Beating the Cheater

“You’ve got mail!”

Those were the most sickening words I ever heard. For months, my husband wooed women on-line until he finally fell for one. Unbeknownst to him… it was me.

Geoff wasn't remarkably good-looking, but not hideous either. He'd begun stages of premature balding, and for the sake of taking it gracefully, decided to go all the way. He looked good bald with the mustache and goatee, so the decision was a good one.

Still, he was middle-aged, bald, slightly overweight and desperate for attention.

When we met on-line seven years before, I'd just decided to stop on-line dating. I hadn’t met anything but liars, stalkers and weirdoes anyway. The day I decided to cancel my account, Geoff messaged me. He seemed sincere. There were lots of spelling errors but the important thing was, he seemed nice, normal.

I wrote a letter back and we really fit! I had two boys, ages 10 and 11 and he had one, age one. We both loved music, art, books and had strong ties to family.

Our career lives were different. At the time, I was not only pursuing a free-lance singing-songwriting career, I owned a small record label and production company, which I used only to manage my career and one band. Geoff worked in industrial trades as basic labor, or as a lead, and enjoyed what he did because it didn't require much mental effort and it kept him in shape. He worked first shift, so he could easily come to a show sometime. Neither of us was overly concerned about the other's career paths.

He eventually visited. If anyone ever asked him (even until this day), he would tell them he fell in love with me the moment I opened the door and smiled at him.

One month later he came for a visit, his truck broke down, and he never left.

Immediately after moving in together he found a job, but quickly started having problems. He'd have an accident that got him worker’s compensation and not be able to work, or he would just plain get fired for stupid things like temper tantrums or poor decisions.

On the home front, Geoff was perfect for me because he gave the appearance of someone who couldn’t help what had happened, but would do anything to make it right.

He would do dishes, cook dinners, clean house and genuinely take an interest in my writing. He loved me for me, and no one had ever done that before. He supported me and we talked about everything. We were always together and usually ended our day in bed laughing about things. He just couldn’t keep a job. If he could, problem solved.

In year five, I came home from work and Geoff was pacing. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me his mother had been trying e-mail him and he couldn't check it, because the computer wouldn’t let him.

None of this made sense because I always checked my e-mail for possible gigs or publishing deals with a cup of coffee before I went to work, and that particular morning had posed no problem. (I'd like to point out that since we couldn't get Geoff gainfully employed, I was working a day job and singing.)

As he started cooking dinner, I went to see what the problem was. Geoff's PC skills were ok, but not good enough to fix one or manipulate them to get the data he needed. The first thing I noticed was the recycle bin was full. I always cleared the trash, to keep from cluttering up the hard drive.

I opened the recycle bin to empty it, and realized that a favorite had been deleted from the web browser, a dating site.

“Hmmm.” I said out loud, jotting the name of the site down on paper and emptying the trash.

I got on-line and realized at once that his email server was now offering free e-mail, and they were just wanting Geoff to register our new PC with their new mail service. I fixed it and in order to make sure it worked, I logged onto his mail.

My heart plummeted. There in his e-mail box were countless letters from dating services he had been signing up for all day. I wondered if he could really be this stupid or if he was trying to get a rise out of me. Rather than bring it up, I explained the new service and told him he shouldn’t have any trouble with it going forward.

With a peck on the cheek, he was off to the computer and I finished making dinner.

The following day, I mulled it over in my mind. In the background of all this, I had decided to purchase a car for Geoff so he could be more productive in his search for work. He had chosen a rather sporty looking Pontiac Grand Am against my better judgment (cooling system malfunctions), but he was really hot for that particular car.

The dealership was detailing it for him, putting in a new CD player, and doing some work on the brake system. This was on a Thursday, and they promised he could have the car by Monday.

I logged onto his mail account and got the names of all the dating sites he had frequented. I then went to those sites. I pretended I was Geoff, and that I misplaced my password. They sent them to his e-mail and once I had passwords, I deleted those emails from his inbox and then from his trash. Afterward, I logged onto his accounts to find he'd been seeking women within fifty miles of our house!

I laughed out loud. He had lied about everything. He even put down that he was self-employed and made $50,000.00 a year. (I wish he had brought some of that money home!) About the only thing that wasn’t a lie was that he was married, seeking sex only.

I tried to think about this. We'd been through 2 floods and lost everything, house fires, two car accidents that we should never have walked away from, and had been struggling to find him work. He obviously felt he needed something.

Secretly, I felt that if one of these women actually contacted him, he'd probably pee his pants and walk away. Then it hit me. The one site he had not registered with, was the one we met on. He probably figured I would find out. So I went to that site, and found a young beautiful blond who resembled me a little bit and asked her if I could use a couple of her pictures. She was kind enough to oblige.

I went to the dating site and built my own account.

I chose a handle similar to mine and tried to put in things that sounded like me, hoping he'd realize who it was and come to his senses. I just basically said I had seen his profile and wondered if he'd be interested in getting together sometime.

