#betteroffwithoutyou

Where’s my happy ending?

Not here.

It’s over.

I can’t believe it’s over.

And in the most fucked up, 황당한 way ever.

About a month and a half ago, we were over at a friend’s place for game night when all of a sudden, one of our friends G got pissed for seemingly no reason and wanted to leave. I asked him what was wrong and he says,

“You.”

?!?!?!

Now this guy is kinda..... unique. He’s super smart in certain ways but also the “nerdy gamer type.” He wouldn’t tell me what he was pissed about and just stormed out.

The rest of our friends and I tried to figure out what had happened but no one could and they reassured me that he had done this before with some of them but that he would probably get over it and apologize.

After that night, I talked to his girlfriend and she said that I can be a bit “intense” and “aggressive” sometimes... She gave this example of this one time that I said, “Sit down, bitch!” to her on the subway when I was 양보해줘ing the seat to her... The context here is that G had kept saying that to her that night so I was just imitating him... but she didn’t get that and of course dumbass me didn’t even recall saying this to her until later and I never got the chance to explain... ㅠㅠ

Either way, I reached out to G to apologize,

“I just want to apologize if my actions and words were aggressive to you. I know sometimes I do try to be a bit meaner like you guys are when you’re joking around with each other but maybe it just comes out weird or I’m doing it wrong... I’m really sorry. I didn’t know it bothered you so much and I will definitely work on refraining from making comments like that... blah blah blah.... I hope you know it doesn’t come from a bad place and I totally respect you... blah blah... I feel really horrible that it got to a point to make you fed up with me and I hope we can talk and work things out.” (blah blahs are stuff taken out for anonymity).

To which he replied,

“I realized what the core of the issue might be. I think we’ve learned that it’s not always easy to see the line between playful teasing and bullying but I think I have some insights that might be useful.”

He went on to list these things...

- Teasing his gf for not drinking. (one time that I remember... S and I bought a round of shots for everyone and despite me saying that G’s gf didn’t drink, he bought her one anyway. When she didn’t finish, I said, “‘***, lame!” But that was it. No shit.)

- Stopping a friend from napping at a party when she was exhausted. (I was just trying to include her and wanted to get to know her better... Besides, who sleeps at a house party?!)

- Joking about S being an inadequate partner. (인정... I wanted validation because whenever I addressed actions that upset me, he would never understand or 인정 so I thought if I brought it up amongst friends and they chided him for it, he would understand... I know, not the best move. That’s why 인정.)

- Bemoaning G for playing his favorite game. (It. was. a. joke. We had a shoot together the day before and it was basically filming him playing a buncha games. The game night was the day after that so when I walked in and found him playing the same game, by himself, when everyone else was talking to each other and socializing, I jokingly said, “Hey G, didn’t you get enough of that yesterday? Haha.” And that’s what pissed him off....)

And then he goes on to say that for the guys, “trash talk is mutual... blah blah... A battle for social status might be appropriate in a HS or college setting but seems unnecessary and unfun among friends in their 30s... But that’s just me. If you feel that I’m being overly sensitive, I’m happy to accept and move on.”

Wtf?!

I know I can be mean sometimes, but wanting the “power” (S’s interpretation of the words... He had been the one trying to make me more like one of the guys so I could be invited to guy’s night which mostly consists of going to PC bang to play FPS games which I love but I was always excluded because it was only something that happened when the other girls weren’t there cuz they don’t like playing PC games...) could not be further from the truth.

Regardless, I tried to apologize again and thanked him for bringing this to my attention because if he really felt I was a bully and “everyone else thinks so, too,” according to him, then it must be true.

“I can see now.... I want to fix this... I appreciate you addressing the issue because it’ll help me analyze the dynamic to understand what’s okay and what’s not... I hope in the future if anything like this happens again, you feel comfortable enough to pull me aside and let me know how you feel before it gets to a point where you’re so fed up that you explode.”

