So I don't have a lot of work today (obviously) and thought it might be time to share a friend of mine's horror story. And I think there are some serious take-aways from this that transend common rp issues.

My friend was actually highly instrumental in how I approached a lot of my ealier years with my now wife. He was a co-worker but we became fast friends. He even made my bachelor's cake for my wedding. He was about as even keel and down to earth as you could meet. Kind of old school hippyish bro, but 100% on the practical side. One of his favorite hobbies was trash-picking. He made as much as me, but with 2 kids and a sahm his thriftiness was off the hook. He loved to garden (vegetable and ornamental) and would go to our local botanical garden , guzzle the drink and sneakily shake seeds from plants into the cup to go plant at home.

But always the captain of his family. He also helped me realize that a sahm situation could work and if we could pull off doing more with less it could only help with having a good family. I listened to a lot of his wisdom and advice. The one time (at my lowest dryspell and beta in my marriage) I considered cheating with a girl THROWING it at me and he talked me out of it. Just to be a better person, and not about the fear of being caught, but what it can do to your own attitude if you aren't that type of person to begin with. With his first wife he cheated liberally and whenever the opportunity presented. He said he was good with it at first. But the erosion it causes with how you view your family adds up and gambling with your children's future. He swore he wouldn't and never cheated with #2. I know opinions (esp on trp) vary on this, but I decided he was right and am glad I didn't pull the trigger.

He had 1 hidden issue though and that was his wife was certifiably crazy if not on medication. Delusional paranoid kind of crazy. He was very traditional alpha but he thought that family was paramount so his blind spot (that I can see now) is that you can't fix crazy. Alpha in appearance but devoted to ruin.

TIMELINE OF WHAT I KNEW: He is a highly career motivated opportunist and jumped at a management opening that looked like a steaming pile of dung to the rest of us. He made it work, though. He turned the department into a money maker for the company, but they shafted him on his promotion so he took another job offer in a city about 2 hours away.

He packs up the family and they move there. He buys a nice house and they settle in. Unfortunately the company was shady that he moved for which only became apparent afterwards. They started laying people off and he could sniff he was next so he pre-empted them and negotiated a package for leaving early. Jobless, new house, he crawled back to our old company and took a demotion + now a 2 hour 1 way commute. After a few months of this he rented a place with a few other guys here and just went back and forth on the weekend.

After about a year he lands a decent job back where he moved to and life picked back up. I go visit him once and then a month later make a phone call and he relays a horrorible turn of events I wouldn't have seen coming a mile away.

His wife of 10 years left to go home to her home state (5 hours away) with their kids, wiped out their bank account, filed for divorce and falsely accused him of molesting his son.

TIMELINE OF WHAT I KNOW NOW: His wife was on meds. When she wasn't on meds she'd have all sorts of paranoid fantasies. People were out to get her. Someone was stalking her. She was almost mugged, etc etc. At one point a couple of years into their marriage she'd filed a false police report against him. It was so egregiously false that he could have pressed charges AND had her committed. Instead he opted to not and allow for counseling and her agreement she'd keep taking her meds. He loved her, he married her , he was religious and believed that was it, anything else would be a failure on many levels to him.

When he started living here part time, she must have stopped taking her meds. But to me her actions seems spookily sociopathic. She planned her exit ahead of time, and had been probing him with "theorhetical" questions to his behaviors and logging his answers. Stuff like "oh gosh these people are going through X divorce..ha ha, if we were to do this what would you do?"

She was from a rich farming family. Her dad was on his deathbed. She thought she stood to inherit at least 1/2 million and some land. And she timed this (plus the wiping out of the account) to move in with her sister (also crazy) back home and await their father's terminal illness to finally kill him. Of course there was some justice here as for the same reason she didn't have any of the family money while he was alive, the dad actually knew her and her sister were nuts and left ALL of his remaining money to his son and 2nd wife (not their mother, who consequently never got along with them). He found this out through some of her own cousins that knew what she was conniving and unstable.

Hindsight 20/20 he recounted that she had started taking the kids back to her home state for mini-vacations during the week in the summer, while my friend had to stay and work and would encourage the kids to hang up pictures of magazine shots of where she was planning to sprint to. Get them primed essentially.

Fallout: The 2nd false claim. Her claim was that when he and the son (10) were wrestling on the floor (in front of her mind you) that he "fondled" him. She spent weeks trying to coach the son into feeling like something was wrong. Apparently even at 10 the son could see what was going on and under interview the police threw out the charge. STILL my friend, in order to start SEEING his kids sooner "opted to make a clearer case for himself" and was pressured by his lawyer into taking the most fucked up sounding psych analysis. I never knew this existed and sounds as fucked up as any mental torture could be. They hooked up his wang to a machine to see if he got an erection while making him listen to ACTUAL TAPES OF CHILD RAPE they had confiscated over the years by police stings. Grown man, 40+ , jaded by tv and the internet, but extreme family man. Brought to sobbing like a baby by the shit he had to listen to. He can't and will never be able to unhear that. He broke down, I didn't press for any more details of what the tests involved. Needless to say he never got a boner. I would be hard pressed not to beat the shit out of the people who put that on my head...but he was fighting for his life and you'll do horrible things to save your relationship with your kids.

