I married way too young the first time. I was emotionally immature and I thought I was in love. She chased after me. She was physically attractive, and she told me how much I meant to her. My low self esteem got pumped right up. She wouldn't stop calling me. I was the most important person in her world, next to her son. She pursued me with reckless abandon.

The chase went on for several months. I was flattered, and then I was seduced. She was an incredible lover. It was the best sex I ever had.  She knew all twists and turns and all the permutations.

It was bliss, it was heaven. Then we were married. And then the worm turned.

All of a sudden things I did never measured up for her. The belittling began. This esclated over time. I dug in and was determined to make this work. The was a coolness in how she should would deal with me and how warm and loving she was with everyone else. It mushroomed into sheer hate and disdain for me. After our second year of marriage, we started working off shifts and she started coming home later and later. Then not at all.

I remember I was stopped in the supermarket by a woman, who told me she was sleeping with her husband. I thought the woman was a nutcase. My wife was a devoted lover to me. With our sex life being astoundingly good, I couldn't possible think there was anything wrong. As Bugs Bunny opined, "what a Maroon!"

The staying out all night was pretty scary. Was she in accident? Did something terrible happen to her? It never occurred to me, but should have occurred to me, that she was with another man. I should have been worrying about me instead of worrying about her.

Finally, it all broke open one afternoon when I came home from work early. Sitting on my couch drinking a beer was this grungy guy. She introduced him as Danny, her high school boyfriend. They were going to get back together. Our marriage was over. Please move your things out. She didn't say "please" actually, that's poetic license.

I was crushed. Crushed. You could have slid me out under the door without opening it. My world had come crashing down around me. I was so stunned I had no idea what to do. What had I done to mess this up?

Me like it's my fault! I got a call from my wife's sister a few days later, asking if she could be of any help. She said she and her family had seen this coming from almost the moment my wife had first met me. She said, "We're all amazed that you were able to make it work for as long as you did. Five years. She always has another guy lined up waiting in the wings before she calls it quits. There's something wrong with her. If I told you before, she would have denied it, and she would have said I was crazy."

How could I be so blind? Why didn't I see this coming? When you are in love with someone you always look beyond the flaws and only see the good in them. Plus I wasn't sufficiently mature enough to understand the warning signs and the manipulation.

I went for a drive through the White Mountains of New Hampshire to try and understand what was happening to me. At first, I was angry at the dirtbag Danny for coming between us. Then I realized he was just a pawn in this game. Like I had been.

She would follow her usual pattern and use him as a temporary replacement, until she found her next victim. I felt sorry for Danny, for about a minute. Then I savored the moments that followed knowing that he would be taking the fall and his world would come crashing down like mine did. I could warn him and tell him what would occur, but he would have filed the advice in the trash can as the words of scorned soon to be ex-husband.

So I said nothing. Know that his day would come. And it did, just six months later. Twenty six years  and seven husbands later, she is still sticking with her usual pattern.

Revenge is always served upon her next victim. Never on her.