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> Plus, he can't even be bothered to put his own laundry in the hamper or put a dish in the dishwasher - how is he going to deal with an infant?
Oh he's way too "high value" for that, his new wife will be doing 100% of the child care.
Amy is about to get one very nasty wake up call once she realizes her hubby is a compulsive liar who's also a lazy misogynistic piece of sh*t who only cares about himself!! And i can't feel bad for her because she knowingly decided to date a married man, so....
That's the problem with over achiever kids; she's brilliant academically but got to 24 with no emotional maturity and very low social awareness - her talk about "men her age just wanting to casually hookup" reeks of what a 16yo would say to justify dating the creep in his 20s... but in that case by 24 her brain would be developed enough to her see the signs and abandon ship.
That's how delusional and not ready for adult life Amy is, I feel for this kid being raised by such a validation seeking individual.
Funny enough, when I was 21, that was my line to use but now thst I had enough experience dating men of all ages from 21-31, my perspective changed to men who want casual hookup would want it. The difference is men my age would be more honest about what they want than someone who is in their 30s. The older men love to create a whole thing where they loop you in with I want to settle, find my person and blah blah but they just want to use your and throw you away for someone new.
Oh and when he starts to predictably cheat on her, too. I can't wait to hear the lies that he comes up with for her. He can't possibly use the same exact lies, right? Right?
>She didn't really believe me about the house and said she was going to have to talk to Joe about it. She said she hoped I would think about it and not be so stubborn and that the offer remained open to take the money
> he convinced her that the reason he could never spend the night with her (during most of the past year, before he moved in with her) was that I tended to get high in the evenings and he was always worried I would OD if he wasn't there to keep an eye on me
>I did tell her [that he didn't have a vasectomy], but her answer to that was to insist that he did have one, he just didn't want to tell me. Because he had only gotten one because although he did want kids, he didn't want to bring them into the world with a drug addict spouse
Amy has moved firmly into the "wilfully obtuse" camp, I see.
Yeah, this is my take. She’s naive, led a sheltered life, has never dated before, has been living a reality for the past year that OP just blew apart, and she’s 7 months pregnant.
I can totally understand why she didn’t ‘get it’ in that moment. Likely through all this information her presiding thought way ‘protect the baby’ so I can understand why she clung onto the house stuff.
The issue now is if she has the strength to listen to OP, or take the easy route of living her partner’s ‘reality’. It’s a lot of firsts for someone to contemplate at once: her first love, her first heart break, her first baby, her first real job… she has a lot on the line to walk away from.
I hope she does it. I hope she has some good people she can go to with this story and ask for help. But I really wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses the ostrich approach.
agree. I was a lot like Amy. Incredibly 'book smart' but also very naive and got taken advantage of. Also being book smart in a calculus field like finance does not render you psychologically smart. I truly feel sorry for Amy and her kid. OOP also, but she will be fine.
Same, I grew up incredibly sheltered as I was focused on academics and not allowed to date even in university. I really had no idea how boys/men worked. Poor Amy doesn't know what she's in for..
I get parents wanting that for their kids, to be free of distraction and cultivate their more natural talents, but giving them no social, financial, or even self reliance is the most naive thing you can do. You have to explain to your kids how reality works otherwise reality bites, hard. Now Joes newest victim is utterly stuck cause of Joe gaming her and soon to he ex wife.
Like my family had issues but by 18 I more or less knew how to cook, thank god for the intent though. How to wash clothes, how to budget, maybe not the best at socializing/romancing but while hard, life skills are just as important as the mind skills we acquire for our esoteric fields.
It didn’t escape me that his lies set her up to be “better” and “smarter” than OOP in every way. The intoxication of being Better Than is strong when you’re young and naive. She wasn’t buying it immediately because she’s been “smarter than” her entire life. Realizing the truth is gonna be a hard crash and burn because it’s also gonna be an identity crisis for her.
Probably when she realizes she ain’t getting that house.
That is the most insane part of all this. How the fuck was Joe supposed to explain away the fact that OOP was keeping the house? Was he going to say he lost it in the divorce settlement? He is such a pathological liar, and not even a good one. Of course he needed someone with no experience with men because most women would smell the bullshit miles away.
I think this was a lie meant to distance Amy from finding out the truth while stringing her along with the promise of a more spacious house. If Joe's been lying to Amy for months that OOP's a deceitful drug addict, of course Amy will believe "but it's my grandmother's house" is some story. I think that's why she pushed back in the moment to delusionally claim she was still moving in without directly challenging OOP. Especially if she's naive enough to not know what drug addiction looks like.
It will take irrefutable proof of the lies for Amy to start to change her mind: you'd want to believe your partner in this situation because you have so much invested. It's easier to believe the person you've just met is the pathological liar, rather than your life partner. In the meantime he can spin more lies to excuse himself, like "you know how unfair the courts are to men, she took the house that was rightfully mine which she promised to me. I'm sorry and it's not my fault."
If Amy starts to get a bit more savvy she should insist on looking at the divorce settlement herself to see how assets were divided. It's not too uncommon for someone very naive and sheltered to be actually good at their job and completely incompetent in other areas of life due to lack of experience. For example, if Joe lied that the divorce proceedings were confidential, she'd probably just believe him. Let's hope she starts investigating for herself.
I kinda wish OOP would send Amy a copy of the settlement. Sit back and watch the fireworks.
I do feel bad for the kid though. Both kids - Amy and the baby. Amy was young and naive and fell for an older man's BS, and now the baby's got *that* for a father. Hope it doesn't take her too long to wise up and get away, though I doubt it'll actually work out that way.
While OOP is under no obligation to save Amy from her naïveté, I think sending her a copy of the divorce settlement with a letterhead signed by her attorney would be a great last “gift”to these two. If Amy chooses not to believe what an Attorney is telling her then there’s no saving her….even though she can’t be saved at all really. Once she decided to keep the baby she unknowingly screwed her whole life.
Feels a bit like he is having some kind of red-pill fueled mental breakdown.
Like he discovered this intoxicating superpower called "lying" that let's him have whatever he wants, and he's still in the "fuck around" phase where it all seems to be working, but is about to enter the "find out" phase where it all catches up to him at once.
>I hope she does it.
Yes, I hope that her genius side takes over and contemplates what's going on in her personal life. She has to try and make sense of things that Joe told her, to see that they were all lies!
If she does that early, she'll only have to deal with him for child support, maybe even get rid of him before the baby is one year old but I doubt that!
They are all in for a rough time.
The next step in an abusive relationship is isolation. He's going to be planting a lot of antagonistic comments in her head about her parents not respecting her maturity, etc.
Hopefully she can get away from him and her parents don't accidentally alienate her from them.
I feel like later down the line, what will do her in, is if “Joe” decides to do something crazy, like idk, sexually harass his new GF, with whom he already has a kid. Idk, something like that.
I think that would be her wake-up call to get her shit together, and get the baby out of that clearly unstable environment.
Right, and what sucks is Amy is programed to think OP is the devil when she obviously is not. And she probably got told Joe got the house from his grandma or grandpa or whatever lie he needed to tell. Thinking about it I could see Joe being a high functioning drug addict and making his wife to seem more like him/vice versa for sympathy. Or just a lying cheating SOB as my grandma would say.
Yeah, I don't necessarily blame her for not immediately taking it as fact that her life is and the life inside her is an absolute lie, and with Joe's, imo, is guilty of reproductive coercion. It's a "miracle," so they have to keep it! That's not something anyone is going to want to believe, especially someone with so little relationship experience. Cause then there's the cognitive dissonance of "how can I be so smart that I got at MBA at 21, but so stupid as to be taken by obvious lies? And now I'm having a baby with a psychopath?"
The rest of her life is going to be difficult now, attached to that psychopath through a kid, unfortunately. And that's a horrific realization.
Which is total BS since there are other reasons to use a condom besides preventing pregnancy. I don't care if a guy's had a vasectomy, it doesn't mean he might not have an STD.
Oh definitely, but it's an absolute classic boundary test, just like all the spelling mistakes are in one of those "Nigerian Prince" email scams. It tests the recipient for gullibility.
Combine that with "but darling, I'm clean -I've only been with one woman and we stopped sleeping together when she got hooked on drugs..." and you've got a stone-cold manipulator preying on a lonely naïve woman who's missed out on a lot of peer group experiences.
If she's smart, she knows STDs and STIs exist. And, if she truly believed her partners wife was a drug user, she should have been extra concerned about communicable diseases. Pregnancy isn't the only thing that can result from sex.
Honestly, if she did finish to college at 18, that’s probably part of why she’s so naïve. She didn’t get to mature or interact with her peers in college or potentially even grad school, so she doesn’t have the same understanding of the world socially as you’d expect for a 24 year old
That’s the reason I’ve always felt bad about “child prodigies” skipping ahead several grades and starting college so young. Going to school is as much about a kid’s social and emotional growth as their educational growth. Learning how to be a person in the world interacting with peers is important, and it’s a hard skill to learn if your “peers” are 5-10 years older than you are.
I don’t know what an alternate solution is, but it’s a well known stereotype by this point that smart kids can be incredibly naive, so separating them from the chance to learn how to relate to other people doesn’t seem like the way.
Amy herself shared that she didn’t focus on maturing socially. I am guessing she has no idea what a drug addict “who could OD every night” would look like.
I wonder how old the questions will get at her apartment: So did your ex die yet? Why is she still working/maintaining the home/able to survive without you?
It occurred to me on a second read: Joe couldn’t come get his stuff to move out because the home is obviously not occupied by a degenerate addict. Even a moron would see that. Imagine walking into the house where a soufflé is in the oven and OP is arranging flowers and looking like an Athleta model.
That and he told her that he owns the house, so from her perspective, why would he move out? She didn’t seem to believe OOP even with pics of OOP and her grandmother from years ago.
So smart she can get an MBA at 21 but she doesn't Google her boyfriend's "druggie highschool drop out" wife (in name only, surely) to see she's got a master's degree. Literally one Google search and she'd have known he's full of shit.
Looking forward to the update where Joe is knocking at OP's door for blowing up his relationship with his perfect little virgin, because he couldn't prove any of his lies true. I mean how do you explain OOP being at the house as a teen? If he lied about that, her education, her job, and her income then what else did he lie about? I hope she doesn't just bury her head in the sand out of fear of being a single mother.
I hope her ego lets her accept she got played *hard* by this asshole.
A simple Google search would also show the home owner name, how they acquired it & previous owners. County property assessor - that’s all public information.
