The story that I will tell may not be EXACTLY how it happened, but it is as I remember and continue to live it. While I don’t believe that anyone here is truly innocent (including myself), no names were harmed in the writing of this blog.

When I went back to re-activate my J-date profile, 8 years after my last visit, I was struck by the fact that I really only had to make one significant change–I could no longer say that I had “a basically great life.” I still work in entertainment marketing (though not currently working), I still have great family and friends, I still like dining and wine tasting, my age, conveniently, or perhaps, cruelly, had automatically updated, and I now had two dogs and no cat. I was, outwardly, basically the same person. Inside, however, I barely recognized myself. I had been broken, stepped on, crushed, deserted. And it all started on J-date. Was I crazy to return to the scene of the crime? On the flip side, weren’t we, technically, a success story? I mean, minus the fact that my ex had an affair, left me within 2 weeks of me losing my dream job, and was deep in a relationship with a woman who self-identifies as a “Tiki mermaid in disguise,” we did, in fact, meet on this site, and we did get married. The site brags about the number of marriages it creates, but offers no statistics on their divorce rate. But I digress. The point, really, is that when I looked at my old profile, I was still that person, except I no longer felt like it was a great life—it felt like I had lost so much. Same profile, different person. All the cliches were true–losing someone you love changes you in ways that you can’t possibly know until it happens to you. And, honestly, it might be easier if the ex were dead because then everyone could mourn with you, and you wouldn’t be forced to perform an autopsy on the relationship and how you might have contributed to it’s demise.

First, let me explain how it all came about.

I was 43 and finally decided that focusing on my career, while successful, was not very fulfilling, and I way over identified with the “Sex and the City” episode where Miranda worries she will die alone and be eaten by her cat. Hit way too close to home. It was time, past time, to take a risk, and look for love.

My ex was the third date on which I went. It wasn’t love at first sight, but he was sweet–and while he was basically my height, I wasn’t really hung up on that. He had a goatee and mustache, neither of which I found appealing, but he had nice eyes and facial hair was probably negotiable. He had three kids–two of which were young enough to be in car seats—which struck me as oddly adorable when his red GTO came up at the valet after our first date.

I don’t know when my ex fell in love with me, but it happened for me over the course of the first 3 months or so. I had REALLY been off the market. My ex was the first man I had sex with in almost 10 years. He was thoughtful, silly, smart, romantic–I thought he was the greatest guy–I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to find him. I was proud of him–he knew about so many things–he was a financial planner professionally, but he raced vintage Fords, rode a motorcycle (two things that a lot of my guy friends seemed to bond over with him), was basically a real-life MacGyver, and he made me laugh–a lot. My friends and family all seemed to think he was as great as I did.

I hadn’t been focused on marriage, per se, but with 3 kids involved and some significant real estate adjustments needed if we wanted to live together, getting married seemed like a natural next step. The fact that I had never wanted kids, had no clue how to be a wife or step-mother, had been single for 43 years, all seemed like minor details that would somehow work themselves out. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that’s not what happened.

In the beginning, things were great. We hit a few bumps (little things that I chose to overlook like the fact that despite being a financial planner, he had not done any planning for himself and four months into our shiny new marriage he told me he could not only not contribute to our life, but he couldn’t meet his monthly obligations to his ex); but I had mated for life, and after a 4 day pity party, I doubled down, loaned him money, and continued on my path to “happily ever after.” Lest the lesson be lost–finances, especially in a second marriage, need to be FULLY explored and disclosed prior to any decision to marry. But in the interest of transparency–I would have married him anyway–I just might not have lost so much respect for him so early in the marriage. And make no mistake–being a step-mother came as naturally to me as speaking Mandarin. I treated the kids like miniature adults–which, it turns out, they are not. Their ability to understand sarcasm is apparently quite limited, though their capacity to tell their mother every time you use a swear word or leave them alone outside a supermarket is infinite. I did come to love the kids, but I didn’t always like them. As my ex claimed that he felt much the same, I figured we were ok. We were not. It was mind-boggling to me when a year before he left me (around the time he started his affair, about which I knew nothing), My ex started to criticize me for being sarcastic, particularly with the kids, and started referring to himself as “Papa Bear,” a term I would NEVER associate with him and which I can only assume was suggested to him by the mermaid. He was about as much of a Papa Bear as I was a Earth Mother–which is to say, not at all.

While there are 5 years worth of things that brought my marriage to an end (as well as many fantastic times that somehow have been twisted to seem like anomalies), the actual murder was committed when my ex connected on-line with the mermaid and began a 10 month affair. And really, it was more of a long, painful, character assassination versus what a quicker, kinder cut would have been. And still, I was blind-sided. I really thought my ex was just being a dick because he was under pressure and I was having a stunningly difficult year. I was willing to forgive him–I wanted to work on the marriage–I wanted what I signed up for–married for life. Unless you’ve lived it, you cannot really understand how crushing it is to have the person that you thought was “your person,” and would always have your back, turn on you. My ex not only couldn’t muster up the courage, strength, emotion to give our marriage a chance, he blamed me and couldn’t resist a few nasty digs on his way out the door. I was being left for another woman, at the same time I was losing my job, and my ex was furious with me! If I had been nicer, a better wife, a fan of cars, you name it, then he wouldn’t have had to have an affair (as he did in his first marriage), and he wouldn’t have to get another divorce! But that’s a story for another day. Now, it’s time to figure out how to pick up the pieces and get that ”basically great life” back. So, now you know the basic story around the ashes; maybe you’d like to follow along the journey as I try and rise from them?