We’d been back in Vegas for a few years when I received a call out of the blue. It was Sarah. The girl who helped me through some really difficult times when I was a small small child. Sarah, the only person to ever make me feel absolute comfort, peace and love. Her and I talked and got caught up since we hadn’t spoke since childhood. She was coming through town (taking her daughter to a new college) and asked if they could stay the night on the way. My wife knew the stories about us as kids and she was excited to meet her.
After a long night of talking, Sarah and her daughter left the next day. It was remarkable how immediate the connection was and we began talking every day. My heart yearned for her.
Sarah made me feel safe and loved again, like when we were kids. Although I loved my wife deeply, I was still a mess deep inside my heart and carried deep wounds from childhood. I never really trusted my wife and always thought (in the back of my head) that it was only a matter of time before she cheated on me and broke my heart. So I never gave her the real trust she deserved. But my wife never did cheat. She never lied. She never broke my heart. She was honest, reliable and a great woman. She loved me with all her heart and I was blinded by a childhood fantasy. I was selfish and never even contemplated what my leaving would do to her and my daughter. So very selfish. I wanted this new true love… Within 6 months my heart yearned for hers and my marriage fell apart. I won’t sugar coat it; I took my son and left my wife. My wife made good money so my daughter stayed with her. This was the most shitty thing I’ve ever done to anyone, EVER in my life.
I already had true love with my wide; I just didn’t know it. Major fuck up.
Before leaving my wife I contemplated seriously about it and Sarah said things to me that no one has ever said to me; and I believed she meant it.
Staring into my eyes telling me everything I always wanted, NEEDED to hear.
“We’ve been connected for all these years and we didn’t even know it”.
“We were meant to be together for life”.
“I would never, ever lie to you”.
“I will never, ever hurt you”.
“You were made just for me and I was made just for you”…
She told me about our “destiny” and “soul matching” and many other things which only reaffirmed in my heart how “right” and destined we were to be together. So I left my wife for her. It was very shitty of me, but it felt good at the time and I actually felt like I had someone I could truly trust for the very first time in my life. It was the deepest love I’d ever experienced or could have ever even imagined. Storybook love.
I fell for her deeply. To the point I had never, ever trusted anyone with my whole heart. Even with my ex-wife, who I adored.
I had ZERO reservations about allowing myself to fall deeply, madly and truly 100% in love for the first time in my life. I was 40 years old and she was 5 years my senior; more mature than myself. Sarah he had her act together. She owned a successful business and was straightforward, honest, reliable and pretty. She’d raised 2 awesome and successful kids with a slacker husband who contributed nothing. So when she called out of the middle of nowhere (while my marriage was falling apart, and she was also just out of a shitty marriage) it felt like it was literal Destiny…
I know, still a horrible and shitty thing for me to do. But it was love…
Sarah lived in another state, but we got serious really fast. I couldn’t find work so she loaned me $3,000 and I started a small marketing company. I built it up with my own two hands and within 3 months I had enough monthly income to pay all my bills. Sarah helped with starting the company a little and within the next 9 months she’d sold her company and started working for me full time. We moved into a new 5,000 square ft house in a private, guard-gated community on a golf course. She did so well at her job, and I was so in love with her, that I gifted her 50% of the company and made her my business partner. She was great at her job and although it was my company and I started it alone, I would not have had as much success as I did without her. Besides, this was my soulmate and I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. I trusted her more than word can express.
Two new sports cars (one for each of us) and the money was rolling in!
Finally, the old “insecure me” was gone. I loved and trusted her to the ends of the earth.
After about 18 months the “old me” starting surfacing again. The feeling that she was cheating and lying.
I kept it stuffed deep down for a few more months because, how could this gorgeous, super successful, honest woman whose raised 2 great kids (one whose a criminal defense attorney) and had 20 employees and tons of friends, how could she be a liar? Worse, a cheater? Worse even yet, lie to me after all those promises made while staring deeply in my eyes?