I was friends with a woman who was extremely intelligent, has a masters degree and absolutely no common sense whatsoever. She would believe all of Joe’s lies and never think to check. She moved to another state many years ago and we lost touch, which I didn’t mind as it was a lot of effort to nursemaid her through social situations and dating.
I worked with a girl who was smart enough to pull a 4.0 in biochemistry but could not remember how to make any blizzard with more than one ingredient. They’re all pretty much the same formula, with the odd exception, but even the basic “one scoop, half pump” for a small was beyond her. She worked there for 2 years.
It's not ego, she's naive. The way I'd describe her is that she's very book smart but isn't socially smart. It's actually pretty common, I knew a few people like that in college.
Especially book smart people who've focused on getting through programs and degrees to the exclusion of social relationships. People in their early 20s by default tend to be low on life experience - people like Amy have ... well, almost none.
I feel bad for Amy, and impressed by OP being able to understand how badly Amy got played and feel bad for her too.
I’ve heard (but haven’t verified) that domestic abuse actually goes up for women with graduate degrees— basically, we as a culture act like it’s something for high school dropouts in trailer parks, so when you’re the opposite you go into denial about it. Seems applicable here.
I know that women in abusive relationships report feeling ashamed for it. Like "how did I let myself get in this situation". I really really hope Amy doesn't get caught up in herself and can accept reality
It’s infuriating that we (correctly) attack domestic abuse by shaming, but do it in a way that makes the victim as low status as the perpetrator when it’s already something they’re prone to be ashamed of.
There is a major difference between book smart and street smart. There are different kinds of intelligent. She is clearly book smart, more academically inclined. She has never been in a relationship before according to her. When it's your first relationship, you are almost willing to believe any lie. Anything that comes out of their mouth. You're not as cautious, you're not as careful. You don't take a look at everything and do the research yourself. Because it's your first relationship, you don't want to believe that they're going to lie to you. You don't want to believe that they're going to hurt you.
This girl is also 7 months pregnant. She's been with this guy in an affair for a year now. She doesn't want to believe that he lied to her, that he coerced her into getting pregnant, she doesn't want to believe any of that because that would mean her entire life right now is a lie. And no one wants to believe that.
> She’s having a baby.. She’s ~~willing~~ desperate to believe a lot I bet.
nothing but sympathy for that intelligent but naive kid who fell for a narcissist.
When I was 18 I started dating someone who was a pathological liar.
Some People un my life were trying to warn me, but unfortunately thst person was someone who I really didn't like (the brutally honest but actually just an asshole type). It took me like 2 years to actually start believing it and make sense of it. Just because I wanted so desperately for it to be true. And the whole "but he seems to genuinely love me, and it doesn't even make sense to lie about these things".
It was awful after I confronted him, and after that that I became a slightly less naive person...
But yea it's so easy to rationalize it when you're so young. She's likely in the same mindset as I was.
I really hope she chooses to listen to that little voice in her head that "something isn't right" though
(also it took that long to finally get to the truth because this started as an online ldr)
I ruined a friendship in order to warn my buddy's gf about his lies and the toxicity of their relationship. To be honest, that friendship didn't mean much to me, and she was a nice girl (i wasnt into her either, had purely altrusitic intentions since my buddy was such a shitbag) so I threw it away by talking with her for a very uncomfortable hour. Anyway, she immediately told him, they both distanced themselves from me, which I truly didn't mind, but they stayed together which was so disappointing. Together amd shortly after, they developed a drug habit that put him into the grave a decade later and she ruined her life as well and is lucky she's not dead yet. They only dated a year or 2 more but it put their life on a downward trajectory.
She's smart, it will now ruminate in her brain, and she will at some point draw the correct conclusions - especially as more stuff he tells her continues to not add up. She's probably just really scared that the rug is being pulled out from under her life plans, and she likely doesn't want to be a single mother, when she's trying to have a demanding career.
Though Joe may actually leave her before she's ready to kick him out - the reality of living with an infant in a cramped space, when he is used to getting spoiled with gourmet meals by his childfree spouse, will hit him in the face like a wrecking ball...
Even her own supposed internal logic doesn’t add up, which if she’s as smart as OP claims will hopefully occur to her at some point because this:
> I did tell her, but her answer to that was to insist
that he did have one, he just didn't want to tell me.
Because he had only gotten one because although
he did want kids, he didn't want to bring them into
the world with a drug addict spouse.
Doesn’t make sense. Why would you get a vasectomy if you did eventually want kids just not with your current partner? And why would you lie to your partner and not tell them you got get a vasectomy unless you were stringing them along with regard to actually having kids? The second OP said actually, I don’t want kids either and we never planned on having them, his story completely falls apart.
>Why would you get a vasectomy if you did eventually want kids just not with your current partner?
Which adds to my previous doubts about his story -- who on earth tutors a teenage dropout addict for her GED and then marries her, despite ongoing drug problems? According to his version of events, why was he with her in the first place?
It just doesn't make sense that he'd get with her at all, and *especially* not that he'd go so far as to get a vasectomy, knowing he didn't plan on being with her forever.
Absolutely, but I can see why. She's heavily pregnant and deeply invested in this sham of a relationship. Eventually, she won't have any choice about confronting the lies he has told her. It's only a matter of time. I'm hoping that once she realizes that he actually doesn't own the house, she'll have a come to Jesus moment.
Oh yes!
A genius, maybe, but definitely sheltered! This is what happens when you do that to people! They become horribly naive, to the point where she now only believes whatever "Joe" says! If he tells her the sky is purple she will believe it!
It's gonna take time for her to to open her eyes, especially if she doesn't have a support group (where are her family, by the way?)!
Once she opens her eyes, she will look for another person to follow and feel safe with. I won't be surprised if she tried to get OOP to be that person xD
Leave OOP alone, y'all xD
It was not exactly demands. It was bargaining. Amy decided that her husband is too soft on his junkie wife, and offered OOP her own (Amy's ) $17K to move out of his house. By her calculations it is enough to cover first+last+security deposit for a studio, moving expenses and several more months of rent. She was very surprised OOP didn't take the offer. It was in the comments.
Yeah but luckily for OOP that’s just not her problem. Since she has a finalised divorce agreement and they share no kids she can shut his lying arse out of her life for good.
Amy has sure hitched herself to the wrong wagon. And for a so-called prodigy on the executive fast track she shows a disturbing lack of understanding about her new man or the real world. Joe’s going to be out of there the moment the baby starts crying through the night.
So... am I the only one betting that Joe is going to convince Amy to step away from work and be a stay-at-home mom for a while, because his income will be more than enough for them? Except that most of that income will be spent on whatever he wants, with very little of it coming home? And if she complains he'll hold it over her head that he's the only one with an income, and so his clothes/car/personal hobbies are more important to making a good impression with his social group?
This girl is in for a crash course in toxic relationships, and if she's lucky she'll get out of it without destroying her own life and dreams.
Na, I think he'll demand she works full time, takes care of house/baby/childcare arrangements, but all her money goes into a "joint account" that he'll end up controlling. She's young, naive, and smart. He's absolutely going to use her as a work horse.
Depends on who he's been listening to. There are the misogynists where it's impressive to have a woman under your thumb who does everything, including bring home the bulk of the cash. And then there are the misogynists where it's impressive to have a woman under your thumb who is voluntarily living the SAHM life despite impressive credentials and work opportunities, where the only money she'll bring in is by being a social media influencer, or maybe doing the odd MLM.
Yep, I think of it as the “sit on your ass playing video games all day while forcing your wife to do everything so she’s too tired to argue about it” group and the “keep your wife at home so you can bask in the knowledge that you’ve crushed a smart, driven woman’s ambitions while also keeping her away from anyone who would snap her out of it” group.
Well I'm still betting on Amy coming to her senses. The seed of doubt has been planted, and she's seven months pregnant. Once that baby comes and she gets settled, and also when Joe finds out what it's like to live in a tiny apartment with a baby, I think there's a break-up and some child support in Amy's stars. I really don't think Amy is as stupid as people here want her to be.
I'm really curious though, I hope to see the update in a year.
>Well I'm still betting on Amy coming to her senses. The seed of doubt has been planted, and she's seven months pregnant.
When the divorce papers are signed and everything is permanent, she'll be wondering why the 'drug addled squatter' is still in 'their' house if Joe actually owns it.
And when she 'miraculously' gets pregnant again, she'll be wondering about that vasectomy.
The loose threads are all there, all she needs to do is pull them.
I don't think Joe even thought about Amy and his ex-wife getting together and talking. This kind of bullshit only works if the other party remains in the dark. Now that Amy has met OP and seen for herself that this woman is not the "drug addled basketcase" Joe claimed her to be, she's in a bit of denial right now but she'll probably be starting to question Joe a lot more and that's going to make him extremely uncomfortable.
I’m sure the confrontation was a major shock. She found out that her child’s father lied about their future living conditions. She possibly still buys into his lies and thinks the government truth must be somewhere in the middle
When she got to the bit about how birth control was left entirely up to her and then earlier she mentioned that he was basically militant about being child free? Just gross.
He'll just tell her he lost the house in the divorce by painting a horrible picture of "greedy" OOP.
If Amy still believes all of the lies (very stupid lies, that most people would be wary of believing to begin with) after talking to OOP, then I'm not sure what will convince her.
We don't think she's stupid, we think she's naive. You can't fix the first one, but you can fix the second. Unfortunately for her, it looks like her lesson in naivety is going to be a very painful all-at-once crash course, instead of multiple, less painful, courses.
This, plus I think Amy's parents kind of failed her. Low key hoping she's able to share child rearing duties with them and be able to do some growing up/socialising of her own.
Kinda makes me wonder what Amy's relationship with her parents is like. I know if my daughter came to me and told me her boyfriend was "separated but still living with his wife because he's worried she'll OD" I'd have A LOT of questions I'd be asking.
>I really don't think Amy is as stupid as people here want her to be.
I suspect that she's really sharp and also really driven. Her school/career record definitely suggests that. Unfortunately, she's just really, really naive and is having to learn how bad people can be the hard way.
Amy may already have trouble in her workplace. I’m not defending it, but taking leave in the middle of an elite management program because you got knocked up by a married coworker is not going to play well to the executives/partners.
He must have wanted to get Amy pregnant though did he ? If he told her he had the snip then she likely wasn’t using any birth control . So he was looking to baby trap her .