He never texted back and I was feeling so wretched about the whole thing that S and I decided to go visit my uncle to get away from the city with my family.

We talked about the incident while we were there, and he was trying to piece together how my actions may have come off as bullying and we spent some time trying to distinguish between “bullying” and “teasing.” Other than that, we had a relaxing time and had to come back home before going to 산소 on Saturday.

On the way back home from 산소, we dropped off my parents at their house and were on our way back home when A calls S. He asked to hang out but we had to go home because of the dogs. To this, he says,

“Well, both of you don’t have to go...”

Wtf man.... that’s some messed up shit. But A was on speakerphone and I told him to go cuz you know how A is about that kind of stuff.

S thinks that A wants to talk about what happened, and surprise, surprise G is with A, too. So I drop him off to meet them and I go home.

Before this, I hadn’t shown S any of the texts between me and G because I didn’t want to get him involved and feel like he had to play middle man, but he wanted to at least see the last text I had sent, for reference, so I showed him before he went to go meet them.

He texted me while he was with them, at first, telling me not to worry and that he’ll 잘 얘기해줘 for me, but when he got home, he didn’t really seem to want to talk about it.

We ended up talking the next morning and he tried to help me understand G’s perspective. Basically, G thought I was a master manipulator, power hungry sociopath but he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. G also took the fact that I hadn’t shown S our text chain to use to say I was manipulating S and withholding facts. WTF?! Regardless, S said he’d help me get through this and we were supposed to have dinner at his mom’s house but he understood if I wasn’t up for it.

I didn’t end up going to his mom’s place and tried to sleep before he came home because I still felt like such a wreck from the whole G situation and was majorly depressed because it broke my heart to think that all my so-called “friends” thought I was some power-hungry mean girl...

I used to be a cheerleader in HS and they think of me as the former mean girl, but that’s so far from the truth because I was bullied so damn hard and always made it a point to reach out to others who were being bullied or were in need of love... But of course none of them know this shit. Well, A does but hell would freeze over before he took my side after all the shit that happened.

The next morning I woke up to hear him leaving the house to walk the dogs and he left me a text saying that I should eat something and that he wanted to talk when he got back.

I was still seriously depressed and I wasn’t quite ready to talk... And I hadn’t checked the message before he came back so when he DID get back, I was still in the room and he texts me suddenly in this cold ass tone saying,

“You can’t avoid this. You have a decision to make and I will not wait forever.”

Something along those lines. I erased all our messages, since, so I can’t write it down verbatim like I usually do.

I didn’t know where this hostility and coldness came from all of a sudden and I asked him why he was talking like that to which he kept robotically responding,

“Like I said, I won’t wait forever. You must make a decision.”

Wtf? I had absolutely no idea what decision he was talking about as there was absolutely no context there and I was so hurt by his sudden change of attitude... This went on for about 20 texts and I ended up leaving the house because I was so upset and couldn’t get through to him.

I was gone for about 3 nights? First 2 nights I stayed at a motel near the house and then the third night I wanted a change of pace (place?) so moved to a different motel...

I had been keeping in touch with my sister and BIL during this situation and BIL called me out that third day to buy me dinner and tell me what happened between him and S because S had called him to talk.

Basically, BIL got super pissed at S and almost walked out on him a couple times because he said S was sounding completely like a robot and nothing seemed to get through to him. He said S wasn’t making any sense and was saying all these ridiculous things that BIL was so close to smacking him upside the head but he prayed a lot and 참았어 and tried to talk some reason into him but to no avail.

The next day, I got chased out of the room by a damn cockroach UGH GROSS. My sister told me S had called her and wanted to talk to her, too, and told me to go home and try to talk to him after she talked to him.

When they talked, she tried to be on his side but told me that it was super frustrating and that she wanted to scold him several times for being a child but prayed and 참았어 a lot too. She tried to be as compassionate as possible and sent him home telling him that I would be there, waiting for him, and I told him the same via text.

When he got home...

I actually don’t remember...

