When Greg first told me he was gay, he used a phrase that bothered me. He said: “I'm sorry I've ruined your life.” I realized he had to be experiencing a lot of guilt, but I loved him so much that it pained me to think he felt that way. After all, it wasn’t the end of the world. It just meant that I was going to fall into the role of friend instead of lover. We could still be part of each others lives, the roles would just be different. My life wasn’t ruined.
Or so I thought.
It was weeks after I moved out of the Haven before he finally confessed the full extent of his betrayal. Again, he wasn’t brave enough to have the chat in person. Not even on the phone. He insisted that we chat on MSN instant messaging when I asked him to call. I suppose he didn't want to hear the pain and anger in my voice. What I learned shocked me. It still upsets me greatly when I think of all that he did to me, all with a smile on his face while pretending that everything was okay.
Our conversation on MSN happened in early August. It turned out to be about three weeks before the announced auction date of our home. Yes, Greg had stopped paying the mortgage. It turns out he had also maxed out the bank loan we had taken out for his schooling. And my over-draft. But that wasn’t all. He also had gone behind my back and either opened another Discover Card account in my name (or kept the one he promised me had been closed.) and maxed that out as well. Not to mention other credit cards he had in his name only that I’d never been aware of. All maxed out. He was months behind on our utilities, too. It appeared he’d just stopped paying every bill. But where was all the money? I was so confused. My paycheck alone should have covered our mortgage each month. When Greg told me we were “living above our means”, the excuse seemed ridiculous. We drove old, payed-off vehicles. We had old, boxy-TVs. We didn’t have a boat. We didn’t have a camper. We didn’t travel. I didn’t own closets full of new clothes. WHERE WAS OUR MONEY?! I never did find out. He could never come up with an explanation that really seemed solid. I just kept hearing comments about him wanting to keep me living in the manor to which I’d always been used to. Except that whenever I crunched numbers, we should have only had about $10,000 debt, max, with his schooling, and our unexpected occasional repairs around the house. I knew we also had about 10K debt in Canada on a line of credit he had taken out for school. We’d used some of the money for the down-payment on our house and we’d purchased a fridge and washer/dryer. “SOME” debt, I knew we had. Reasonable debt. Debt that could easily be paid off once he was done with his schooling. But it turns out that the Canadian debt was maxed out, too. Or at least that’s what I was told. I never did see any documentation proving that fact. He wouldn’t show me anything. It was so frustrating. The thing that hurt me the most and really FINALLY made me feel as if he truly hated me, was when he told me he’d logged in to my 403B retirement fund at work. He stole my identity, set up a password, and then took the biggest loan possible against my retirement funds. All that money, gone. At least $3000.00. He did this in April, three months after he’d finally told me he was gay. He already knew at that point that he was going to be divorcing me. He knew it was over. But he couldn’t leave me until he’d taken EVERYTHING. And he got it all.
All my paychecks went into that shared account he emptied. My retirement was gone. My house was sold out from underneath me. My cats, my beloved babies who I cared for like real children, had to be taken to the Humane Society because I no longer had time to find a safe place for them to go. My BABIES! Gone. He said he wanted to keep Bo and Hunny, but then sold them for $50.00 each on KSL classifieds. Fifty dollars for purebred animals who were fixed, immunized, trained… and all their supplies. Kennels, food, dishes, harness, leash… the whole package. They were amazing dogs. Someone out there got a GREAT deal. I hope they value what they have and really are good to my pups. I’ll never know, of course. I didn’t play a part in any of it. In fact, Greg made sure I had no control over the outcome of anything!
Why didn’t we short-sale the house long before he needed to max out so much debt? If he’d just said he was done, we could have salvaged our credit, avoided huge financial problems, been able to move on and have less stressful lives. But he had to keep control. He couldn’t let me fix things. He had to make sure that everything was in ruins before he could let me go. Every account maxed. Every opportunity for my happiness destroyed. Why!? I’ll never have those answers.
It was the ultimate betrayal. And it came from the one person on the planet that I trusted completely. The one person I shared everything with and was willing to tell everything to. The person I loved with all my heart.
It took a few months for the chaos around me to settle down. And in the end it was me that filled out all the divorce papers and made sure things were ended. Greg said it was “my turn” to do documentation since he’d been the one who did all the paperwork for the fiance’ Visa that brought him into my life. Fair enough. Whatever it took to make things done, I was ready to do. I even drove him around to get his part of the paperwork notarized when the time came. Wanted it over as quickly as possible. I had to chauffeur him because he had recently crashed his car into a block wall and then left it there to be hauled away. Eventually the company who towed car just had the title switched into their name and had to sell it to settle his debt.
I put a rush on the divorce papers and asked for the courts to wave the 90-day waiting period. There was no chance that we’d reconcile. Even if he’d suddenly decided that girls were great and he didn’t want to lose me, the connection was shattered. It was over. I’d never trust him again. I was able to get all the signatures and notarization I needed around Christmas of 2010. After a brief waiting period, I was able to get them over to the courthouse. Dropped them off the morning of January 3, 2011. I was told it could take weeks for things to be finalized. But luck finally came my way. Because it was the start of the year, there wasn’t as much for the judge to get through before he could address my paperwork. He signed off on our divorce on the 4th, and it was filed and officially on record by the 5th. DONE! Divorced. Free. I was "Lindsie *maiden name*" once more.
I put a rush on the divorce papers and asked for the courts to wave the 90-day waiting period. There was no chance that we’d reconcile. Even if he’d suddenly decided that girls were great and he didn’t want to lose me, the connection was shattered. It was over. I’d never trust him again. I was able to get all the signatures and notarization I needed around Christmas of 2010. After a brief waiting period, I was able to get them over to the courthouse. Dropped them off the morning of January 3, 2011. I was told it could take weeks for things to be finalized. But luck finally came my way. Because it was the start of the year, there wasn’t as much for the judge to get through before he could address my paperwork. He signed off on our divorce on the 4th, and it was filed and officially on record by the 5th. DONE! Divorced. Free. I was "Lindsie *maiden name*" once more.
I filed for bankruptcy a few months later. Thanks to a referral by a friend at work, I had an amazing lawyer who charged me a reasonable fee, and did a GREAT job. I highly recommend that anyone considering bankruptcy make sure to get a lawyer. Don’t do it on your own. If you miss anything, or are incorrect in any of your paperwork, you’ll be denied and have to try again. And you will lose that $300 filing fee. Not a good thing. Do it right the first time.
In the end, including the debt in Canada, the debt that totaled up after the auction of the house and the credit cards/loans that I did and didn’t know about, there was almost exactly $90,000.00. And I’m not responsible for any of it, now. Which is a good thing. Because I will insist until the day that I die, that if I’d been in charge of our finances, or allowed to participate in any way, we’d never EVER have reached the point that we did. You want to wrack up some debt? Fine. It’s all yours, buddy. Enjoy!