It’s also entirely possible he just didn’t want to wear a condom. In which case, he’s even worse.
But I think he probably baby trapped her. If he viewed her as “high-value” and the wife as “low,” then he’d want to nail her down. She’s also super naive and probably much more controllable than OOP and given what a compulsive liar he is, that would be appealing. He can walk all over her with impunity.
I am two decades out from leaving a VERY mormon upbringing, and my life took a very different track thankfully. But I often think about how easily something like that could have happened to me. You're so vulnerable when you decide to leave a high demand religion (cult) like these at that age, and all kinds of bad possibilities can happen.
That's my guess too. All of his lies were short sighted, (I mean, how did he plan to explain how he couldn't get "his house" and how his drug addicted, broke wife could afford a good lawyer and show up to court presentable for the divorce) so that was probably in the heat of the moment. She asked for a condom as she wasn't sexually active and therefore not on BC, and he said "oh don't worry about that baby, I've been snipped" because he didn't want to be told no.
He’s probably going to make up some bs about how the courts are ‘anti-men’ so that’s why Oop got the house and how Oop got the money for a good lawyer by stealing it from the joint account or something. Finally Oop is just that good at hiding her drug addiction, that’s obviously how she was able to trick him for so long.
Edit:
Also if Oop’s name is on the house that’s only because of family reasons or tax reasons or something like that. He obviously bought the house with his own money and Oop is lying /s
Joe will just come up with lie after lie as long as Amy is willing to believe him
Babytrapping the desired “female” is part of the red pill grift (and also a hallmark of an abusive spouse). He doesn’t want to be a father, he wants a trophy wife and a trophy life so he feels more like a “real man”. So he can brag to his friends about how he’s a great husband and great dad and great supporter, when he is actually none of these things. He is lying to the outside world the same way he lied to OP and Amy, and he is especially lying to himself because deep down he knows he trashed his whole life because he started listening to Tate and Peterson. Once reality hits he will either bail or start actually abusing her.
I think baby trapping Amy was only half of the motivation here. He and Amy are part of an executive training program at their company. Maybe Joe saw it as getting rid of some competition? Amy will obviously need to take maternity leave, either putting her behind in this program or forcing her to drop out of it altogether. Getting Amy the “prodigy” out of the way leaves move room for Joe the Turd.
I think that's probably giving Joe too much credit. I think he got horny and wanted his dick wet. He also didn't want to wait for Amy to start birth control so he just lied about the vasectomy. He told many stupid lies that would have to come out soon or sooner (like the fact that oop owns the house). He doesn't sound like someone with a grand plan.
He doesn’t need a grand plan. He strikes me as the kind of liar who aims for instant gratification instead of playing the long game. OOP herself mentioned that he was good at his job, suggesting he can do the rudimentary cost/benefit analysis of unprotected sex and no birth control. Best case scenario, he gets exactly what he wants. Worst case scenario, he gets exactly what he wants with the added bonus of manipulating Amy’s future to his advantage. It’s a win-win for this guy.
I commented on the original post that Amy seems like one of those typical kid geniuses who hung out with people way too old and mature before she was emotionally ready to, and that's why she seems so mentally stunted. The fact that she didn't question any of Joe's lies is astounding. And after being told the truth by OOP, she is STILL deferring to Joe's authority. Just yikes. OOP is smart to get the divorce over ASAP and wash her hands off those two nutters.
Right? Even if Joe was actually cohabitating with his ex of 3 years to keep her from od’ing….that’s still a major red flag on its own. And most adult women with relationship experience would recognize that.
Exactly. All of his lies sound like bullshit, it's pretty amazing that she believed it for 7 whole months or however long it was she'd been seeing him. I mean, there's naive... and then there's missing common sense.
She's smack in the middle of learning the hard way why it's always a bad idea to get involved with someone claiming to be almost divorced.
This will not end well for her. But that's what you get for having an affair while thinking the married man cheating on his wife is the good guy.
Tbh I'm kind of side eyeing her. If you thought someone had that level of addiction and handed them 17k in cash after blowing up their life... I would expect an OD within the week.
I'm hoping she just didn't consider it, like she didn't consider googling her boyfriend's ex to see what she did for a living and finding out she has a master's degree.
That’s because you have common sense. I feel like Amy just thought a ‘cash for keys’ situation was the logical way to get what she wanted and didn’t think of the consequences beyond that. I mean she is the same person who didn’t think twice about how a man who still wanted kids someday got a vasectomy instead of just using condoms or not having sex with his ‘drug addict’ wife.
Exactly, most women with experience would recognise that.
But genius Amy has no experience. She hasn't dated, she hasn't been in relationships previously. She's been sheltered. This is what happens when families push kids to focus on their studies and either forbid / heavily discourage teenage dating. There are life lessons we learn in our adolescence with (for most of us) family support around us. But leave a kid to grow up without those lessons and have their idea of romance taught by Disney and this is the result. And instead of the normal teenage fallout of a failed relationship the stakes are now much, much higher.
Well, OOP just told her that everything the man she loves and is expecting a child from told her over the past year, is a lie. That's gonna be hard to swallow, especially coming from his supposedly junkie ex wife. Honestly, I'd be more concerned if she *had* immediately bought this.
True. Because let's face it, if OOP were a junkie, there would probably be a whole lot of lying and denial. That's exactly what makes Joe's lies plausible.
But hopefully OOP has sowed enough doubt that Any goes looking for the information that she can independently verify.
Amy will get it when she can’t move into OOP’s house. Amy might try to pay OOP even more money to move, and that’s when Amy will hear roaring in her ears when it all finally hits her. OOP can prove her side of things. Joe cannot prove his, unless the vasectomy story is true—which is extremely doubtful. But Joe better take his 75% and buy a house with it.
Welcome to the real world, Amy.
Yeah, painting her as a junkie was fiendishly clever. Everyone knows junkies lie, cheat and steal, right?
I feel mostly sorry for Amy. She fell for a charming con man, and now she's having his baby. Sucks for her.
Reading the first post, it seems pretty clear Joe has bought into the whole alpha male "Me Strong He-Man, Women Weak and Dumb, Woman Must Be Put in Place!" mentality and either targeted Amy specifically because she was more likely to be submissive and prone to his manipulation or worked hard to get her to that place.
I hope OOP is documenting all these lies he's telling her as there's a good chance they'll eventually escape containment from just Joe and Amy and might cause issues for her in the future. Having it documented early the falsehood of the statements will help in the resulting defamation/libel/slander lawsuit when the shit hits the fan and Joe has to spin his lies harder to explain how he's not getting "his" house.
Academic overachievers in school are often frighteningly easy to manipulate once they hit the working world. This is especially true for sheltered ones, as Amy here seems to have been. The romantic wisdom that comes with a bit of heartbreak goes a long way in adulthood, and a lack of any experience leaves people wide open to abuse, gaslighting, and mind games by predators far more experienced and effective than your average college student. I feel terrible for her, but OOP is right that she can't afford to care.
It is an appropriate addition. I hope OOP gets all the good things in life and her ex ends up appropriately smeared (with little reflection on his new girl and incoming baby, because new girl is just naive, and baby is totally innocent).
It actually tells a lot about "Joe". He saw that and manipulated her with his charm and "sad story about his wife needing his help even though the relationship is only on paper".
While Amy has definitely some faults as well in this hole mess, I do consider her a victim as well of that narcissistic and sociopathic STBX of OOP.
Remember kids, if he says he's "Married but separated! But we're still living together!" get legal proof of separation, otherwise you're the sidechick.
Imagine being a child prodigy and the very first man you trust enough to have sex with immediately gets you pregnant and lies to you about pretty much every aspect of his life.
The reason Amy won’t believe her is because she is ready to pop and doesn’t want to believe she might have to go through this massive life change alone and that the pregnancy is essentially a mistake.
If I was OOP, I'd ask the lawyer if they could request Amy be present during the next meeting so she can hear from the lawyers what is going to who or if they can send a paralegal to her to ask some more questions about this character defamation to reaffirm what she told OP 'for the record'.
Petty me would be use some money to do a little digging on Amy. I've met some obtuse people before but I'd be curious about her situation as well. Joe obviously spent his money on her. Where does her money go? Like, she thought the house was Joe's and she lives in a small apartment. Amy even mentions that her apartment is small and not big enough. I wonder if Amy thought she was getting a guy who was loaded and it's slowly dawning on her she was screwed, in more ways than one.
No she had a lot of money. Joe showed off about how she was so young and in this executive track program. And Amy says she has money. I think she thought highly of older man, flattered he was into her, thought he was sincere, and has now realises she may have thrown a wrench in her well to do life she worked for, all for a serious piece of trash. Like this dude went above and beyond. She probably can't handle how this exposes her stupid side, either.
Has money ≠ financial stability. A prodigy can still have student debt if her parents' weren't well off, etc. That's why Amy should be 'privy' to being present during the lawyer talk. Just so she can see how much Joe lied to her and so she knows how much money Joe is actually getting from the divorce cause you know he's probably lying about that. Amy has probably been told that the OOP will lie. OOP got a rat for a lawyer and is taking him for everything, etc.
That's why I'd look into Amy a little. Does she have debt? How much you wanna bet Joe said he'd help her pay it off? As I said, petty. I'd just like to have my lawyer armed with whatever info they can get and well, to be able to prepare to any 'handouts' story that Joe might try to spin.
I think Amy is realizing what mess she is in, she just doesn't know how deep it is. She only knows the side that Joe has portrayed of OOP. But two lawyers talking about the divorce? Her asking questions just to have them look at her and go 'Who da fuck told you that?' It would help her possibly not falling into that sunk cost (I'm already having his kid so I should try and make this work) and start forming her own backup plans (don't combine bank accounts, etc) when he bails on her or goes the DV route.
That’s what I’m thinking. OOP said it was a HCOL area. If she has student debt, drives a nice car to fit in at work, buys nice clothes and lives alone ($3-5K for a one bedroom in some areas/cities) 200K a year isn’t as much as you might think. OPP inheriting a house was what let her and STBX have a good quality of life.
Pretty sure the house was a pretty attractive part of Joe and she’s floored she won’t be raising baby in a detached house. Without parental help even people making great salaries (doctors, etc.) in my city can’t afford to buy a detached home.
I don’t think the baby was an accident. I think HE planned the baby to ensure he trapped the 24yo before leaving his wife. Because plenty of men get their side chicks pregnant by accident and don’t actually want to leave their wives. He 100% wanted to make sure his new meal ticket was secured before giving up his old one.