Within five minutes, he had written me back asking me several questions about my job, my dreams, etc…

I lied. I was a young photojournalist from a neighboring town who was off on Fridays and Mondays. I made $45,000.00 dollars a year. In fact, I worked close to his town from time to time so meeting him shouldn’t be difficult.

He wrote back and began telling me about the car he was buying, how he was having work done to it and would love to meet me on Monday if I could swing it.

In a state of disbelief, I accepted his invitation.

Two hours later, he drove up to my office driving my car. He came in strutting like a peacock saying what a good day he’d had at the job fair. Another lie. (He had been on-line talking to me.) I maintained my calm until he left.

I then spent the entire weekend sucking up and making him feel bad about his decision, but to beat it all, he continually went to the computer to check and see if "she" had written.

Sunday morning, I opted to go to church and visit my mother afterwards, so he was happy to push my stepson and me out the door.

I skipped church and went right to mom’s house. I detailed the plan to my mother. Mom never liked Geoff and was only too happy to let me use her computer.

I logged on as silksasha and hammed it up, asking naughty questions and I even asked him to send me a photo, since his profile hadn’t offered one. Apparently, the only photo he could find was really bad, so he was miserable waiting for a reply. Of course, I didn’t think I needed to actually see the picture and had already logged off.

When I got home, he was still sitting in front of the PC, waiting for a response. I decided to tell him, but would wait until my seven-year-old stepson went to bed.

I sat Geoff down and told him I knew he'd met someone and I wanted a divorce. This was a surprise, because he had no inclination that I knew. When he asked where this was coming from, I explained that I knew there was someone else and wasn’t going to hold him back. If I wasn’t what he wanted, he should just let me go.

He admitted that he'd been “looking” at photos of nude women on-line, but that didn’t mean anything. Then he asked why on earth I thought he'd met someone.

I told him I knew what he was doing because I was silksasha.

You could have heard a pin drop.

There wasn’t any fighting. I had already drawn up the papers for the divorce and just wanted out.

Several days later, we decided not to get a divorce. He promised to be good, and we were like a couple of school kids for a while. I reasoned that he hadn’t actually done anything and if I hadn’t interceded, probably nothing would have happened anyway. But... now I knew what he was capable of and wouldn’t assume I was out of the woods.

Jump forward to year six. Things plummeted. He still hadn’t found a job and while he wasn’t using the internet, he was smoking twice as much and couldn't take his nose out of fantasy novels for a conversation.

I tried to stay supportive, to encourage him to look for work. Surely something had to give. I knew he was having emotional issues. I wanted to be strong for him, show him that our love could overcome anything. But I was alone.

My boys had to stay with their grandma because Geoff didn't work. They came home every weekend and holiday, but whenever they did, Geoff was mean. If they entered the room where he was involved in his book, he sucked at his teeth, rolled his eyes and stomped out, or he'd yell at them to shut-up and go somewhere else. He was treating my children like they didn’t belong in the house I was paying for. This was a new development that seemed to accompany the sudden love of fantasy novels. We were the distractions… not the books.

I got Pneumonia and needed a week’s worth of bed rest. My job couldn’t spare me that long so I had to keep working. I just got sicker. When I came home every day, Geoff was sitting with his novel and his cigarettes, ignoring everyone. I had to cook, clean, do dishes and prepare meals, when I felt like I was dying.

Finally, I got a job offer across the state just out of the blue. It was in the same town with my sister, about forty-five miles from my brother.

It paid substantially more than I was making and I had once again already drawn up papers to leave Geoff. I called his mother and asked her to come get him because by this time, he'd torn up his car, they repossessed it and he had no way to go. His family heard what he had been doing and refused to have anything to do with him. His mother’s advice was to throw him out. To her thinking, he was grown and not her responsibility. (And she was right!)

I went home, and explained to Geoff that I was going to make a new life for myself.

He wanted to change. He wanted to be with me, to see this new city and see if maybe a change would do him some good. He reasoned that we had been in that tiny rural town for so long he felt like he was losing his mind.

I told him no, but eventually caved anyway. He kept true to his word for about three months. Flash forward to month eight, house number three. He lost his third job after three months and we couldn’t afford the gas to send me to work forty miles away.

Pretty soon, he started sneaking out of bed at all hours of the night. He would leave the video games running so I thought he was gaming. I got up one morning, and as I began checking my e-mail, I had any number of lascivious pop-ups coming up behind the windows.

“Weird.” I marveled. I was about to delete the cookies when the next thing I knew, my husband, who rarely ever got up at 5 a.m., was standing next to my chair, (having only been in bed about ten minutes), asking me what I was doing.

“Checking e-mail.” I responded. “For some reason I have pop-ups everywhere.”

“Oh.” He replied. “I was up checking out cheat codes last night. It's probably from one of those stupid gaming sites. I’m sorry honey.”

He pecked me on the cheek and walked away.

Naturally, I went into the temporary internet folder and uncovered any number of naked pictures. I logged onto his e-mail and again, we were signed up for dating.