There’s just no way…
After a few months I couldn’t ignore the feelings any longer… So when she was asleep I checked her texts… And there it was. The most sexually graphic and explicit things I’d ever read. Sarah was saying to other men every night while she laid in bed next to me. She’d even been using my car to go on dates and telling these men she owned the company. She had been screwing around the whole time; even while saying how she would never hurt me and telling me I was “insecure” for accusing her. She knew she was lying and smiled while doing it. To make things worse, this was not with one or two dudes, it was many different men. She was fresh out of her marriage (when she met me) and she was making the very most of it.
I’ll keep the details to myself, but this was my first Dark Night Of The Soul. Watch a video about what that is here.
I was fucking devastated. Rocked to my hearts’-core deeper than I’d ever felt an immense, deep, horrible pain. Having read the horribly graphic sexual texts to other men; I couldn’t get them out of my head. Things I’ve never even heard a woman say in bed to me before. The most GRAPHIC stuff I’d ever heard; all while I slept next to her. She would use my car, my money and my company’s time to go on dates. She even told them it was her car.
There was no running away from this pain. No hiding from it. No ignoring it.
And there it was… All the pain I’d kept tucked away for the past 40 years; deep in my heart from childhood came bubbling to the surface. All the trauma, betrayal, suffering, emotions and insecurities I thought were long gone, where now right in front of me. In an instant my drinking spiraled out of control. The pain was unbearable and I couldn’t handle it. I started down the path of self destruction again. I had my life all neat and tidy on the outside while my insides twisted and turned and wretched in agony.
I kept the pain at an arms length for about 2 months before it just exploded out. I started to become verbally abusive toward her. I became verbally abusive towards my son as well. I was mean to clients and everyone I came in contact with. I started gambling, a lot.
After about a month I got really drunk one night and hit her.
Then I did it again and she’d had enough and called the cops. I owned my part and went to jail for domestic abuse. I only spent a night in jail and I loved her so deeply. We started talking again the next day and she promised she would never, ever do anything like that ever again. I promised the same. It took weeks of her reassuring me and me reassuring her, that allowed us to settle back into a place where we moved back in together. I promised I could forgive her and she promised not to never hurt me again.
As soon as we moved back in together, I kept my shit together on the outside, but I was still a mess inside. I was making between $7k and $50k a week but I was gambling most of it away. Now I was drinking more than I did when was when I was kid with headaches. Although there wasn’t anymore abuse from either one of us, I hated myself and wanted to fucking die. I was absolutely miserable.
I’d lost 60 pounds, my hair went mostly gray and everyone hated me; even my kids. I completely lost sense of who I was and didn’t care if I died. I didn’t care if I lost all the money gambling, died in a high speed crash or drank myself to death. My son was getting in trouble at school and I couldn’t even pull my shit together enough to help him through it.
After another 2 years of internal torment, I was able to start living a somewhat normal life again. I worked every day on forgiving her, but every time I saw her on her phone I would still flash back to the absolutely awful and graphic things she’d been texting to other men while laying in bed next to me.
But, we pushed forward and ended up buying a 20 acre off-grid ranch with a large house in Northern Montana. We worked the business remotely and made a new life for ourselves up there.
Things settled into a new normal and although I was still drinking too much, I had my external world under control. Drinking 8 – 10 beers a night was average.
What nobody knew, not even her, there was still a deep gouge of betrayal and resentment in my heart that I couldn’t let go of; deep down, I hated her. Over the next few years it turned into her resenting me and taking advantage of me. She began to boss me and my son around the ranch like we were paid employees.
There was never and physical or verbal abuse so things were cool on the outside to everyone else.
As we made friends and got to know everyone in this small community, everyone welcomed us and it was nice.
She made a bunch of new friends quickly. She was a social butterfly everywhere she went. I really moved out there for the solitude; but before I knew it I had 10 new friends. For the first time in my life, I felt like these were solid, honest and reliable people. Men and women like me; men who kept their word and women who were honest and loyal. So I let my guard down again and started to do the “social thing”.