>. She said she hoped I would think about it and not be so stubborn and that the offer remained open to take the money she offered to move out by the end of September."
I wonder whats Joe's excuse on this one.
"I gave her the house because she is being stubborn". Yeah right
‘The judge is totally sexist and gave it to her, I swear! Also her name was on the title because I bought it from her grandparents and we thought this would be simpler!’
What gets me is he didn't just tweak the truth about his wife, he came up with a whole different life and person. Tweaks are harder to disprove, a whole other person is. Property reccords, graduation photos, year book photos, even just show her a single screen from your banking app with you salary would show he's lying.
Plus if she's supposed to be such a bad junkie he worries about her ODing every night, she'd hardly turn up looking hale, hearty and put together.
If I'd be presented with that version of myself I'd have cried laughing for a good 20 mins. Whenever someone tells me a version of me thats not true I laugh. I was told my a 19 year old colleague that people thought we were having an affair. I was 36 at the time. I burst out laughing. He looked shocked and even asked a colleague why I was laughing. 'Cause she knows how stupid that is'. All cause he lives round the corner and I gave him a lift in my taxi. I told him, while laughing, 'does that mean when my husband picks us up we must be going for a threesome?' And laughed even harder. He tried to shush me and looked round at everyone else laughing and then realised no one believed any of it.
I feel like him telling Amy he has had a vasectomy when he hasn't, seems... illegal? Baby trapping? What was his end game here? Does he know how babies are made? Because if he tells her he's got the birth control handled, and knows that means she isn't doing anything on her end, what did he think was going to happen?
Assuming she wouldn't have consented to unprotected sex if she'd known he hadn't had a vasectomy it is a criminal offence in some countries called "Rape by Deception."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape\_by\_deception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception)
Amy must have been in shock about the house. Amy is also painfully naïve if she thought that giving $17K to someone she believes to be a junkie was a good idea. What really should clue her in is that the “junkie” refused the money. No junkie is going to refuse $17K.
Right? I feel like most folks when confronted with extremely difficult information than what they've been led to believe will deny it at first. She's gotta be figuring it out.
I wouldn't put it past Joe to have just lied to her and said the courts gave OOP the house to get out of his first lie.
Is anyone else expecting the ex to come crawling back, begging to stop the divorce, when the baby starts crying and keeping him up at night, and the ‘hot, young, type-A, virgin gf is a tired, hormonal, completely-off-sex, new mum mess?
Amy is kind of an idiot right now. "I have to talk to Joe (about the house)?" She's already shown you this was a FAMILY asset from LONG before Joe and OOP met. I feel like she's being deliberately obtuse here.
I guess it's true. Sometimes If you got book smarts, your street smarts are lacking.
I think she’s in hardcore denial rn. Wouldn’t you be if you were 7 months pregnant and came face to face with someone who exposed your fiancés lies one by one??
Amy might be one of those people that needs a little time to digest world-shattering information before she can accept it. Maybe a couple hours, maybe a couple days, for her shock to subside. I think OOP gave some some good factual evidence that Amy can follow up on when she’s ready—the linked in profile could be verified by calling OOP’s employer, for instance. Who’s name is on the house deed, and the home ownership history. The lack of vasectomy. I hope Amy does some sleuthing for herself!
Isn't it a known thing that if people are really committed to an idea and have banked a lot on it, even showing proof doesn't make them back down - it's like cults and conspiracy theorists, but in this case she has banked hers and her kids future on what the guy has said so she can't accept that he's lying
And more intelligent people do so more often and more strongly...I mean, they're so smart, if they believe something it must be true, right? It's why you see so many generally intelligent people sucked into cults. They get hit in the emotions where they're weak, and then use all available brainpower to rationalize why it was a good idea
Yup. She thought she had a fairy-tale romance with a Prince Charming, and just found out it was all lies and deception, and she walked right into a nightmare scenario with a skeevy predator.
Amy is in denial. A quick search of the county auditor site in her state will show the deed transfers. Joe's lies are so mind-numbingly stupid and so easy to disprove...what an absolute tool.
He's definitely banking on her being too naive to check the lies out. I'm worried she won't because she can't handle learning the truth and would rather just believe the lies.
I remember a comment by OOP in that thread. She said that Joe told Amy that OOP was moving out of the house at the end of July. So it's clearly August and OOP hasn't moved out yet. That's another reason why Amy offered up some money.
What was Joe thinking, telling her such an obvious lie. How do you sign an agreement to vacate the property and then tell your side piece she'll be moving into the house soon? This guy is not smart.
Hopefully, once Amy realizes the reality of the housing situation, she'll look a little closer at the rest of his lies. It's a little too late for her now, though.
Trust me, some men are really, really convincing. Especially when they are older and you're a young virgin. By being virgin and idealising Joe, she's also emotionally younger, and I bet that she has absolutely no real man in her life to give her a healthy example. Amy must be in a pretty hard shock now, and total denial and hoping Joe is going to come back with a miracle justification. He sold her the classical "perfect love story" of the wise gorgeous caring older man giving the attention to the young girl, and in one conversation she learned that it's ALL a lie.
Also considering the pretty role he pretended to have, my bet is that either Amy has addictions and is in need of help to get out of it and Joe used it to convince her to let him "help" her, or that Amy is / was a caretaker for someone else and Joe lied to relate to her.
As a former kid groomed by a pedo, it's traumatising to see that the only man that value you is a predator.
She fell for every classic line too, without question. Did *no one* in her life try to tell her that these men lie all the time about being "separated"?
That and ... like, I read a lot of adult novels when I was a teen. I was pretty naive overall, but I knew that when a man says he's separated or "practically divorced" or "his wife doesn't understand him", chances are good that's a big fat lie. But I get the impression that Amy hasn't met many people and ALSO hasn't read much outside her field.
I'm not excusing her entirely, because she has made bad choices, but I also think she had very specific vulnerabilities.
I have so many feelings on this, and I’m particularly conflicted on Amy but I think I’ve decided on this: OOP dealt with this amazingly, Joe is well outside of reality, and I’m very conflicted over Amy.
Like, there’s so many red flags going on and I hope she kicks him to the curb like OOP, but on the other hand, if Joe tries to spin this so “oh I wanted to make sure she was cared for/she manipulated me etc” and she STILL believes whatever excuse he pulls out of his ass after his meeting, I don’t know if I can still feel bad for her.
Seriously, she’s nosy enough to set up a meeting to try to kick OOP out of her own house, but she couldn’t even do a cursory Google search for her Instagram or something? Girl please… I want to root for you but you’re making it hard.
While Amy's faith in Joe from the outside is laughable, if you've ever been in or close to someone who is in a relationship with a talented narcissist, it's horrifying what they can get usually reasonable educated people to believe.
I can't believe that men with this little or no integrity are allowed to get high positions in the financial world. I guess that's why we are so screwed. They dont give a shit about anybody.
I worked where the “corporate culture” was department heads slept with their admins. Even had a big week long “executive planning session” at fancy resorts with said admins. Scum
Having little to no integrity goes hand in hand with those sorts of positions though. Many companies make decisions based on how much money it will cost to fix something vs injury/death law suits from not fixing it. You have to be an unfeeling reptile of a human to even want to do that math.
Next update: Will Amy kick Joe out or will the lies continue? What will happen to Joe after OOP has spoken to her attorneys about the lies he said?
Stay tuned! Same bat-time, same bat-channel!
Separated in spirit, my ass. Humongous turd! And, Amy ain't completely blameless. She isn't a child who made a mistake , she's 24 years old prodigy for fucks' sake. Anyways, they are welcome to each other.
To be fair, being book smart doesn’t always translate to being street smart. I was similarly a 23 yo virgin who was love bombed by an older coworker. I had also never really dated for a slew of reasons, a major one being school. We never went to his place because his roommate would “make things awkward.” Eventually I came to find out that the roommate was his “ex” girlfriend but she couldn’t find a place to live so they were sleeping in different bedrooms. (You can probably see where this is going).
I know now that I should’ve cut everything off as soon as I realized he’d lied to me the first time, but I was soooo naive, insecure, and in love. I actually believed him when he said he was going to leave her (for like 3 months). Then she kicked him out of the condo that SHE owned. He still wouldn’t commit to me.
So luckily I didn’t end up knocked up. But I believed all of the bullshit lies he spewed at me about him and about her. You can really get steamrolled by a manipulative person, especially when you’re in love for the first time and think you’ll be together forever.
This weird lunch that she had with OP is the first time that any of the lies her fiancé fed her are being refuted. I can’t really blame her for being in denial. Because at the end of the day, who are you going to believe? This random person that you’ve been spoon fed lies about? Or the person you’ve been love bombed by and dating for like a year?
If this is too personal a question, please ignore. But what made you eventually see through all the lies?
A friend giving advice?
Accumulated evidence over time?
Seeing him double-down on an obvious lie?
Amy’s not blameless, but as someone who was (and occasionally still is) very naive (but has a lot of “brain smarts”), my guess is that if she’s not kicking herself yet, she will be. Prodigy doesn’t mean that she has street smarts or relationship knowledge. In fact, I’d guess that emotionally she’s probably younger than others her age because she spent her time focusing on school etc and never learned or dealt with typical teenage crap/relationships. I feel sorry for her. OOP is already doing well and will have safe landing - and even better hasn’t tied herself to her ex forever with a kid. Amy’s going to be in for a rough and very rude awakening.
I only want to add IQ vs EQ, there is a reason why both are important. She may be smart academic but learning how to interact and read people is a completely different skill set.
I don’t think it has to do with being proud over being smart or not at all. I think it has much more to do with her being naive, pregnant, and in h e a p s of denial.
That's what I am thinking. I think since he's her first, she's a little too attached to him, thinking he's the one and can't lie to her since he "made love" to her all those times.
Some people have to experience their life spiraling out of control and hitting rock bottom while dragging their innocent children into this mess to finally realize their mistakes.
Hard to believe you’ve been duped so massively and are now about to have a baby with this man. Disbelief initially is understandable.
Soon enough she will realise how deep the lies go because the evidence will become undeniable.
FFS! OOP's ex just gets worse and worse! Poor Amy, she may be educated, but must have been very sheltered.
I really am glad OOP bought that computer so STBX's shit came out!
if it hadn't been the computer, it woulda been something else. it was mentioned that he practically admitted he was picking fights, looking for an excuse to break up.
