Back in 2001, I met a man named Chris whose wife had just walked out on him days earlier. Chris was a food and beverage manager at a hotel in New York City. He lived in a three-family house where his 81-year-old mother lived alone in one apartment while Chris lived with his wife and two sons in another. The third apartment was rented out to another family.
Chris was devastated. He cried constantly and blamed himself for his wife’s actions. She blamed him too. Every evening after work, I met up with him to help him process the wreckage she left behind. She took the money. She took the kids. She took his peace. The only thing she couldn’t take was the house because it was under his mother’s name. But she still tried.
The court eventually awarded Chris fifty-fifty custody. His sons stayed with him almost every weekend because their mother found a weekend job. But none of that softened her venom. She laughed in his face. She told him she would find a better man. She mocked him for years, claiming he never loved her, that he would never change.
Chris told me there was a time when his wife nearly died giving birth. He didn’t leave her side for days. He slept in a chair at the hospital. He did everything he knew how to do as a husband. Yet now he was left asking, “How could she do this to me after all that I did for her?”
She remarried within a year. Every time she saw Chris, she made sure to flaunt her new husband in his face. But her little victory parade didn’t last long. Eight months later, she drained the new husband’s bank account and left him too.
Years passed. Chris sold the house after his mother passed away. He bought a beautiful condominium where he lived with his two sons and a new girlfriend. His boys are now in college, building their own futures.
Today, Chris called me. Seventeen years since we first met. He told me he ran into his ex-wife on the street. She couldn’t even look him in the eye. She hung her head in shame as they passed each other. Later, Chris found out through mutual friends that she had stolen from her second husband, moved to Florida, and spent every dime. She ended up living in a trailer park, but even that became too expensive. She returned to New York City and now sleeps in a women’s homeless shelter.
Chris thanked me for standing by him in the beginning. He said, “You were right. She got hers in the end.”