What I do remember is that over the next three days, he basically tried to “help me realize what was wrong with me” and get to the “root cause” of what my problem was. He wanted to “see if I was capable of change” and that if I “continue down this road, I can’t go with you. I’m fully prepared to be the asshole in your family’s eyes and leave you.”

This consisted of him interrogating me on why I did the things that I did to our friends and getting me to see how I manipulated him and our relationship. Whenever he asked me a question about some of my behaviors, nothing I said seemed to satisfy him. I tried to relate back to an example where our situation was flipped around and we were in each others’ shoes, to which he would keep deflecting back to me, saying,

“We’re talking about you right now. Not me. We can get to me later.”

I asked if we can work on mending our relationship, but even to that,

“Not now. We can get to that later.”

Super frustrating.

(I later found out that he was using the “detect a covert aggressor” clues and was using these questions as a trigger to try and get responses that satisfied him... But, fuck, it was already apparent that he made up his mind about me and that he used this as a guise to “try everything in my power to make things right with her.” 뻑이나...)

After a lot, a lot, a LOT of talking and crying (me, not him), he finally broke me and got me to admit that maybe I was a horrible person that thought I was better than everyone else and that’s why I looked down on his friends.

There’s a certain amount of truth there, and I was broken enough to expand on it in a hypothetical. I never really thought of them as MY friends. They were HIS friends, before they were mine. Plus, there was all that shit that happened with A, which resulted in me treating him not so nice sometimes, and I know that’s bad and not very God-loving of me. I honestly just thought of them all as my little 후배s because they kinda were... S’s friends and by extension, my 후배s...  I admitted to all of this and my conclusion was that I needed to make things right and that I also need God back in my life to learn to love others around me more rather than judge

Despite my “breakthrough,” he didn’t understand or agree to the need for God and brought this up as another “issue” and wasn’t sure if he was “okay” with this being my conclusion.

At that point, I was so broken and depressed that all I could think of was suicide.

I wondered if it would be better to jump out the window or from the roof... Or if I should just take a buncha pills...

I realized, then, that I had to get out of there before doing anything I truly regret and can’t reverse.

I told him I needed to go home to clear my head a bit and he agreed.

When I got home, I was basically dead.

I had barely eaten for the past week and my mom said I looked like a walking corpse...

My sister and BIL tried to help me through a lot of it and told me that I should try to work things out with him and admit to what I did wrong, but be careful not to apologize for anything that I DIDN’T do.

Which is exactly what I did.

Of course, I did a lot of soul searching, too. The thing that I remember the most is that my BIL said to be true to who I am. Which is so important, now that I realize... I was always sitting around, waiting for S to notice me and trying so hard to be the one for him that I completely 무시했어 myself and who I am. I was basically a fuckin pushover, and my unhappiness there came out in other areas.

S came by to talk to me once or twice, but when I tried to address that realization I had, it was met, again, with the same response;

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

He also met with my sister a couple times, and she said that it seemed like he was changing every day.... Like her words would get through to him, but then be pushed back... 계속 back and forth, basically.

In our talks during and after that, he talked about:

- How I made him feel bad for going out to meet his friends when he had no reason to feel bad (we would be on our way home after work and had plans to eat and whatever but then his friends would call for a “guys night” WHY ALWAYS A GUYS NIGHT?! and despite me telling him to go and that I would love to have the house to myself, he would feel bad for going but blame his feeling bad on me.)

- He never wanted to get married in the first place and that’s why he was probably pushing off the wedding. (This one really pissed me off more than anything because I’ve always, from day one, been so cautious not to force him to do ANYTHING because I didn’t want him 원망해ing me for it. I ended a friendship with one of my best friend’s for forcing him to think about how he feels about me!!  And now he’s saying that I forced him into this relationship?! When a year ago he was telling me that, no matter what, even if it’s the smallest of the smallest, he wants to “give me a wedding”?!)