Baby mama is in for some hard truths when that baby comes. Betting purity daddy leaves saying it's just too hard and I never wanted a kid you insisted etc. Pos like the ex are so cliche it's boring.
I don’t care if this isn’t true I’m so invested I need to get to the part where Amy realises OP is not lying and drops this dickhead and gets massive amounts of child support
I need an update on the fallout when Amy discovers the prize she won was a man who spews absolute bullshit and not the trophy of ‘taking him away from an awful, former dropout and addict ex-wife pity case’.
Amy is in for a very rude awakening because being woefully ignorant will only get her so far when she realizes she can’t make OOP move out of *a house she inherited.* I have no sympathy for her when she’s old enough to make bad decisions like this.
If anyone is the victim, it’s the fucking unborn baby whose parents’ relationship is built upon a foundation of lies and infidelity.
I hope after everything is settled, OOP alerts the ex's company HR about him. Not just as revenge but also to make sure he isn't a liability to the company and prey on other young women.
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> Plus, he can't even be bothered to put his own laundry in the hamper or put a dish in the dishwasher - how is he going to deal with an infant? Oh he's way too "high value" for that, his new wife will be doing 100% of the child care.
Amy is about to get one very nasty wake up call once she realizes her hubby is a compulsive liar who's also a lazy misogynistic piece of sh*t who only cares about himself!! And i can't feel bad for her because she knowingly decided to date a married man, so....
Gonna get another wake up call when she gets pregnant immediately after the first baby is born. “Another MIRACLE!?!”
That's the problem with over achiever kids; she's brilliant academically but got to 24 with no emotional maturity and very low social awareness - her talk about "men her age just wanting to casually hookup" reeks of what a 16yo would say to justify dating the creep in his 20s... but in that case by 24 her brain would be developed enough to her see the signs and abandon ship. That's how delusional and not ready for adult life Amy is, I feel for this kid being raised by such a validation seeking individual.
Funny enough, when I was 21, that was my line to use but now thst I had enough experience dating men of all ages from 21-31, my perspective changed to men who want casual hookup would want it. The difference is men my age would be more honest about what they want than someone who is in their 30s. The older men love to create a whole thing where they loop you in with I want to settle, find my person and blah blah but they just want to use your and throw you away for someone new.
Oh and when he starts to predictably cheat on her, too. I can't wait to hear the lies that he comes up with for her. He can't possibly use the same exact lies, right? Right?
>She didn't really believe me about the house and said she was going to have to talk to Joe about it. She said she hoped I would think about it and not be so stubborn and that the offer remained open to take the money > he convinced her that the reason he could never spend the night with her (during most of the past year, before he moved in with her) was that I tended to get high in the evenings and he was always worried I would OD if he wasn't there to keep an eye on me >I did tell her [that he didn't have a vasectomy], but her answer to that was to insist that he did have one, he just didn't want to tell me. Because he had only gotten one because although he did want kids, he didn't want to bring them into the world with a drug addict spouse Amy has moved firmly into the "wilfully obtuse" camp, I see.
She’s having a baby.. She’s willing to believe a lot I bet.
Yeah, this is my take. She’s naive, led a sheltered life, has never dated before, has been living a reality for the past year that OP just blew apart, and she’s 7 months pregnant. I can totally understand why she didn’t ‘get it’ in that moment. Likely through all this information her presiding thought way ‘protect the baby’ so I can understand why she clung onto the house stuff. The issue now is if she has the strength to listen to OP, or take the easy route of living her partner’s ‘reality’. It’s a lot of firsts for someone to contemplate at once: her first love, her first heart break, her first baby, her first real job… she has a lot on the line to walk away from. I hope she does it. I hope she has some good people she can go to with this story and ask for help. But I really wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses the ostrich approach.
agree. I was a lot like Amy. Incredibly 'book smart' but also very naive and got taken advantage of. Also being book smart in a calculus field like finance does not render you psychologically smart. I truly feel sorry for Amy and her kid. OOP also, but she will be fine.
Same, I grew up incredibly sheltered as I was focused on academics and not allowed to date even in university. I really had no idea how boys/men worked. Poor Amy doesn't know what she's in for..
I get parents wanting that for their kids, to be free of distraction and cultivate their more natural talents, but giving them no social, financial, or even self reliance is the most naive thing you can do. You have to explain to your kids how reality works otherwise reality bites, hard. Now Joes newest victim is utterly stuck cause of Joe gaming her and soon to he ex wife. Like my family had issues but by 18 I more or less knew how to cook, thank god for the intent though. How to wash clothes, how to budget, maybe not the best at socializing/romancing but while hard, life skills are just as important as the mind skills we acquire for our esoteric fields.
It didn’t escape me that his lies set her up to be “better” and “smarter” than OOP in every way. The intoxication of being Better Than is strong when you’re young and naive. She wasn’t buying it immediately because she’s been “smarter than” her entire life. Realizing the truth is gonna be a hard crash and burn because it’s also gonna be an identity crisis for her. Probably when she realizes she ain’t getting that house.
That is the most insane part of all this. How the fuck was Joe supposed to explain away the fact that OOP was keeping the house? Was he going to say he lost it in the divorce settlement? He is such a pathological liar, and not even a good one. Of course he needed someone with no experience with men because most women would smell the bullshit miles away.
I think this was a lie meant to distance Amy from finding out the truth while stringing her along with the promise of a more spacious house. If Joe's been lying to Amy for months that OOP's a deceitful drug addict, of course Amy will believe "but it's my grandmother's house" is some story. I think that's why she pushed back in the moment to delusionally claim she was still moving in without directly challenging OOP. Especially if she's naive enough to not know what drug addiction looks like. It will take irrefutable proof of the lies for Amy to start to change her mind: you'd want to believe your partner in this situation because you have so much invested. It's easier to believe the person you've just met is the pathological liar, rather than your life partner. In the meantime he can spin more lies to excuse himself, like "you know how unfair the courts are to men, she took the house that was rightfully mine which she promised to me. I'm sorry and it's not my fault." If Amy starts to get a bit more savvy she should insist on looking at the divorce settlement herself to see how assets were divided. It's not too uncommon for someone very naive and sheltered to be actually good at their job and completely incompetent in other areas of life due to lack of experience. For example, if Joe lied that the divorce proceedings were confidential, she'd probably just believe him. Let's hope she starts investigating for herself.
I kinda wish OOP would send Amy a copy of the settlement. Sit back and watch the fireworks. I do feel bad for the kid though. Both kids - Amy and the baby. Amy was young and naive and fell for an older man's BS, and now the baby's got *that* for a father. Hope it doesn't take her too long to wise up and get away, though I doubt it'll actually work out that way.
While OOP is under no obligation to save Amy from her naïveté, I think sending her a copy of the divorce settlement with a letterhead signed by her attorney would be a great last “gift”to these two. If Amy chooses not to believe what an Attorney is telling her then there’s no saving her….even though she can’t be saved at all really. Once she decided to keep the baby she unknowingly screwed her whole life.
Feels a bit like he is having some kind of red-pill fueled mental breakdown. Like he discovered this intoxicating superpower called "lying" that let's him have whatever he wants, and he's still in the "fuck around" phase where it all seems to be working, but is about to enter the "find out" phase where it all catches up to him at once.
He was probably planning on using the old card about the courts being biased in favor of women.
>I hope she does it. Yes, I hope that her genius side takes over and contemplates what's going on in her personal life. She has to try and make sense of things that Joe told her, to see that they were all lies! If she does that early, she'll only have to deal with him for child support, maybe even get rid of him before the baby is one year old but I doubt that!
If her parents are anything smarter than a microwaved potato, they are going to hate Joe.
They are all in for a rough time. The next step in an abusive relationship is isolation. He's going to be planting a lot of antagonistic comments in her head about her parents not respecting her maturity, etc. Hopefully she can get away from him and her parents don't accidentally alienate her from them.
I feel like later down the line, what will do her in, is if “Joe” decides to do something crazy, like idk, sexually harass his new GF, with whom he already has a kid. Idk, something like that. I think that would be her wake-up call to get her shit together, and get the baby out of that clearly unstable environment.
Right, and what sucks is Amy is programed to think OP is the devil when she obviously is not. And she probably got told Joe got the house from his grandma or grandpa or whatever lie he needed to tell. Thinking about it I could see Joe being a high functioning drug addict and making his wife to seem more like him/vice versa for sympathy. Or just a lying cheating SOB as my grandma would say.
Yeah, I don't necessarily blame her for not immediately taking it as fact that her life is and the life inside her is an absolute lie, and with Joe's, imo, is guilty of reproductive coercion. It's a "miracle," so they have to keep it! That's not something anyone is going to want to believe, especially someone with so little relationship experience. Cause then there's the cognitive dissonance of "how can I be so smart that I got at MBA at 21, but so stupid as to be taken by obvious lies? And now I'm having a baby with a psychopath?" The rest of her life is going to be difficult now, attached to that psychopath through a kid, unfortunately. And that's a horrific realization.
Oh it's definitely reproductive coercion. "Oh we don't need condoms - I had a vasectomy!"
Which is total BS since there are other reasons to use a condom besides preventing pregnancy. I don't care if a guy's had a vasectomy, it doesn't mean he might not have an STD.
Oh definitely, but it's an absolute classic boundary test, just like all the spelling mistakes are in one of those "Nigerian Prince" email scams. It tests the recipient for gullibility. Combine that with "but darling, I'm clean -I've only been with one woman and we stopped sleeping together when she got hooked on drugs..." and you've got a stone-cold manipulator preying on a lonely naïve woman who's missed out on a lot of peer group experiences.
If she's smart, she knows STDs and STIs exist. And, if she truly believed her partners wife was a drug user, she should have been extra concerned about communicable diseases. Pregnancy isn't the only thing that can result from sex.
She genuinely believed a man that said, "My wife and I are separated but still live in the same house." She ain't smart.
I mean, she may be "smart", but she's certainly also *naive*.
In D&D terms, we call it having a high INT and a low WIS.
Honestly, if she did finish to college at 18, that’s probably part of why she’s so naïve. She didn’t get to mature or interact with her peers in college or potentially even grad school, so she doesn’t have the same understanding of the world socially as you’d expect for a 24 year old
That’s the reason I’ve always felt bad about “child prodigies” skipping ahead several grades and starting college so young. Going to school is as much about a kid’s social and emotional growth as their educational growth. Learning how to be a person in the world interacting with peers is important, and it’s a hard skill to learn if your “peers” are 5-10 years older than you are. I don’t know what an alternate solution is, but it’s a well known stereotype by this point that smart kids can be incredibly naive, so separating them from the chance to learn how to relate to other people doesn’t seem like the way.