I was raised atheist, but had always wanted to learn about God, so we started a small bible study at our house two times a week and also went to church a lot.
The man leading our private study had been deep into Christianity for more than 50 years and he was a wealth of knowledge. Each study was around 2 – 3 hours long and it bored me terribly. I had to fight to stay awake. I was still miserable deep down and wanted to grow closer to God…
Things continued like that for 4 years, but I still couldn’t let the hurt go. Finally, one night she and I got into an argument and I called her the “C word”. Just like that, she got in her car and left, not saying a word. She would later say she was scared because she thought I had kicked her car; but that never happened.
I didn’t think much of it at first, but she didn’t come back that night. I knew her past and figured she’d gone to shack up with strange dude. Then another night went by. And another. Then the 4th night she called and said she was staying at a friends’ house. Honestly, I was relieved she was okay. She said I scared her when I was drinking and asked me to quit. I refused to quit because how did I scare her? I wasn’t abusive. There had only been the brief instances of rage 7 years before so why do I need to quit drinking? What’s the point in me quitting? A power trip? You want to leave because I called you a bad name? Or was this an excuse?
But deep down, I didn’t want to quit drinking and I was happy our relationship was over. I was glad she was gone. Finally, I had let go of her and the hurt she’d caused. For the very first time I didn’t care where she was, who she was with or what she was doing it with them. I was just over it.
Then the news came…
When she went to the mutual friend’s house and LIED to gain their sympathy and said I had been hitting her. IT WAS A FLAT LIE. But it didn’t matter. The damage was done.
We lived in a very small town and now EVERYONE thinks I’m a woman-beater.
Un-fucking-real.
My solid reputation had been completely destroyed. All the new friends I’d made now all wanted to kill me. I had been betrayed again. I completely lost grip on reality. I literally went insane. The next thing I remember is my son asked me something and I lunged at him.
Up until this point, I had never hurt my kids. Never.
I’d only ever spanked my daughter once and my son two times in their whole lives. I just wasn’t that type of guy.
My son, now an adult man, was taller than me by 5 inches and 60 pounds heavier. At 19 he could’ve squished me if he wanted to.
But I lost it on him. I tackled him down to the ground and before I knew it, he was losing consciousness.
In that moment, I had a TRUE “out of body” experience. From above, I saw myself and what I was doing. It must’ve only been a few seconds, but it was like slow motion. I could SEE his pain. I could SEE his fear and SEE his emotions. I could see the same in me as well. I could also feel his pain and confusion.
For the VERY FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I could feel emotions that had never existed before. I could feel real sympathy. I could feel real empathy. I felt a deep compassion and sorrow for how my son must feel. These are emotions I always thought I had, but it wasn’t until that very moment I realized there had been something wrong with me my whole life.
For the first time in almost 50 years, I could not only imagine how he must feel, but I could feel how he felt.
I immediately stopped, stood up and helped my son off the ground. I broke into tears begging for his forgiveness. Falling to my knees on the ground at his feet, sobbing like a child. He fell to his knees beside me and hugged me. This man, my son, who I just hurt, hugged me deeply and said something I couldn’t have imagined; something I was unworthy of.
“It’s okay, Dad. I love you. I know you didn’t mean it. You’ve been under lots of stress and I love you… It’s okay, Dad”.
As he held me, I trembled and sobbed and we wept together for a few moments.
How absolutely humbling. Utterly ground-shaking. Heartbreaking. Earth shattering.
I took a moment and made sure he was okay for a few more minutes and he assured me he was. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. How could I have done this to my own son? How could an “adult man”, me, behave like this?
What was I thinking? What the fuck is wrong with me????????????????????
I started walking up the driveway and I knew, there were only 2 options ahead of me.
1. Call the cops on myself because I was a complete piece of shit who should get whatever he has coming.
2. Just fucking end all this hurt already.
I chose option 2.
