Lately I’ve been getting some comments from someone who has disagreed with a lot of what I had to say. Apparently this guy was in the process of leaving his bipolar wife, and he was trying to justify why he just couldn’t stay any longer. It wasn’t enough that he was arguing his reasons, he was challenging me for my own opinions and perceptions. I welcome all comments and engaged him to defend my own thinking. I always try to see both sides of everything and did consider what he had to say and agreed with his right to his feelings, always saying that everybody’s circumstances were different and I wasn’t going to judge.

The story this commenter told sounded pretty bad. He described some extreme behaviors of his wife from being so depressed that she was incapacitated to being so high one Christmas that she was opening the kids presents and eating whipped cream straight out of the can. I sympathized that it did sound like it was a bad situation and that I understood how living with her could become unbearable.

But it didn’t stop there. In his apparent attempt to justify his own actions he openly argued with what I had to say. I was wrong to think that I wasn’t 100% responsible for the breakup of my last marriage. He also expressed that my ex-wife was as justified at kicking me out as he was for leaving his wife. He kept pushing me on my not wanting to talk with my ex and chose to communicate via text and email, saying that she had her own reasons for not wanting to talk to me. Again, I considered what he had to say and acknowledged when I felt he had a valid point.

It got worse. The disagreements turned into open attacks. When I wrote about the details of the end of my marriage he strongly defended my ex-wife. He said that he felt that he thought his wife was his soul mate for many of the same reasons I thought my ex-wife was mine. But he felt like he was duped into thinking that as his wife was presenting herself falsely because of her mania just like I had duped my ex-wife. Nothing was his fault; everything was bad because his wife was bipolar.

I even started writing other posts in response to what he was saying. One of my articles was about how people with bipolar were responsible for the results of their actions even if they weren’t responsible for their behavior when in the grip of an episode. I wrote about how even though my bipolar illness did have a lot to do with the failure of my marriage, there were reasons my wife had her own share of the responsibility. That prompted another round of attacks from a different commenter that were more derogatory than the first guy. After one post this new person commented with a tirade against me blasting me for expressing my opinion on my ex-wife’s own problems. He then sent the same comment directly to my personal email account to make sure I was going to read it.

Wait a minute. My blog isn’t linked to my personal account at all. How on earth did this guy know how to get in touch with me directly? Well, here’s the thing. The email that came to me personally was from my ex-wife. It was word for word to the anonymous poster so I knew she was one and the same. When I looked closer the return email on the second commenter was the same as the one as the first one who was so argumentative. So there it was… It was my ex-wife all the time. One of my family members had given her the information to find my blog, and she had ‘followed’ it to get email updates every time I posted. She didn’t realize that in the site administration I could see who had subscribed and I could see the email addresses of everybody who commented. She was busted.

I started to censor her comments. She noticed that her comments weren’t making it to my posts and added new comments about how I would only post positive feedback. After I didn’t respond, she sent more comments about what a jerk I was for not allowing all comments to be posted fairly. Finally, after a couple of days of ignoring her and blocking her comments I had to say something… and sent her a response to her comment simply asking her (by name) to stay out of my life.

Don’t look for her past comments; once I realized who was posting them I went back and deleted them. I write my blog for myself, and to help others where I can. This is not a place to engage my ex-wife in a debate on why she was right and I was wrong. I guess she got the message from my email as I haven’t had any new comments from her, and she is now unsubscribed from any updates.

I try to be fair and objective when it comes to comments that are posted to any of my articles. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I respect that and always try to consider their point of view. But just as she did in our marriage, she has again betrayed my trust. So don’t be surprised if an especially negative comment doesn’t make it onto the post. I have to make sure she doesn’t intrude into my life again, and if it sounds anything like her I’ll have to censor it. That doesn’t mean I won’t post any comment that isn’t favorable; I welcome all valid opinions. But I won’t take a chance of her betraying me again.

As I’ve said before, one of the things I discovered after the split was how often and easily she lied to me. Pretending to be someone else to justify why things were entirely my fault is just another lie. Her pretense on my blog was just a continuation of how she had misrepresented herself to me right up to the very end of our marriage.

Maybe now people will understand that, while I won’t deny my own responsibility for the failure of our marriage, it really wasn’t entirely my fault.