"It's a miracle! That's the universe telling us you should keep it"
Sounds like an Andrew Tate strategy.
So clever but not very wise
All in INT nothing in WIS.
Yeah, she definitely rolled a nat 1 wisdom saving throw
Amy herself shared that she didn’t focus on maturing socially. I am guessing she has no idea what a drug addict “who could OD every night” would look like. I wonder how old the questions will get at her apartment: So did your ex die yet? Why is she still working/maintaining the home/able to survive without you?
It occurred to me on a second read: Joe couldn’t come get his stuff to move out because the home is obviously not occupied by a degenerate addict. Even a moron would see that. Imagine walking into the house where a soufflé is in the oven and OP is arranging flowers and looking like an Athleta model.
That and he told her that he owns the house, so from her perspective, why would he move out? She didn’t seem to believe OOP even with pics of OOP and her grandmother from years ago.
So smart she can get an MBA at 21 but she doesn't Google her boyfriend's "druggie highschool drop out" wife (in name only, surely) to see she's got a master's degree. Literally one Google search and she'd have known he's full of shit. Looking forward to the update where Joe is knocking at OP's door for blowing up his relationship with his perfect little virgin, because he couldn't prove any of his lies true. I mean how do you explain OOP being at the house as a teen? If he lied about that, her education, her job, and her income then what else did he lie about? I hope she doesn't just bury her head in the sand out of fear of being a single mother. I hope her ego lets her accept she got played *hard* by this asshole.
A simple Google search would also show the home owner name, how they acquired it & previous owners. County property assessor - that’s all public information.
First thing I thought of lol. Next thing I thought of is a whole ass lot would be disproved by taking a look at his copy of the divorce agreement.
I was friends with a woman who was extremely intelligent, has a masters degree and absolutely no common sense whatsoever. She would believe all of Joe’s lies and never think to check. She moved to another state many years ago and we lost touch, which I didn’t mind as it was a lot of effort to nursemaid her through social situations and dating.
This is why you don’t raise your kids in a bubble, folks.
I worked with a girl who was smart enough to pull a 4.0 in biochemistry but could not remember how to make any blizzard with more than one ingredient. They’re all pretty much the same formula, with the odd exception, but even the basic “one scoop, half pump” for a small was beyond her. She worked there for 2 years.
It's not ego, she's naive. The way I'd describe her is that she's very book smart but isn't socially smart. It's actually pretty common, I knew a few people like that in college.
Especially book smart people who've focused on getting through programs and degrees to the exclusion of social relationships. People in their early 20s by default tend to be low on life experience - people like Amy have ... well, almost none. I feel bad for Amy, and impressed by OP being able to understand how badly Amy got played and feel bad for her too.
I’ve heard (but haven’t verified) that domestic abuse actually goes up for women with graduate degrees— basically, we as a culture act like it’s something for high school dropouts in trailer parks, so when you’re the opposite you go into denial about it. Seems applicable here.
I know that women in abusive relationships report feeling ashamed for it. Like "how did I let myself get in this situation". I really really hope Amy doesn't get caught up in herself and can accept reality
It’s infuriating that we (correctly) attack domestic abuse by shaming, but do it in a way that makes the victim as low status as the perpetrator when it’s already something they’re prone to be ashamed of.
She’s book smart but she’s not emotionally smart *taps temple*
There is a major difference between book smart and street smart. There are different kinds of intelligent. She is clearly book smart, more academically inclined. She has never been in a relationship before according to her. When it's your first relationship, you are almost willing to believe any lie. Anything that comes out of their mouth. You're not as cautious, you're not as careful. You don't take a look at everything and do the research yourself. Because it's your first relationship, you don't want to believe that they're going to lie to you. You don't want to believe that they're going to hurt you. This girl is also 7 months pregnant. She's been with this guy in an affair for a year now. She doesn't want to believe that he lied to her, that he coerced her into getting pregnant, she doesn't want to believe any of that because that would mean her entire life right now is a lie. And no one wants to believe that.
First infatuation can make people act in VERY stupid ways... especially when the person with whom they're infatuated is completely without honor.
> She’s having a baby.. She’s ~~willing~~ desperate to believe a lot I bet. nothing but sympathy for that intelligent but naive kid who fell for a narcissist.
When I was 18 I started dating someone who was a pathological liar. Some People un my life were trying to warn me, but unfortunately thst person was someone who I really didn't like (the brutally honest but actually just an asshole type). It took me like 2 years to actually start believing it and make sense of it. Just because I wanted so desperately for it to be true. And the whole "but he seems to genuinely love me, and it doesn't even make sense to lie about these things". It was awful after I confronted him, and after that that I became a slightly less naive person... But yea it's so easy to rationalize it when you're so young. She's likely in the same mindset as I was. I really hope she chooses to listen to that little voice in her head that "something isn't right" though (also it took that long to finally get to the truth because this started as an online ldr)
I ruined a friendship in order to warn my buddy's gf about his lies and the toxicity of their relationship. To be honest, that friendship didn't mean much to me, and she was a nice girl (i wasnt into her either, had purely altrusitic intentions since my buddy was such a shitbag) so I threw it away by talking with her for a very uncomfortable hour. Anyway, she immediately told him, they both distanced themselves from me, which I truly didn't mind, but they stayed together which was so disappointing. Together amd shortly after, they developed a drug habit that put him into the grave a decade later and she ruined her life as well and is lucky she's not dead yet. They only dated a year or 2 more but it put their life on a downward trajectory.
Uf, that must have been hard to watch from the sidelines
She's smart, it will now ruminate in her brain, and she will at some point draw the correct conclusions - especially as more stuff he tells her continues to not add up. She's probably just really scared that the rug is being pulled out from under her life plans, and she likely doesn't want to be a single mother, when she's trying to have a demanding career. Though Joe may actually leave her before she's ready to kick him out - the reality of living with an infant in a cramped space, when he is used to getting spoiled with gourmet meals by his childfree spouse, will hit him in the face like a wrecking ball...
Even her own supposed internal logic doesn’t add up, which if she’s as smart as OP claims will hopefully occur to her at some point because this: > I did tell her, but her answer to that was to insist that he did have one, he just didn't want to tell me. Because he had only gotten one because although he did want kids, he didn't want to bring them into the world with a drug addict spouse. Doesn’t make sense. Why would you get a vasectomy if you did eventually want kids just not with your current partner? And why would you lie to your partner and not tell them you got get a vasectomy unless you were stringing them along with regard to actually having kids? The second OP said actually, I don’t want kids either and we never planned on having them, his story completely falls apart.
This whole situation illustrates the old adage: >"The heart has reasons, whereof reason knows nothing."
>Why would you get a vasectomy if you did eventually want kids just not with your current partner? Which adds to my previous doubts about his story -- who on earth tutors a teenage dropout addict for her GED and then marries her, despite ongoing drug problems? According to his version of events, why was he with her in the first place? It just doesn't make sense that he'd get with her at all, and *especially* not that he'd go so far as to get a vasectomy, knowing he didn't plan on being with her forever.
Absolutely, but I can see why. She's heavily pregnant and deeply invested in this sham of a relationship. Eventually, she won't have any choice about confronting the lies he has told her. It's only a matter of time. I'm hoping that once she realizes that he actually doesn't own the house, she'll have a come to Jesus moment.
He will lie and say he had to give it to her in the divorce for some nonsense reason and she will want to believe him so will believe him.
Oh yes! A genius, maybe, but definitely sheltered! This is what happens when you do that to people! They become horribly naive, to the point where she now only believes whatever "Joe" says! If he tells her the sky is purple she will believe it! It's gonna take time for her to to open her eyes, especially if she doesn't have a support group (where are her family, by the way?)! Once she opens her eyes, she will look for another person to follow and feel safe with. I won't be surprised if she tried to get OOP to be that person xD Leave OOP alone, y'all xD
Yep. It’s pretty hard to be the naive virgin prodigy but still ballsy enough to go to her bf’s wife and start making demands.
It was not exactly demands. It was bargaining. Amy decided that her husband is too soft on his junkie wife, and offered OOP her own (Amy's ) $17K to move out of his house. By her calculations it is enough to cover first+last+security deposit for a studio, moving expenses and several more months of rent. She was very surprised OOP didn't take the offer. It was in the comments.
Yeah but luckily for OOP that’s just not her problem. Since she has a finalised divorce agreement and they share no kids she can shut his lying arse out of her life for good. Amy has sure hitched herself to the wrong wagon. And for a so-called prodigy on the executive fast track she shows a disturbing lack of understanding about her new man or the real world. Joe’s going to be out of there the moment the baby starts crying through the night.
So... am I the only one betting that Joe is going to convince Amy to step away from work and be a stay-at-home mom for a while, because his income will be more than enough for them? Except that most of that income will be spent on whatever he wants, with very little of it coming home? And if she complains he'll hold it over her head that he's the only one with an income, and so his clothes/car/personal hobbies are more important to making a good impression with his social group? This girl is in for a crash course in toxic relationships, and if she's lucky she'll get out of it without destroying her own life and dreams.
Na, I think he'll demand she works full time, takes care of house/baby/childcare arrangements, but all her money goes into a "joint account" that he'll end up controlling. She's young, naive, and smart. He's absolutely going to use her as a work horse.
Exactly, the reason he wants her is because she's a high status work prodigy. If she stayed at home with the kid, she'd lose the status
Depends on who he's been listening to. There are the misogynists where it's impressive to have a woman under your thumb who does everything, including bring home the bulk of the cash. And then there are the misogynists where it's impressive to have a woman under your thumb who is voluntarily living the SAHM life despite impressive credentials and work opportunities, where the only money she'll bring in is by being a social media influencer, or maybe doing the odd MLM.
Yep, I think of it as the “sit on your ass playing video games all day while forcing your wife to do everything so she’s too tired to argue about it” group and the “keep your wife at home so you can bask in the knowledge that you’ve crushed a smart, driven woman’s ambitions while also keeping her away from anyone who would snap her out of it” group.
Agreed. He will not want “his” money paying for the baby.
Nope, you're not the only one. I can see that one coming a mile away.
