clothing or other fashionable items as a treat at random times. It's what nice guys do.
4	Everyone should be able to live on their own and take time for themselves to process their feelings by themselves.	I cannot be by myself! If Shen is not around, I need to go see my parents since I can't bear the thought of sleeping alone in my apartment. My dog does not count as a human. I need human company over the night in order to feel safe and secure.
5	Working on your dreams are fine but when you're not making any money or cast for any roles (as an actress), you should seriously consider doing other things that can utilize other skills you have.	People who do menial jobs or do other things outside of their main dreams are wasting their times. I am an actress and I refuse to do anything like work in a restaurant or retail. Besides, my husband makes a lot of money so why do I need to have any self-sufficiency?
6	Having weird art and books around my home makes it feel like home.	Weird art does not belong on walls. They belong in museums. Books everywhere makes the place look untidy. Bookshelves shouldn't be in the living room ever.
7	I love to read and discuss literature and poetry.	The only books I'll read are music sheets and plays that I may want to act in. Reading books feel mostly boring to me. I'll rather watch TV or scroll on social media.
8	Social media pictures of myself should display candidness. I don't care if I don't look my best in the pictures posted.	Social media pictures must reflect my absolute best. I cannot look goofy unless that's my intention. Otherwise, full makeup and just looking beautiful.
9	If I fall in love with someone, I have to ask myself if that is rational. I don't want to make spontaneous decisions which can destroy current relationships.	If I fall in love with someone, I just got to go for it. Love conquers all right? I just have to follow my feelings. If a relationship is meant to end, falling in love with someone else is a perfectly good way to end it.
10	If someone buys me a lot of gifts, I feel very uncomfortable. I feel like that is a sign of disrespect since I can make my own money and I'm not a dependent child. I would rather be self-sufficient.	I love it when someone buys me gifts and I don't have to work for it. Any man is lucky to have me and if they're not willing to spend money on me, I don't want to be around them for too long.
11	Keeping secrets from your significant other is never a good idea. Even if it's emotionally damaging, it's better to hear the truth.	I would rather just wait things out and keep a lie since what my husband doesn't know won't hurt him. I'll tell him one day but I can't now since he'll get angry. I'll keep delaying telling him the truth and maybe I don't have to deal with it one day.

For the last three reasons, Abby (my ex-wife) left me for a former friend of mine named Craig. Yes, I got backstabbed by two people! Neither of them told me anything. While I was working on myself by going to therapy and support groups as well as taichi, Abby did no work on herself emotionally or spiritually. Instead of examining herself or just moving in with her parents to recover, she literally moved into a stranger's house and got into a relationship with him. This occurred barely a month later since she had at first told me that she was staying with her sister and then said she moved in with a friend when I asked her how she was able to move so much furniture into her sister's house 2 months later (August 2023).

She was very coy in telling me which friend. I had suspicions even then because Craig also stopped responding to me but I dismissed it since Abby was 28 and Craig was 72. That's a 45 year difference! When Abby was born, Craig was already well past his middle age. There was no way those two could get together! Well, Craig is a s*x and love addict as he openly admitted to me. He has been arrested before for publicly masturbating and for a while lost his attorney license. To add to the irony, he's presently a divorce attorney.

A few months later, I get suddenly pinged online that my credit card has been used. It turns out that Abby has used our joint credit card to file for divorce online. I say joint when really I pay for the bills. Not only that, she was not apologetic at all and said that she didn't need to give me any warning. I was distraught and did nothing about it for months hoping that she would change her mind.

Fast forward to February this year (2024) and I have mostly processed the fact that Abby is not going to come back. Also around this time, my friend Michelle informed me that Abby has been sleeping with a 72 year old man who likes to work out a lot and is an attorney who lives in Memorial City. It does not take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together.

I sent Abby a very nice letter to which she gladly took. When I confronted her, she said she felt a little sorry but also stated that love was love and she "fell in love" with Craig. This is what happens with someone who doesn't understand herself or the meaning of life. As Scott Peck puts it, people often confuse cathexis with love. Read this article for a bit more information:

https://letstalklovetoday.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/cathexis-vs-love/

In any case, tangent aside, she then proceeded to say that she had no plans to tell me the truth any time soon because I would just angry. This completely discredited my feelings. Of course, I would get more angry finding it out this way but I don't think she realized that. Abby is scared of many things and admittedly through our horrible interactions and fights, she grew wary of how I might react. Truthfully, through my self-growth, I felt no inclination to be angry at her at this point.