- I wasn’t supportive enough in his businesses and when he told me he was worried about having to start over in the US (we were supposed to move back after the RR failed but then he wanted to try out his PP so we built that together but that ALSO failed) I told him that it was just cold feet. All this made him question himself and he realized that he couldn’t make his own decisions or trust his own gut, and that was my fault. (REALLY?! Sitting countless hours at the store with him, paying for EVERYTHING, putting aside everything I wanted to fit his needs, and he has the gall to tell me that I wasn’t supportive enough and that I made him doubt himself?! He doesn’t think any of this doubt has to do with the fact that his past THREE businesses failed, first one of which was with A, and he left because A was a “manipulative 개새끼,” his words. And now he was saying that A is such a good friend to him???)

- He felt I “lied by omission” in not telling him how Christian my family was. He knew I was, but when we went to 산소 and were 찬양 and 예배드려ing he said he felt really uncomfortable and realized how lonely he would be if I made all these Christian friends in the US. (DO YOU KNOW HOW FREAKING LONELY I FELT IN THAT GODLESS GROUP WITH ALL YOUR NON-CHRISTIAN FRIENDS?! INCLUDING THE FUCKER THAT WAS ALWAYS TRYING TO WEDGE A NAIL BETWEEN US THAT YOU NOW CALL A BEST FRIEND?!)

As the talks evolved, basically what he wanted from me was to admit that I had “emotionally abused him.”

His words. Not mine.

“Physical abuse is a lot easier, cuz you can see the scars. Emotional abuse is not as clear cut.’

I told him that I probably wasn’t as loving and supportive as I could have been. We were both at our worst and in a horrible, difficult situation, and we both needed to address these problems.

“Nope. I need you to admit that you manipulated and emotionally abused me.”

I admitted to the manipulation. I had to. Because the way he saw it, “Short of anything illegal, you’ll do anything to get your way.”

In part, it’s true.

Because to him, manipulation, in any shape or form, is bad.

Hiding vegetables in a meal to force your kid to eat vegetables?

Just as bad as having someone co-sign a loan that you know you won’t pay back.

According to him.

Plus, I sat around waiting for him because I felt he was the one, no matter how hard and depressing it was...

So I admitted it.

But what I couldn’t admit was the emotional abuse.

After admitting to the manipulation, though, he seemed to feel a bit better. He told me that “they” had diagnosed me as a covert aggressor.

To very, very briefly summarize, it’s a person who uses these tactics to inadvertently manipulate a person. Tactics such as minimizing fault (it’s not that big a deal) or putting the example back on the other person... Honestly, it sounded like such bullshit to me. He used the SAME “tactics” on me, but how does that make me the only covert aggressor?!

“Just because a person checks off some boxes in a column doesn’t mean that person is what it says. You check off a lot of the sociopath boxes, but that doesn’t make you one, does it?”

I said to him. To which he replied,

“We’re not talking about me right now.”

UGH!!!

After I confronted him with my thoughts on this “theory,” he said he felt like I was regressing and this wasn’t going to go anywhere, and finally said,

“I want a divorce.”

During this time, I had asked him to go a marriage counselor because I absolutely did not agree with a lot of the things he was saying and I really felt like we needed an unbiased, third party professional, but he said he would only do that if A was the third party.

WTF?!?!?!? How is he an unbiased third party?!?!?!

Sigh.

So yeah. That was that.

“Ok.”

I was fucking broken and didn’t have the strength or grace to argue.

A week later, we were at the court house to file for divorce.

A month later we were there to finalize it.

You know what's even more ridiculous?

After we finalized the divorce, we came out of the court house and he asked to go get coffee. I really didn’t want to but ended up going because he kept saying he didn’t want things to end this way.

After some small talk, he says,

“We had a good run though, yeah? Lotta fun times.”

“Really? Despite all that emotional abuse?”

“...”

그치... 할말 없지 개새끼야...

And then he says,

“A really misses you...”

“I’ll believe that if he ever says it to me.”