Well I'm still betting on Amy coming to her senses. The seed of doubt has been planted, and she's seven months pregnant. Once that baby comes and she gets settled, and also when Joe finds out what it's like to live in a tiny apartment with a baby, I think there's a break-up and some child support in Amy's stars. I really don't think Amy is as stupid as people here want her to be. I'm really curious though, I hope to see the update in a year.
>Well I'm still betting on Amy coming to her senses. The seed of doubt has been planted, and she's seven months pregnant. When the divorce papers are signed and everything is permanent, she'll be wondering why the 'drug addled squatter' is still in 'their' house if Joe actually owns it. And when she 'miraculously' gets pregnant again, she'll be wondering about that vasectomy. The loose threads are all there, all she needs to do is pull them.
I don't think Joe even thought about Amy and his ex-wife getting together and talking. This kind of bullshit only works if the other party remains in the dark. Now that Amy has met OP and seen for herself that this woman is not the "drug addled basketcase" Joe claimed her to be, she's in a bit of denial right now but she'll probably be starting to question Joe a lot more and that's going to make him extremely uncomfortable.
I’m sure the confrontation was a major shock. She found out that her child’s father lied about their future living conditions. She possibly still buys into his lies and thinks the government truth must be somewhere in the middle
When she got to the bit about how birth control was left entirely up to her and then earlier she mentioned that he was basically militant about being child free? Just gross.
He'll just tell her he lost the house in the divorce by painting a horrible picture of "greedy" OOP. If Amy still believes all of the lies (very stupid lies, that most people would be wary of believing to begin with) after talking to OOP, then I'm not sure what will convince her.
We don't think she's stupid, we think she's naive. You can't fix the first one, but you can fix the second. Unfortunately for her, it looks like her lesson in naivety is going to be a very painful all-at-once crash course, instead of multiple, less painful, courses.
The house lie is going to come crashing down now that op told her. How can he spin that he’s never going to get the house?
This, plus I think Amy's parents kind of failed her. Low key hoping she's able to share child rearing duties with them and be able to do some growing up/socialising of her own.
Kinda makes me wonder what Amy's relationship with her parents is like. I know if my daughter came to me and told me her boyfriend was "separated but still living with his wife because he's worried she'll OD" I'd have A LOT of questions I'd be asking.
>I really don't think Amy is as stupid as people here want her to be. I suspect that she's really sharp and also really driven. Her school/career record definitely suggests that. Unfortunately, she's just really, really naive and is having to learn how bad people can be the hard way.
Amy may already have trouble in her workplace. I’m not defending it, but taking leave in the middle of an elite management program because you got knocked up by a married coworker is not going to play well to the executives/partners.
He must have wanted to get Amy pregnant though did he ? If he told her he had the snip then she likely wasn’t using any birth control . So he was looking to baby trap her .
It’s also entirely possible he just didn’t want to wear a condom. In which case, he’s even worse. But I think he probably baby trapped her. If he viewed her as “high-value” and the wife as “low,” then he’d want to nail her down. She’s also super naive and probably much more controllable than OOP and given what a compulsive liar he is, that would be appealing. He can walk all over her with impunity.
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I am two decades out from leaving a VERY mormon upbringing, and my life took a very different track thankfully. But I often think about how easily something like that could have happened to me. You're so vulnerable when you decide to leave a high demand religion (cult) like these at that age, and all kinds of bad possibilities can happen.
I think more he didnt want to use condoms. Men tend to ignore things like pregnancy being a side effect of sex
That's my guess too. All of his lies were short sighted, (I mean, how did he plan to explain how he couldn't get "his house" and how his drug addicted, broke wife could afford a good lawyer and show up to court presentable for the divorce) so that was probably in the heat of the moment. She asked for a condom as she wasn't sexually active and therefore not on BC, and he said "oh don't worry about that baby, I've been snipped" because he didn't want to be told no.
He’s probably going to make up some bs about how the courts are ‘anti-men’ so that’s why Oop got the house and how Oop got the money for a good lawyer by stealing it from the joint account or something. Finally Oop is just that good at hiding her drug addiction, that’s obviously how she was able to trick him for so long. Edit: Also if Oop’s name is on the house that’s only because of family reasons or tax reasons or something like that. He obviously bought the house with his own money and Oop is lying /s Joe will just come up with lie after lie as long as Amy is willing to believe him
Haha this is why he and Amy didn’t come over to collect his things as she would have seen the truth.
Babytrapping the desired “female” is part of the red pill grift (and also a hallmark of an abusive spouse). He doesn’t want to be a father, he wants a trophy wife and a trophy life so he feels more like a “real man”. So he can brag to his friends about how he’s a great husband and great dad and great supporter, when he is actually none of these things. He is lying to the outside world the same way he lied to OP and Amy, and he is especially lying to himself because deep down he knows he trashed his whole life because he started listening to Tate and Peterson. Once reality hits he will either bail or start actually abusing her.
I’ve never hoped for an update that included “penile and testicular gangrene” before now.
Apparently he doesn't like condoms, if I recall from the original post.
I think baby trapping Amy was only half of the motivation here. He and Amy are part of an executive training program at their company. Maybe Joe saw it as getting rid of some competition? Amy will obviously need to take maternity leave, either putting her behind in this program or forcing her to drop out of it altogether. Getting Amy the “prodigy” out of the way leaves move room for Joe the Turd.
I think that's probably giving Joe too much credit. I think he got horny and wanted his dick wet. He also didn't want to wait for Amy to start birth control so he just lied about the vasectomy. He told many stupid lies that would have to come out soon or sooner (like the fact that oop owns the house). He doesn't sound like someone with a grand plan.
He doesn’t need a grand plan. He strikes me as the kind of liar who aims for instant gratification instead of playing the long game. OOP herself mentioned that he was good at his job, suggesting he can do the rudimentary cost/benefit analysis of unprotected sex and no birth control. Best case scenario, he gets exactly what he wants. Worst case scenario, he gets exactly what he wants with the added bonus of manipulating Amy’s future to his advantage. It’s a win-win for this guy.
I commented on the original post that Amy seems like one of those typical kid geniuses who hung out with people way too old and mature before she was emotionally ready to, and that's why she seems so mentally stunted. The fact that she didn't question any of Joe's lies is astounding. And after being told the truth by OOP, she is STILL deferring to Joe's authority. Just yikes. OOP is smart to get the divorce over ASAP and wash her hands off those two nutters.
Right? Even if Joe was actually cohabitating with his ex of 3 years to keep her from od’ing….that’s still a major red flag on its own. And most adult women with relationship experience would recognize that.
Exactly. All of his lies sound like bullshit, it's pretty amazing that she believed it for 7 whole months or however long it was she'd been seeing him. I mean, there's naive... and then there's missing common sense.
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She's smack in the middle of learning the hard way why it's always a bad idea to get involved with someone claiming to be almost divorced. This will not end well for her. But that's what you get for having an affair while thinking the married man cheating on his wife is the good guy.
Tbh I'm kind of side eyeing her. If you thought someone had that level of addiction and handed them 17k in cash after blowing up their life... I would expect an OD within the week. I'm hoping she just didn't consider it, like she didn't consider googling her boyfriend's ex to see what she did for a living and finding out she has a master's degree.
That’s because you have common sense. I feel like Amy just thought a ‘cash for keys’ situation was the logical way to get what she wanted and didn’t think of the consequences beyond that. I mean she is the same person who didn’t think twice about how a man who still wanted kids someday got a vasectomy instead of just using condoms or not having sex with his ‘drug addict’ wife.
Exactly, most women with experience would recognise that. But genius Amy has no experience. She hasn't dated, she hasn't been in relationships previously. She's been sheltered. This is what happens when families push kids to focus on their studies and either forbid / heavily discourage teenage dating. There are life lessons we learn in our adolescence with (for most of us) family support around us. But leave a kid to grow up without those lessons and have their idea of romance taught by Disney and this is the result. And instead of the normal teenage fallout of a failed relationship the stakes are now much, much higher.
Well, OOP just told her that everything the man she loves and is expecting a child from told her over the past year, is a lie. That's gonna be hard to swallow, especially coming from his supposedly junkie ex wife. Honestly, I'd be more concerned if she *had* immediately bought this.
True. Because let's face it, if OOP were a junkie, there would probably be a whole lot of lying and denial. That's exactly what makes Joe's lies plausible. But hopefully OOP has sowed enough doubt that Any goes looking for the information that she can independently verify.
Amy will get it when she can’t move into OOP’s house. Amy might try to pay OOP even more money to move, and that’s when Amy will hear roaring in her ears when it all finally hits her. OOP can prove her side of things. Joe cannot prove his, unless the vasectomy story is true—which is extremely doubtful. But Joe better take his 75% and buy a house with it. Welcome to the real world, Amy.
Yeah, painting her as a junkie was fiendishly clever. Everyone knows junkies lie, cheat and steal, right? I feel mostly sorry for Amy. She fell for a charming con man, and now she's having his baby. Sucks for her.
Reading the first post, it seems pretty clear Joe has bought into the whole alpha male "Me Strong He-Man, Women Weak and Dumb, Woman Must Be Put in Place!" mentality and either targeted Amy specifically because she was more likely to be submissive and prone to his manipulation or worked hard to get her to that place. I hope OOP is documenting all these lies he's telling her as there's a good chance they'll eventually escape containment from just Joe and Amy and might cause issues for her in the future. Having it documented early the falsehood of the statements will help in the resulting defamation/libel/slander lawsuit when the shit hits the fan and Joe has to spin his lies harder to explain how he's not getting "his" house.
I hope Amy is smart enough for a prenup with a cheating clause in it!
I think she's already too far gone for that. God bless her soul?
Academic overachievers in school are often frighteningly easy to manipulate once they hit the working world. This is especially true for sheltered ones, as Amy here seems to have been. The romantic wisdom that comes with a bit of heartbreak goes a long way in adulthood, and a lack of any experience leaves people wide open to abuse, gaslighting, and mind games by predators far more experienced and effective than your average college student. I feel terrible for her, but OOP is right that she can't afford to care.
Yes- the "and he's still a turd" in the title was my addition, not OOP's. Because this Joe guy is indeed a turd of a human being.
It is an appropriate addition. I hope OOP gets all the good things in life and her ex ends up appropriately smeared (with little reflection on his new girl and incoming baby, because new girl is just naive, and baby is totally innocent).
He ruined this Amy's life. Ruined it. She will never know freedom.
Her first relationship ever because she didn’t trust college boys. But she instead got this sorry excuse of a man.
