Update to key stealing MIL saga. My STBEXW tried to defame me. Backfired badly June 13, 2024

To the people here who kept telling me not to divorce, that my wife loved me, etc. Y’all couldn’t have been more wrong. I couldn’t even tell who amongst you were trolls, or just naive fools. Some even brought religion into it. I could care less about someone’s religious views on divorce. They are not me. They are not living my life. I remember an old example of a rich man saying he knows how hard it is to pay for gas when he drives a million dollar car. He can’t know the struggle of paying for gas when he has enough wealth to buy an obscenely expensive automobile. In the same way someone can’t claim to know whether or not my STBEXW loved me just because. They didn’t live with her or MIL. They did not suffer at their hands. So they don’t have valid reasons so say they knew better.

I also apologize for the length of this post. But there’s a lot to say.

Edit: Just wanted to make sure everyone reading knows this all happened months ago. I did that a break from Reddit for some time.

My STBEXW pretty much admitted to my face that she only married me for the financial security. So yeah, I was exactly right. She spent years grooming me so she could trap me in marriage and walk all over me. And yes, she did have plans to babytrap me as well after I initiated divorce. I’ve confirmed this. But she dropped any act of wanting to save the marriage after her mother died.

In my last post, I told how I reported my MIL’s hoarding, and her house was inspected and scheduled to be condemned. She demanded my STBEXW pay for the house to be fixed. But when STBEXW said she couldn’t pay, her mother went ape on her and then died from a heart attack soon after. She had a congenital heart condition I was completely unaware of till after she had kicked the bucket. I was told for years she was on disability only for mental problems. But she actually had a weak heart. Her potentially being removed from the only home she’d lived in for decades put her stress over the edge, and her heart gave out when she attacked her own daughter for being unable to fund her home restoration. Yes I do still feel guilty about what happened. But it’s in the past now.

MIL’s house was torn down. Not sure when. But about a week before making my previous post, I drove over to where her house was, and there’s nothing but an empty lot now. The house was likely declared a biohazard or something. Not sure if my STBEXW owns the property now, or if it was sold. I don’t know. I can’t imagine my STBEXW inherited much of anything good from her mother’s hoarder den. That house was so bad, I’d even seen a rat scurry by across the top of the hoard once.

Many past commenters were exactly right about my STBEXW was likely aiming at trying to babytrap me with her love-bombing behavior. A few days after she’d left to the motel when her mother died, I went into the bathroom she tore up to clean it. She’d left it in quite bit of a state the day she left by having a meltdown in there. But thankfully nothing but her personal items were broken. She did splatter shampoo all over the walls though.

While cleaning I looked in the waste basket and noticed a bottle of pills with “Fertility Support” written on the label. When I removed the cap from the bottle, the paper seal had been torn out. I googled this stuff, and it was a common female fertility vitamin that anyone could buy online or in store, not prescription. I confronted my STBEXW when she came to get some more of her stuff. She admitted that she’d hoped to get pregnant so I wouldn’t divorce her. But that was before her mother died. After that she said she’d never want to touch me again. And she scoffed when I said I’d felt that way towards her for a while before she did me. I never found out if my ex put anything in the food or open beer she’d tried to serve me though. I searched the house top to bottom for anything else that might have been a clue, and came up with nothing. So she may have just wanted to get me drunk. I can’t express enough though how glad I am that I didn’t have a child with this woman.

I wasn’t allowed to MIL’s funeral. Though I didn’t really want to go, my STBEXW specifically told me she didn’t want me there. And I responded that I understood why. But then later STBEXW posted online that she was furious barely anyone from her family showed up. Not even her father came. And then she lied by saying I was invited, but refused to come. Which was blatantly false. And I had screenshots of our texts proving it.

When my STBEXW left the house after her mother died, she went back to the motel for an extended stay while she moved her stuff out bit by bit. Either to storage, or a friend’s place. I don’t know since I didn’t help. I heard from friends she eventually found a studio apartment. But hated living in such a small space after previously having a house. She was also seen looking miserable at the local laundromat. Our former landlord agreed to keep the extra furniture neither of us could take, as his new incoming renters were happy to use them. A lot of you thought she would. But my STBEXW did not try to sabotage the house in any way other than her bathroom tantrum. But she stubbornly refused to help pay for a cleaning service. She made it more than obvious she was doing that to spite me. So rather than wasting time fighting with her about it, I hired a cleaning crew myself. They and I left that house spotless. And I got back my half of the security deposit without issue.

I did later buy a used Kent Ridgeland bike, and started riding again. The bike had a replacement seat, but is otherwise bone stock original. I only a ride little at a time these days. Currently once or twice a week at most. I just don’t have the passion for it I used to. But I do enjoy my short cruises around town. And while I could commute to work on the bike, the surprising amount of warnings I got from people here telling me that’s a bad idea made me reconsider doing it. Didn’t help that I found out that some friend of a friend got hit by a car while on his bike a couple of months ago. So I’m just hobby riding instead of commuting. My best friend joins me sometimes too. He’s got a red Mongoose MTB he dusted off. It needed tires, so I put some on for him and gave the bike a tune-up. And then we took to the bike paths. His bike has gears, but is also much heavier. Mine’s a single speed but fairly nimble. So it kinda evens out.

After her mother’s funeral, my STBEXW went into full hate-mode. She started badmouthing me on her social media, and told multiple lies about me because she saw me as responsible for what happened to her mother. She claimed I was physically, emotionally, and financially abusive. Which I was not. If anything, she was all that to me. She also played off the value of my skeleton key collection, which she still claimed was worthless. However there was already a fair amount of word spread around through my friends and former mutual friends about what really happened. And they commented on her posts about it to the point she took them down. But I still got messages from angry flying monkeys. The most common thing them saying was that I ended a sick old woman’s life over keys. I told them all my side of what happened, and pointed out I had plenty of evidence. Including being told I wasn’t invited to the funeral, and showing screenshots of the texts. I was sorry MIL died. But I couldn’t have foreseen she’d have a heart attack. And her house was so bad, it was completely unlivable. A select few apologized, most just stopped talking, and a good few persistently called me a liar. So I had to block them.

I ended up contacting my STBEXW to tell her that I’d file a defamation lawsuit on top of the divorce if she didn’t stop making posts about me. Which likely wouldn’t bode well for her career. I’d already screen-shotted everything I needed from her profile before she deleted the posts. Well she tried to say I was blackmailing her. But she stopped. Then she played the whole situation off as just being angry in the moment. But her lying was still called out, and she lost all her credibility. She soon shut down her social media entirely, and called me afterward to blame me for it. Then she mocked me and said she was glad I was divorcing her. She told me I’d never satisfied her in bed because I was too vanilla. And she wished she could have gone back to her ex-boyfriend. That one actually stung a bit.

To clarify though. My STBEXW never cheated on me. Many people figured she did, including my friends. But no. She just spent a lot of time with her mother. I’ve also spoken to the man who dated her before me. Some of my STBEXW’s former friends still were in touch with him, and gave me his number. He told me dumped her because she and her mother treated him the same way they treated me after I married my STBEXW. Which means their playing nice for three years was one hell of a calculated move. I also learned from the guy that he’d found out the guy who dated my STBEXW before him also dumped her for the same reasons. And he was her high school sweetheart.

I’m afraid there’s still more to this, and will make another post soon. I will say though that the divorce is underway, and not going in STBEXW’s favor.

TLDR: I confirmed my STBEXW’s scheming to try and babytrap me because I filed for divorce. She also persistently lied about me to others and tried to defame me until it all came crashing down, and now her social media is deleted. I am cycling again. Which has been fun.