Sign Says Curve Ahead You’re Gonna Crash And Burn

When your marriage breaks in half, you’re instantly, intimately bonded to all other broken and unmatched halves. A divorced acquaintance, one who's a few years ahead of me and has benefited from a lot of therapy said this:

"The key question you will need to ask and reflect upon is, Why did I ignore the signs that were there?"

My first instinct: ignore that question. Whatever. What signs? He told me he adored me. Everyone thought he adored me. Nobody saw signs; to say they were there is somehow saying this was all my fault.

In Seoul, I learned about how a typical man spends Friday nights. Instead of going to happy hour, he goes to a Madam. He chooses a woman to sit in his lap, take her clothes off, drink shots of vodka and pass it to him through a “kiss.” She’ll make him laugh, make him look good, sing and dance for him and spend the night with him. She is inexpensive and she follows instructions. This all takes place in a bar not a brothel. It’s not in a dark alley, it’s across from the office.

Saturday morning he’ll dress in the clothes he wore to work Friday and go home. He won’t craft a story to explain his absence to his wife. She won’t ask.

Three months after we were engaged, I found out my fiancé was having cyber sex with a woman in his office. Was that a clue? Should I have asked more questions, packed and left, at least made him sleep on the couch?

In the months that followed, when he told me again and again that I think too much, that “crazy little head of mine” doesn’t know when to let things go, I needed to remember that nothing happened, they were just emails with no thought or love behind them, I was acting insecure, was I ignoring a big sign?

When he stood up for his father, who left his mother for another woman and now spends much of his time surfing online porn in the office, meeting women online and then traveling the country to meet them, should I have pushed back, not decided to go easy on him because it must be painful to have such a fucked up dad?

My problem recognizing signs was simple. He made me believe he was right about my crazy little head acting up. I was thinking too much. I needed to forgive and forget like a big girl.

It’s only now, in Shanghai, surrounded by a neon skyline of billboards written in Chinese characters that I’m starting to think about reading signs, wondering what they mean.