S had suggested I talk to A about the whole situation to “recognize the severity” of it when all this was happening, so I did.

A basically said I could be mean sometimes (I know... I was intentionally mean to him cuz he was an asshole...) and that he was really upset when I first started dating S because we were seeing each other at the time.

NO WE WERE NOT!!!

I was dating JH and he was dating this other girl (which he actually lied to me about for quite some time) so I had no idea wtf he was talking about but I was still broken, now submissive me at the time, so I just let it go.

He also said he still loves me and will accept me as I am, blah blah... but funny thing is he never talked to me again after that...

I also talked to G during all that to show S I was making amends and he went on and on saying that he didn’t feel I was truly sorry because he doesn’t believe a word I say and that he thinks I’m a social mastermind manipulator (HA! I wish! That’s A, not me!) and he’s scared of me...

Left me speechless... I’m a master manipulator for “bemoaning” about you playing games and not wanting a friend I’ve been asked to get close with to sleep? How am I the master manipulator and not A?!

Anyway, that was that... and I haven’t heard from S since.

Actually, he called me about 2 weeks ago at 3 in the morning... twice... I didn’t pick up and he sent a message saying he was at the empty store and was reminiscing so he called...

I messaged him back the next morning to apologize for missing his calls and a little small talk went back and forth but that was it.

Apparently he also called my sister right before the divorce, saying I was a bitch for taking my family away from him. He also met with her to “warn her because she would likely be my next ‘victim.’” (Another thing I addressed to him during our talk right after the divorce was finalized and to which he was unable to say a thing). This all happened before our divorce was finalized, but

WTF are you serious?!

Ugh.

I haven’t seen or heard from any of them since then, with the exception of, funnily enough, A’s gf. She was the only other Christian in the group and we were really starting to bond until this shit hit the fan and she messaged me not long after asking how I was doing and that we should meet up before I leave to the states.

I also talked to another friend (AC - he also used to be friends and worked with A until A tried to undermine him and steal his contacts/ work -_-) about what happened. I had to tell him what happened because of work stuff and he was so shocked by the story but not too shocked cuz he always thought they were a weird group of people and that they were incels..... New word I learned but totally made sense to me because when I tried to tell S at the beginning that I felt that if I was a guy, none of this shit (”bullying” him and his friends - something he TOLD me to do if I wanted to be one of the guys and that he  called “teasing” until all this was brought up) would have happened, but he disagreed and said my view of the world is skewed... But it was pretty damn validating to hear that from AC and he helped me feel a lot better about the situation.

My family was also super supportive during the time and I’m so grateful for that.

But anyway, that’s the story of my divorce.

Fuck.

I’m divorced.

It sucks but I learned a lot from the experience. How unhappy I was, how underappreciated I felt and how that came out in the most horrible ways (angry drunk... I didn’t realize this until now but I was never an angry drunk until I met him... So I kinda understand why his friends saw me this way because they’ve seen the worst, drunken side of me that’s really embarrassing, but they don’t know me like S does... Or how I thought he did...). How important it is to marry a fellow believer...

I also realized I’m a LOT happier now that he’s out of my life.

It’s like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders.

No more having to deal with his “wouldn’t this be a great business idea?” at every little freaking thing or his “ugh. affection. ew. that’s so not me” bullshit. Even when we first fell in love, he would look at me and say, “Fucking mykastory...” And not having to worry about spending most of my paycheck on rent for the store!

I need someone who loves me as much as I love them and actually KNOWS what it means to love.

It doesn’t mean abandoning someone in their time of need - I REALLY needed him by my side during this time, but he wasn’t there for me or willing to budge. Never once apologized for a thing during this whole ordeal.

The biggest thing I realized is that I shouldn’t missionary date/ marry and that he never really knew who I was because we never connected, spiritually. Also, he only had the capacity to love himself. No one else. He always came first and didn’t understand the meaning of sacrifice.

He will forever be the person who broke my heart and bounced.

But good riddance.

I’m better off without you.