On this phone call (which was the last civil one we had) she also said that she doesn't want any of my money. Fast forward to April and I finally got the divorce papers ready for her to sign. She doesn't respond and when she finally does after I call her multiple times, she inquired me on where it states that she should receive half my money. I told her that back in February she said she didn't want anything and we can each go our ways. She told me I completely misunderstood. When I cried and asked her why she cared so much about money, acting like a narcissist, she turned around and gaslit me by saying that I'm the one who cares too much about money since if I didn't, why would I have so much trouble just giving her half?

In the meantime, during all these months, she had continually posted on Facebook all the fancy restaurant meals and jewelry and handbags that Craig has been buying her. She never mentioned Craig by name or put up a single picture of him (probably for fear of judgment) but she was happy to say things like "best birthday gift ever!" with several pictures of thousand dollar Jimmy Choo bags that Craig bought her. This completely negated the Fiji honeymoon we took which spanned her birthday in 2022. I don't know if she was being purposely hurtful towards me or just wanted to show the world that she was doing okay. She also got a nose job done paid for by either her parents (who's always willing to buy her anything) or by Craig.

I went through the attorney and turned it into a contested case. Discovery items were filed to which on her side she claimed she had $25 in her credit union account and that was everything she possessed. She demanded almost $90K on my part. In the meantime, her lover Craig was acting like a ghost attorney giving her all sorts of free legal advice. I'm sure she tried to service him in bed as best as he could manage given that he's no longer able to perform in bed from what he last told me.

At the end of it, we went through a court extension and finally mediation. There, she pulled $65K from me in terms of a cashier's check. I ended up borrowing some money from my parents and scrounging almost all my liquid assets to write this check for her.

My attorney told me that even before the ink dried, Abby walked in and rudely demanded the check. This once again indicates to me how desperate she seems to be for money. She was the one who 

1. Left me physically
2. Moved in with a former friend of mine and got into a relationship with him without telling me. In other words, cheating and lying on her husband.
3. Initially filed for divorce
4. Sat on the paperwork for months and continued with the cheating and lying
5. Said she didn't want any money from me and then changed her mind later. In the meantime, she lied to herself and to me that she always expected half my money
6. Claimed that I was hiding money and forced me to go through discovery to list out every single I owned before marriage and presently to make sure I'm not hiding money. It is ironic to me how a liar and cheater accuses an honest person like me of also lying.
7. Showed no remorse for her behavior since "falling in love" is a good justification for everything and since I was cruel to her, it was perfectly fine for her to do all this

At the end of the day, she got what she wanted. It took from mid April to end of July but after 3 months of wrangling, she got her $65K. What did she lose? 

1. All our mutual friends. None of my friends have any respect for her.
2. Any relationship or sympathy from my parents. In fact, they're full of severe dislike towards her.
3. Me. Any possibility of reconciliation with me is gone. In the past before marriage, we have broken up twice and gotten back together. Now, there's no possibility at all of that ever happening given how clearly I see her character.
4. Her own self-worth. She's willing to do sexual favors and act like a trophy wife for a 72 year old man as long as she gets all the luxury items and other gifts that she wants without needing to work for them.
5. Her marriage.
6. Her parents for a bit. They had the worst possible relationship for a while but they have since reconciled from what I understand.
7. Her self-growth. By depending on someone else and treating material things with such high regard, she is not growing in terms of a greater appreciation of what is truly meaningful in life. More fundamentally, she also cannot admit that she was at fault for doing at any of this and so for her none of this taught her anything about herself.
8. Her honesty. Even if she cannot admit it, everyone who knows the story can say that this is someone who is willing to lie for months and severely hurt her partner's feelings. She is also willing to lie to herself thinking this was the best path she could have done.
9. Her self-love. She so desperately wants the image of her to be perfect that in social media, she can only present herself as such. She doesn't realize how superficial she appears for that is all she knows what to do in order to get the public's attention and feel that she is beloved because she looks beautiful. She got a nose job done because she didn't like the look of her own nose.

As several of my close friends have put it, a relationship like the one she has is purely transactional even if she doesn't believe it. If Craig was making minimum wage all other things being equal, she would not be with him. This is a relationship born from two desperate love addicts from what I see. Craig has been desperate for years wanting a girlfriend. Every girl that he meets that he finds attractive he thinks the possibility is there to be his girlfriend. I have heard the stories from him for years. For Abby, she has openly admitted that she never felt comfortable by herself. As far as I have known her, when she wasn't with me, she was always with someone else or trying to get with someone else. She has never felt comfortable in her own skin. She has also never been financially independent and always depended on either her parents or later me and now Craig.