Sighing, I decided to take a different approach this time. Obviously, my husband was trying to replace me. He always did this when money was tight, or when I was down. I was plain tired of being kicked when I was down.

I confronted him.

He agreed to stop.

A week later, I caught him again.

We talked it out.

A week after that, he was back at it again. Every time, he got a little better at hiding it.

Rather than go to a dating site, I went to his social site, which for legal purposes we’ll call “Mopspace”. This appeared to be the place my husband was looking for women the most. His inbox was full of responses to his letters, which he sent in pursuit of their lust.

I was done but I planned t make him pay. I created an account for a fake woman named Jennifer and then realized I would need photos.

I logged onto a personals web site and found the prettiest woman I could who had a lot of photos, so I could build a photo album on the fake Mopspace.

I spent two days creating the right account, the right background, the perfect photo gallery. .. then I contacted my husband. I was an elementary schoolteacher on St. Simon’s Island, less than forty miles from his front door. I was in my very early thirties, and made about $86,000.00 a year. I had moved here for this new teaching job and didn’t have friends locally. I told him I was looking for a guy with a sense of humor and his site was cool. (Never mind the fact that I built it for him.)

Since the lady whose pictures I borrowed (with her permission of course), rode motorcycles and smoked, I made sure to highlight those two things. Geoff was all about women with money and who were exciting.

He wrote back saying that he was a happily married man and he didn’t want to get divorced, but if she wanted to be friends, they could.

I realized then that he thought it might be me and he didn’t want to get caught. He obviously didn’t know I had already caught him again, I just wanted to show him that you can’t believe everything on the internet. Finding me that way was kind of a fluke. I agreed to be friends with him.

Over the following couple of weeks, we wrote back and forth and I could tell by my husband’s explicit sexual language that this "friendship" had evolved into something else.

Not wanting to spoil it, I took our son out for "house-hunting" because we were about to be evicted. Geoff opted not to go, saying that his stomach was queasy. I already knew this was a ploy to talk with "Jennifer".

I was in the car less than a couple of minutes and I called my mother. I had her log on as me. I would tell her what to type, and we had a good time. My son thought my mother was having trouble with her PC, and had no clue what we were doing.

I stayed out all day. Of course, as a loving wife, I called Geoff several times to check on his tummy and let him talk to our son, telling him what we were doing... and he bought it.

Sunday morning, Geoff skipped church. He was still "under the weather". My brother was my pastor at the time, and agreed to let me use his computer after church. I called my husband and told him our son and I were going to stay and visit a while. Within minutes, he was on-line.

That night, I finally broke down and told him that I wanted a divorce. I just couldn't take it anymore. He didn’t fight it. He had been feeling that as hard as life was with me financially, we just probably weren’t meant to be together.

He moved to his sister's house and took my stepson with him.

After about a week, he called begging me to take him back. He missed me and realized that he'd been taking me for granted. We talked for a few days and during that time, he had not written to Jennifer.

Later, he did it again.

He called me late on a Friday to tell me he had a good job interview Thursday. If he landed this job, he could get us a place in a couple of months and we'd be back together again. I was staying with my brother’s family until I could get on my feet, and I still loved Geoff. I wanted to believe him.

I got up Saturday morning renewed. Perhaps being without me really made a difference. Around two o’clock several of the church members were coming over for a bar-b-que and I decided to check my Jennifer mail.

The words “You’ve got mail.” Turned my stomach.

He apologized for not getting in touch sooner and said we weren’t together anymore. He told her about his interview, about having her come there when he got on his feet, then began asking her about her sexual preferences and passions. He even referred to her as “my love”.

He said he was going to buy a cell phone and he asked for her phone number.

I broke up laughing. Every time I thought I had made a break-through with this man, something like this happened. I'm the fool. Even at this juncture, my wounds reopened. Why wasn't I good enough?

The laughter faded and I sobbed. I think it was the first time during all of this that I realized it really was over, and that was the last time I cried over it. My lovely sister-in-law came in and caught me in tears so I told her what had been going on.

"Girl." she said. "He's been trying to replace you for years. Your love and your hard work was the only thing holding that together. We all knew it, but no one wanted to hurt you by saying it."

"What should I do?" I asked her, to which she replied:

"I can't tell you what to do, hon. You have to do what's right for you. But if it was me? I'd get even."

She then let me use her cell phone number to give to my ex-husband, because he didn't know her number and it was local to our area. I emailed it to him right then.

He called in less than 3 minutes.

I answered…

“Hello?”

“Hi! Is this Jennifer?” he asked, giddy.

“Yes.” I responded, keeping my answers short and masking my voice.

“This is Geoff.” He chirped.

“Oh hey!” I answered.

This opened up a barrage of talking. He'd gotten the job and was very full of himself until I said…

“Geoff.”

“Yeah?”

“This is your wife.”

Silence.

I explained that Jennifer was something I concocted and thanked him for his consistency, assuring him he would soon hear from my lawyer.

His response?

“What number did I dial?”

I may never get used to saying; “My ex-husband left me for me”, but you have to pull out all the stops if you want to beat a cheater.