He can't use the dropped 1st false charge in his divorce proceedings! Since he opted for the counsiling he apparently gave up the right to be able to use it. He still tried to find it, and the lawyer he had dealt with years before COULDN'T FIND THE PAPERWORK.

There were so many other fucked up craftiness she did though, with her timing and moving out of state that fucked him up in the case that her false charges didn't stick.

Even with the charges dropped, the blatant theft, the abduction of his kids, after I talked to him last he was low pressure on trying to fight too hard to get dual custody. His take was that his kids will be 18 eventually and can make their own minds up, and in the interim it'd be traumatic to ferry them such a large distance frequently. A lot of her family supported her so they help run cover and flak when he tried to get contact etc. he knows he'll have to battle them as well all the time. Of course, to me, this is after 8 for the son and 10 for the daughter years of crazy programming by the mom, and I don't know that I'd make the same choice.

He's since stopped answering his calls and emails. It's been over a year since I talked to him. But at the place he was at, I could tell me calling and him relaying the bad shit over and over was painful. His facebook page is still the same as it was in 2012. Linked in hasn't changed either. And the last fb post is of a family trip they took and he's sitting next to his son with his arm over his shoulder like a proud dad, the son is beaming. Breaks my fucking heart to have a friend go through that.

Take-aways? There's no fixing crazy even with trp. Even if you are captaining the ship in the best way possible, never give too much benefit of the doubt or take your eyes off of actions. Thank all-that-is-holy that NOT awal his wife. I think she is paranoid delusional at best and a cold sociopath at worst. As sad as it sounds, if a woman has a physical brain imbalance don't try to fix her. Move on. If it comes to light after marriage and a family and you don't want to read the handwriting on the wall ... RECORD THE FUCK OUT OF IT and keep records for possible defense later. Some of this is just no duh. But I dated one girl at least 2 weeks too long after I found out she was on mental-meds. Should have never called her back the moment I found out. Being a man in general there are some biological pulls of satisfaction in fantasizing you can save people and be a hero. Don't. Don't white knight. They can live nice lives without me or you. And at least if they decide to go off the rails later, you wont be an easy target.

UPDATE: Well, I'm happy to make this update (sorta as it's a shitty outcome, admittedly not as shitty as his ex-wife was TRYING to do to him). So after writing this I felt a pretty big surge of guilt that even though he stopped returning calls for that brief period of time I dropped trying to contact him. I tried calling him and his number was disconnected. I still had an old yahoo email account for him so I emailed him and he responded! He was in a meeting, gave me his new number and would call me back. I also feel shitty as fuck because it's been closer to 2 years since I talked to him last (instead of 1).

So he got divorce raped. Apparently the wife did inherit some of the land and money she was anticipating. She used this to hire THE MOST EXPENSIVE HARD ASS LAWYER in his city. Even with that the conclusion was still that she's nuts, but it's too traumatic for the kids for her to not have primary custody. She planned that well absconding out of state. He sounded rough but said he was on the upswing. He had a roomate that helped with the bills (called him a cool stoner...paid everything but was stoned all the time, yet cleaned up after himself).

He got to keep the house, but A) He had to pay her lump $80,000 out of his 401k (which I guess he had to liquidate) in lieu of monthly alimony. He had to fire a second lawyer and SUE the first lawyer to get him to accept a payment plan. :-/ He has bi weekly custody and a few weeks during the summer. He said his relationship with his daughter is tight but he left it in the air that the one with his son is strained. Legal fees (had to pay a portion of her lawyers as well) to free him of the false charges + divorce totalled $70,000. BUT he got to keep the house. The big expensive house that he can't afford on his own.

Still not sure if his head is in the right place as he made a statement of "You know it's funny , but if she hadn't involved lawyers I still think we could have worked it out". :-( Stockholm central. This women FALSELY ACCUSED HIM OF MOLESTING HIS SON, STOLE HIS MONEY, AND ESSENTIALLY KIDNAPPED HIS CHILDREN until he FORCED HIMSELF THROUGH PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE to get to see them again.

And now he's been ping ponging through 35+ year old women. Now he's talking about moving to LA because he's been sorta dating an actress for 9 months (he named some shows she's been in, small supporting roles) who has a small business she runs. He's realistic in the fact that he's not sure if this is anything and that it's been working probably due to it's infrequency. WTF. He gets it'll put him more out of contact with his kids, but he sounded punch drunk when he said "I know, I just gotta get on with my life and I have no friends and family here".

So he says he's alright, but I still think he's pretty head fucked about the whole situation and doesn't necessarily have his bearings yet.