In the meantime, I lost about $22K with attorney fees and $65K to her as well as any love towards her and the marriage but I have gained a lot! What did I gain?

1. Deeper friendships with existing friends due to vulnerability sharing and empathy.
2. New friendships and acquaintances stemming from being able to be vulnerable as well as trying out new activities and support groups.
3. Deeper understanding of what actual love is.
4. More exercise and spiritual growth with taichi.
5. More support for my behavior addictions with returning to therapy and my support grups.
6. More spiritual growth in general with self-reflection and going to church.
7. New relationship with someone I met through doing taichi.

I have now an overall deeper understanding of myself and a greater self-love as well. Overall, my life could not be better! I am thankful for the failed marriage as a teaching moment for me. It was an expensive lesson as my mom put it and I hope to not make the same mistake twice.

Literature: Shadows of Love

Shadows of Love

Your presence once blanketed me
But your love was one of which
Blotted out the sun and left me
In such comfortable shadows

The darkness has its own appeal
And for a time I wanted to feel
Skirting amongst pain and thrill
This shimmering edge of insanity

The light is always brighter still
And happiness directs its own will
So I walked away from your sight
To see in solitude the sunlight

Nostalgia has never been my forte
And this poem is not a serenade
For I am not one to spill tears
On memories of yesterday's years

Literature: Catch Your Light

When I inched away from your love

I started falling into a darkness

So slowly that it took me a while

To see that you looked fainter

When we took the time to reflect

And you shook your fist

And I shook my head

Things started to become clear

Clear that you're not the setting sun

The light bygone never to return

But the rising one which for a time

With clouds have hidden you away

So on my rocket I will fly up

With every foot higher I see better

That you are always there

Shining as bright as before

For me to catch your light

Literature: Have We Touched Love?

Have we touched love?
I say neither you nor I,
Yet as breathes coalesce into silver mist
Only love is rolling by

Have we touched love?
I say neither I nor you,
Yet as we collapse into soft caress
Only love is rolling through

Attachments to Person or Work

Before I went to bed last night, I read a few love essays from the New York Times column Modern Love. This has led me to think how little some people value love compared to their careers. I know of some guys who have no problem moving somewhere else and breaking up with their current girlfriends. Others are not even looking due to either their perception that career should be first or just shyness. Skipping the shyness reason which is an issue of its own, the other reason of just not caring as much isn't something I agree with.

Should your desire of achievements be considered more important than your feelings? Perhaps that's the wrong question. Rather, how deeply do you have feelings for someone else and are those more intense your feelings towards your work? If your current relationship's level of emotional attachment is less than that of your work or other things, you should let your romantic partner so she won't take it too hard when you leave. Of course, by giving too much truth, she may leave you just because she knows this.

The answer truly depends on where your heart really lies. Some people are married to other people; others are married to their professional interests or hobbies.

Sociology: Why Musicians are More Attractive

The female mind acts more out of emotion than reason. The reason that musicians have much greater sex appeal than most non-musical nerds* is due to music's direct access to the emotional part of the brain. Music, a favorite activity of musicians, is a drug that can create intensely good feelings in the brain. Intellectual conversation, a favorite activity of nerds, on the other hand, is a convoluted and complicated logical process that usually confuses the less intellectual-minded (which happens to make up most of the population).

"Falling in love at first sight" is not a logical response but an emotional one. Even a decent musician who can play some songs can trigger a series of chemicals creating a fuzzy good feeling in any girl's mind except those of the deaf or emotionally comatose variety. However, an intellectual discussion is far less likely to create the same emotions and can sometimes cause argument even if the girl understands the conversational topic. Thus, to reach a girl's heart, it's best to avoid the logical and appeal to the emotional.

The only times when the nerd is on equal footing as the musician for sex appeal is when the girl is a rational being herself or is impressed by intelligence. This will be a rare girl indeed and if a nerd finds such a girl, he has probably found another nerd. Even in such a situation though, too much logic is not good. For instance, consider the first kiss. A nerd analyzes the moment and decides whether it is the moment before doing anything. By the time the nerd does anything the moment has already passed.

