Hello everyone:

One of my former co-workers had a massive shock when he returned home from work one evening. He noticed that the house seemed a bit different when he pulled up, but it was not until he got inside his home that he realized that all of the curtains were missing. He also found that his living room was devoid of furniture.

Sure enough, he went from room to room and found nothing in them. His dining room contained a folding table and one folding chair in place of the formal dining room set that had been there that morning. He went into the kitchen and found one fork, one spoon, one knife, one plate, one cup, one bowl, and one glass sitting on the counter next to a single kitchen towel.

He climbed the stairs, where he found his children’s bedrooms completely empty; the master bedroom’s king sized bed had been replaced by a twin bed with a set of sheets, a pillow, and a single blanket stacked on it. The bathroom had a shower curtain liner but the fancy shower curtain that he had just seen earlier that day had vanished. There was one towel and a single washcloth in the vanity.

A knock came on the door; a male neighbor was standing outside, holding a pot of stew. He told my co-worker that they had not known how to get ahold of him (this was before the days of cellphones and he had never told them where he worked), but that, as soon as he had left for work that morning, a moving van had pulled up to the house and his wife had directed the sudden move-out.

The neighbor offered to stay with him while he absorbed the information, but my co-worker thanked him, took the pot of stew, and went inside to face the fact that he was now unexpectedly single. He knew that he and his wife had been having some problems in their marriage, but he had no idea of her plans.

They eventually got divorced, with his wife keeping all of their furniture and being awarded one half of the value of the house. She was also awarded alimony and child support, but this was more than 30 years ago and men could get out of paying these monthly court-awarded fees by moving out of state.

He was so mad that he took a job in a nearby state and moved there. He did not pay her anything, saying that she had poisoned the kids against him and he would see them again when they were old enough to drive over to the state where he now lived to visit him. He could have been arrested for nonpayment of alimony and child support, had he returned to their state so he did not go there again.

Do you have a tale of woe to share? I found this story heart breaking, even though the guy was a bit of a jerk.

Best,

Dr. Sheri