As I walked up the long driveway to the house, my mind was racing in terror at what had just happened. But no fear of what I was about to do; end it already. Once inside, I went upstairs to my room and placed the gun on my bed. I made sure it was loaded and sat down, contemplating what would happen when my son walks in and finds the mess I was certain to leave behind. I couldn’t do that to him; so I started to think up a new plan to take a long walk in the woods and never come back…
I’ll keep most of this private, but what I need people to know is this: I had a physical encounter. Not spiritual. Not astral. Not a vision. Not scripture. Not a dream and not a hallucination… No, this was a real and physical encounter.
That night, during my encounter, my brain had PHYSICALLY been rewired. Rewritten. Unscrambled.
From that moment forward, I felt a peace I had never known. I told Sarah it was over. My son and I began cleaning up the house up and I listed it for sale and left.
Doing the “man thing”, I allowed Sarah to stay at the house while it was listed for sale. Her and I talked daily and had become good friends and although I missed her and loved her, I knew it was over. In the following days, I’d quit drinking and Sarah wanted me to come back to her, desperately. I stopped saying bad words, read the bible daily and was a true man of God. I felt His presence everywhere and in everything I did. She begged me to come back to her over and over again, but I refused because I made a pledge of celibacy in repentance as a thank you.
A year later the house sold and Sarah was tasked with cleaning it out and placing all our belongings in storage. She asked me what I wanted to keep and I told her “I’m throwing it all out to the universe and whatever comes back to me is what I deserve, so it’s in your hands. I love and trust you”.
Over the next few months she proceeded getting the house cleared out and everything in storage. (It was a very large, off-grid house so there was a 60 day closing). I allowed her to have temporary control of the company and control over the sale of the house for the year during my awakening so I could focus solely on God.
If you haven’t had a Spiritual Awakening, you won’t understand this part;. but part of the Awakening process is surrendering all desires for money, friends, romance, sex, tangible and material possessions. I always thought people did this to prove their worthiness or look better in God’s eyes; but no, that wasn’t the case, at least not for me. The desires for such things were just erased from my heart and mind. I could’ve cared less about the $500k in property, the $200k in vehicles, and the 7 figure house.
So I simply walked away with a light heart and only the Love in my soul and lived that year with my folks, “walking the path”.
Although she had been a liar, master manipulator and a cheat, she was a great business woman and had integrity when it came to business and finance; she was very fiscally responsible, so I felt comfortable leaving the house and business in her control. She was many things, but not a thief…
And I did. I walked away from everything. I knew I’d have half the money coming in from the sale of the house (around $250k for my half), and my half of the business worth around another $250k, so I’d be set and able to focus the rest of my life on being a good dude and helping the helpless.
I began volunteering at a homeless shelter and made a plan. Within a couple weeks I started working on setting up a charity setup for kids and helping feed the needy.
Sarah ended up stealing the company from me, only giving me 20% of the proceeds from the house and gave away (or kept) ALL of my belongings. Everything. She didn’t even let me keep my work boots or camping gear; she even took the wind chimes and my knife sharpener… It was all gone.
Betrayed again, I couldn’t believe it. How could she do this?
Enter my 2nd Dark Night Of The Soul. But this time, I had learned lessons to fall back on.
This happened 2 years ago and I still have nothing and I’m still celibate and waiting to meet my forever partner. My son and I live in a tiny, 700 sq-ft apartment.
My mom passed Dec 2024 and I’m currently working with my Dad to get him moved in with us, but money is tight.
My son and I have a very close relationship; he actually told me I’m his best friend the other day. Shit, can it get any better than that??? Seriously. What an amazing end to this life of mine.
Now I work to help guide other people who have gone through severe and traumatic life experiences grow their understanding about this place and their purpose in it.
The experiences in this story barely touch a fraction of my life, but I know now I have been placed here to help others. This is my purpose in life even if I have to do it for free. I’m here to help others; no matter the cost.