In short, nerds rarely get into bed with a girl or have a romantic relationship since the nerd's favorite activity is usually too analytical to have much emotional appeal. On the other hand, music has a direct emotional appeal and enables the musician to be immediately more attractive to the female mind. This truth can be seen all around. While ugly musicians can hook up with attractive girls, even handsome nerds are often single.

I think I may have been too analytical here myself. This analysis is concluded.

Sociology: Double Standards of Virginity

Recently, I was reading an article on Lolo Jones, the track and field athlete who has won a number of awards including the Olympics, which quickly led to reading on her comments on her virginity when she's past 29. I shall quote her lines here from her HBO interview earlier this year:

"If there's virgins out there, I'm going to let them know, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life — harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college, has been to stay a virgin before marriage."

She and others like her who believe in this idealism are following a flawed path without even realizing it. Religion or extreme conservative moral compass has blinded them to logic and truth. The logical reason that you make a vow in adolescence to not sleep with your partner is to prevent the long-term consequences which at that age you're very ill-equipped to deal with. At some point, moving forward by taking the jump into sexuality is a step to do to acquire greater social maturity. By not moving forward, the woman chooses to remain forever at the age of adolescence with her lack of experience. The growth of sexual maturity is one facet in the growth of emotional maturity for an individual.

Consider this scenario. When I encounter a man older than 35 who tells me that he's still a virgin, my first reaction is not of awe or admiration but rather of suspicion. I start wondering whether he's lying or whether he's socially retarded. If he is socially retarded but not overly creepy, I'll feel deeply sorry and offer to hook him up with someone I know. My reaction is not atypical; a man who has not followed his biological drive by that age is considered a deviant.

Clearly, a double standard exists. When a man is past a certain age and still a virgin, you either find him creepy or you feel sorry for him. Yet, when a woman in the same situation is somehow considered "good to have standards". This is especially prevalent among the conservative religious ladies who attempt to model themselves after perfection. They genuinely believe that they should wait out for a prince charming to explore their virgin territory.

Our lives are meant to be filled with experiences which enrich us and enable to to understand ourselves and others better. Choosing not to have certain experiences due to limits placed by an antiquidated social model is severely damaging to proper function in the modern society. Not all sexual experiences lead to stronger emotional bonds but many do. Instead of congratulating the woman for holding out, we should be instead feeling sorry for her level of sadly stunted romanticism.

Literature: Retribution of Tears

Her violet eyes streamed with tears as she stood on the edge of a seawall holding the broken shards of a crystal ball. In the next second, everything will change. She imagined herself plunging into the dark turquoise waves below her, forever erasing all traces of the broken shards of her and her memories. Yet, even in this last moments of her life she couldn't help but cry out for someone to save her.

A memory flashed by of her unforgivable action a minute ago. The shards held in her hands piercing into her flesh were literally the remnants of her former lover. At this very spot a moment ago, she had accused him of betraying their trust. He had given her a look of derision tinged with fear and laughed and said that she deserved it for first betraying him. He went on, heedless of the pain which his words like tiny barbs dug into her heart. He had thought she was the type of girl that he liked, one who will relish having a man around to protect her from this dreadful world where cute girls often fall into the laps of perverted devious men.

Instead, after she revealed herself to him, he had found himself to be utterly redundant. She was more capable of taking care of herself than he was. He had slowly started to draw away. But that wasn't the last straw. That was a week ago when he saw that she had the power to transform people into perfect replicas of glass when people saw her cry. That was when he knew that he had to get away to wake himself up from this unexplainable insanity. So it was just good fortune that he met someone that day who happened to be someone actually normal and wasn't able to take care of herself, so of course what happened just happened.

She had tried to hold it in then but couldn't. She had cried with open eyes and watched helplessly as her retribution of tears twisted his body into glass. The wind blew then and this form had toppled over shattering against the wall below. The only remnants were his eyes that flew like tiny pearls from his head to land miraculously in her open hands at that very moment.

A proper end for her has always been on her mind and she was always ready to execute her demise. She took out a mirror and gazed at her reflection held within, the last visages in her vision herself at her worst. There was barely a moment of regret before she toppled over, the second glass statue to fall into the waves that day.

Literature: Flight of the Dandelion

 
This is an allegory of the battle between the immortal dream and the temporal world. Every dream has an associated cost. Saints hardly ever marry; to reach aspirations, they have to sacrifice worldly concerns like individual love for a greater love. For better or worse, I'm no saint but being an idealistic dreamer at times, I'm hoping to capture some of their spirit in this simple story:

My scholar's robes swished back and forth across the stone floor giving off a silent display of impatience mirroring my mood. The pendulum chime at the corner of the workshop showed that there's still ten minutes to the hour but that seemed like an eternity to me.

Today was to be the start of a glorious period of my life; it is also the end of a long painstaking period of my life. In the season of life, I will have passed into the glorious state of summer where the blue sky and white clouds will give me boundless freedom. This is not allegorical for today I will have finished the Dandelion.

Five years of ingenuity and hard work and we have finally done it. Our shared dream of flight will finally take flight, if you'll excuse the pun, once the last component arrives and the ornithopter completed.

DONG! DONG! The ding-dong of the pendulum was punctuated by the opening of the door. In came the most intelligent if not also most beautiful lady in the known world. Her blue and purple robes gave an air of impatience as she approached.

Ciela reached into her robe and held out a sparkling gem. It shone with an unnatural brilliance that even the glass mirror in the sunlit room failed to match. I realized that I knew what it was and exclaimed, "A soul catcher!"

"Indeed," Ciela corrected. "With a worthy soul soon-to-be in place I can finally fly."

"Don't you mean we?" I laughed and said. "No need to be egoistical at this stage."

"There was no mistake," Ciela said with eerie calm as she slowly approached me.

When I saw the knife it was already too late. There was a silent slash and then I saw my reflection in the mirror falling. That was me with my throat cut, my mind thought with alarming disbelief. I struggled to ask why but what actually came out was a bubble of blood and spit.

"I have always loved flight more than I loved you," Ciela replied guessing my inquiry. "And you are a worthy soul for this dream to bear fruit for out of all in the kingdom, I have seen that only the soul of you or I are fit to power this flight."

I tried to say that I would never do the same to her but once again nothing came out. She guessed my thoughts and continued, "If you say you'll never do the same to me, that's only because you're foolish enough to willingly throw away an immortal dream for temporal love. Know that whatever love I felt for you never for a fraction of a second could compare with the love I felt for what's up there."

My life was slipping away and there was nothing I could do. My last thought which never found voice was "I love you and always will". She must have sensed that for when she turned away there was a hint of sadness and the trace of a tear.

[Sociology] Dating Social Progression?

Probably at a used book store somewhere sometime, I picked up a 1950s guide on dating called Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers by Evelyn Millis Duvall. I really like reading retro books and its subject matter was too curious for me to avoid. Since then, it has comfortably reclined on my book shelf gathering dust until now....

As I'm reading this, I'm wondering just how many of the things Dr. Duvall discussed still applies today. I'll list out five that I think no longer holds true in modern American society. Quoted verbatim from the book:

1. In a poll of high-school boys, more than two-thirds said that they do not like to have girls call them on the telephone. They feel that this is a boy's privilege, and that a girl seems forward when she phones a boy.

2. When in doubt about what to give a girl, flowers are usually safe.

3. Boys find that girls do not like the indirect approach that starts, "What are you doing next Friday night?" That puts the girl "in a spot." Boys should not act as though they expect to be refused, as Amos does when he says, "I don't suppose you'd like to go on a date with me, would you?" This backhanded kind of invitation is apt to make the girl feel uncomfortable and is a mark of the boy's feeling of insecurity, too.

4. A girl must be extremely tactful; boldly buying her own ticket or handing him the cash in public may be embarrassing for him.

And this line is quite hilarious. Ah, if only teenagers followed her advice then but too late for America now:

5. ... They are usually the more immature, impulsive boys and girls who have not yet learned that there is a place for everything in life, and that even a kiss is better when it is reserved for the times, the places, and the persons that give it most meaning. With experience a man is able to tell a woman he loves her with his eyes; a woman can express her adoration in a hundred little gestures that only he can understand. It is only during the calf-love stage that love-making is open to the herd.

There are some advance that very well still holds water though:

1. A good conversationalist is not necessarily the one who talks all the time. More often he or she is the sensitive person who listens well and is not afraid of the silences that come along from time to time.

2. You overcome a bad reputation by gaining a good one...This times time and perseverance, but it is the only sure way.

3. Your hospitality is one of the nicest things that you can offer to those you like.

4. You are fortunate if you and your parents have worked out your dating questions by now, for dating is much more satisfactory when it has their approval.

5. The first person you loved was yourself. Little babies are capable of loving no one else at first. They have not had enough experience even to be aware that there are other persons to love.

I'll probably pick up this book again and give my thoughts on it in greater detail but I leave you these few points to ponder upon.