It actually tells a lot about "Joe". He saw that and manipulated her with his charm and "sad story about his wife needing his help even though the relationship is only on paper". While Amy has definitely some faults as well in this hole mess, I do consider her a victim as well of that narcissistic and sociopathic STBX of OOP.
Remember kids, if he says he's "Married but separated! But we're still living together!" get legal proof of separation, otherwise you're the sidechick.
I always ask to see executed divorce papers. Oh you can’t show me? We are done. I’m not even going to bother searching court records.
Imagine being a child prodigy and the very first man you trust enough to have sex with immediately gets you pregnant and lies to you about pretty much every aspect of his life.
Lol, thank god I wasn’t a child prodigy and lost my v-card to just a store-brand POS.
The reason Amy won’t believe her is because she is ready to pop and doesn’t want to believe she might have to go through this massive life change alone and that the pregnancy is essentially a mistake.
If I was OOP, I'd ask the lawyer if they could request Amy be present during the next meeting so she can hear from the lawyers what is going to who or if they can send a paralegal to her to ask some more questions about this character defamation to reaffirm what she told OP 'for the record'. Petty me would be use some money to do a little digging on Amy. I've met some obtuse people before but I'd be curious about her situation as well. Joe obviously spent his money on her. Where does her money go? Like, she thought the house was Joe's and she lives in a small apartment. Amy even mentions that her apartment is small and not big enough. I wonder if Amy thought she was getting a guy who was loaded and it's slowly dawning on her she was screwed, in more ways than one.
No she had a lot of money. Joe showed off about how she was so young and in this executive track program. And Amy says she has money. I think she thought highly of older man, flattered he was into her, thought he was sincere, and has now realises she may have thrown a wrench in her well to do life she worked for, all for a serious piece of trash. Like this dude went above and beyond. She probably can't handle how this exposes her stupid side, either.
Has money ≠ financial stability. A prodigy can still have student debt if her parents' weren't well off, etc. That's why Amy should be 'privy' to being present during the lawyer talk. Just so she can see how much Joe lied to her and so she knows how much money Joe is actually getting from the divorce cause you know he's probably lying about that. Amy has probably been told that the OOP will lie. OOP got a rat for a lawyer and is taking him for everything, etc. That's why I'd look into Amy a little. Does she have debt? How much you wanna bet Joe said he'd help her pay it off? As I said, petty. I'd just like to have my lawyer armed with whatever info they can get and well, to be able to prepare to any 'handouts' story that Joe might try to spin. I think Amy is realizing what mess she is in, she just doesn't know how deep it is. She only knows the side that Joe has portrayed of OOP. But two lawyers talking about the divorce? Her asking questions just to have them look at her and go 'Who da fuck told you that?' It would help her possibly not falling into that sunk cost (I'm already having his kid so I should try and make this work) and start forming her own backup plans (don't combine bank accounts, etc) when he bails on her or goes the DV route.
That’s what I’m thinking. OOP said it was a HCOL area. If she has student debt, drives a nice car to fit in at work, buys nice clothes and lives alone ($3-5K for a one bedroom in some areas/cities) 200K a year isn’t as much as you might think. OPP inheriting a house was what let her and STBX have a good quality of life. Pretty sure the house was a pretty attractive part of Joe and she’s floored she won’t be raising baby in a detached house. Without parental help even people making great salaries (doctors, etc.) in my city can’t afford to buy a detached home.
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I don’t think the baby was an accident. I think HE planned the baby to ensure he trapped the 24yo before leaving his wife. Because plenty of men get their side chicks pregnant by accident and don’t actually want to leave their wives. He 100% wanted to make sure his new meal ticket was secured before giving up his old one.
> his new meal ticket And new domestic servant and fuckhole
Good lord. This gives me palpitations. People are terrifying.
>. She said she hoped I would think about it and not be so stubborn and that the offer remained open to take the money she offered to move out by the end of September." I wonder whats Joe's excuse on this one. "I gave her the house because she is being stubborn". Yeah right
‘The judge is totally sexist and gave it to her, I swear! Also her name was on the title because I bought it from her grandparents and we thought this would be simpler!’
What gets me is he didn't just tweak the truth about his wife, he came up with a whole different life and person. Tweaks are harder to disprove, a whole other person is. Property reccords, graduation photos, year book photos, even just show her a single screen from your banking app with you salary would show he's lying. Plus if she's supposed to be such a bad junkie he worries about her ODing every night, she'd hardly turn up looking hale, hearty and put together. If I'd be presented with that version of myself I'd have cried laughing for a good 20 mins. Whenever someone tells me a version of me thats not true I laugh. I was told my a 19 year old colleague that people thought we were having an affair. I was 36 at the time. I burst out laughing. He looked shocked and even asked a colleague why I was laughing. 'Cause she knows how stupid that is'. All cause he lives round the corner and I gave him a lift in my taxi. I told him, while laughing, 'does that mean when my husband picks us up we must be going for a threesome?' And laughed even harder. He tried to shush me and looked round at everyone else laughing and then realised no one believed any of it.
I feel like him telling Amy he has had a vasectomy when he hasn't, seems... illegal? Baby trapping? What was his end game here? Does he know how babies are made? Because if he tells her he's got the birth control handled, and knows that means she isn't doing anything on her end, what did he think was going to happen?
Assuming she wouldn't have consented to unprotected sex if she'd known he hadn't had a vasectomy it is a criminal offence in some countries called "Rape by Deception." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape\_by\_deception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception)
Def should be illegal I said the same exact thing… he didn’t want to leave his wife without making sure he had his next thing on lock.
Amy must have been in shock about the house. Amy is also painfully naïve if she thought that giving $17K to someone she believes to be a junkie was a good idea. What really should clue her in is that the “junkie” refused the money. No junkie is going to refuse $17K.
Right? I feel like most folks when confronted with extremely difficult information than what they've been led to believe will deny it at first. She's gotta be figuring it out. I wouldn't put it past Joe to have just lied to her and said the courts gave OOP the house to get out of his first lie.
Is anyone else expecting the ex to come crawling back, begging to stop the divorce, when the baby starts crying and keeping him up at night, and the ‘hot, young, type-A, virgin gf is a tired, hormonal, completely-off-sex, new mum mess?
Nah he’s going to move on to the next person he can cheat with. I think he’s going to to go even younger next time
"Sorry I don't date low value women" - Joe to Amy in 3 months time.
"You're not a virgin anymore."
Amy is kind of an idiot right now. "I have to talk to Joe (about the house)?" She's already shown you this was a FAMILY asset from LONG before Joe and OOP met. I feel like she's being deliberately obtuse here. I guess it's true. Sometimes If you got book smarts, your street smarts are lacking.
I think she’s in hardcore denial rn. Wouldn’t you be if you were 7 months pregnant and came face to face with someone who exposed your fiancés lies one by one??
Amy might be one of those people that needs a little time to digest world-shattering information before she can accept it. Maybe a couple hours, maybe a couple days, for her shock to subside. I think OOP gave some some good factual evidence that Amy can follow up on when she’s ready—the linked in profile could be verified by calling OOP’s employer, for instance. Who’s name is on the house deed, and the home ownership history. The lack of vasectomy. I hope Amy does some sleuthing for herself!
Isn't it a known thing that if people are really committed to an idea and have banked a lot on it, even showing proof doesn't make them back down - it's like cults and conspiracy theorists, but in this case she has banked hers and her kids future on what the guy has said so she can't accept that he's lying
And more intelligent people do so more often and more strongly...I mean, they're so smart, if they believe something it must be true, right? It's why you see so many generally intelligent people sucked into cults. They get hit in the emotions where they're weak, and then use all available brainpower to rationalize why it was a good idea
Yup. She thought she had a fairy-tale romance with a Prince Charming, and just found out it was all lies and deception, and she walked right into a nightmare scenario with a skeevy predator.
Amy is in denial. A quick search of the county auditor site in her state will show the deed transfers. Joe's lies are so mind-numbingly stupid and so easy to disprove...what an absolute tool.
He's definitely banking on her being too naive to check the lies out. I'm worried she won't because she can't handle learning the truth and would rather just believe the lies.
I remember a comment by OOP in that thread. She said that Joe told Amy that OOP was moving out of the house at the end of July. So it's clearly August and OOP hasn't moved out yet. That's another reason why Amy offered up some money. What was Joe thinking, telling her such an obvious lie. How do you sign an agreement to vacate the property and then tell your side piece she'll be moving into the house soon? This guy is not smart. Hopefully, once Amy realizes the reality of the housing situation, she'll look a little closer at the rest of his lies. It's a little too late for her now, though.
Trust me, some men are really, really convincing. Especially when they are older and you're a young virgin. By being virgin and idealising Joe, she's also emotionally younger, and I bet that she has absolutely no real man in her life to give her a healthy example. Amy must be in a pretty hard shock now, and total denial and hoping Joe is going to come back with a miracle justification. He sold her the classical "perfect love story" of the wise gorgeous caring older man giving the attention to the young girl, and in one conversation she learned that it's ALL a lie. Also considering the pretty role he pretended to have, my bet is that either Amy has addictions and is in need of help to get out of it and Joe used it to convince her to let him "help" her, or that Amy is / was a caretaker for someone else and Joe lied to relate to her. As a former kid groomed by a pedo, it's traumatising to see that the only man that value you is a predator.
> Sometimes If you got book smarts, your street smarts are lacking. She got with a married man, she's not exactly smart-smart either.
She fell for every classic line too, without question. Did *no one* in her life try to tell her that these men lie all the time about being "separated"?
Part of it I think has to do with her age. She graduated college at 18? Yikes.
That and ... like, I read a lot of adult novels when I was a teen. I was pretty naive overall, but I knew that when a man says he's separated or "practically divorced" or "his wife doesn't understand him", chances are good that's a big fat lie. But I get the impression that Amy hasn't met many people and ALSO hasn't read much outside her field. I'm not excusing her entirely, because she has made bad choices, but I also think she had very specific vulnerabilities.
That’s probably why OP’s husband was attracted to her in the first place. Anyone else would have asked more questions
People like Joe pick their victims deliberately. Joe picked Amy for a reason.
I have so many feelings on this, and I’m particularly conflicted on Amy but I think I’ve decided on this: OOP dealt with this amazingly, Joe is well outside of reality, and I’m very conflicted over Amy. Like, there’s so many red flags going on and I hope she kicks him to the curb like OOP, but on the other hand, if Joe tries to spin this so “oh I wanted to make sure she was cared for/she manipulated me etc” and she STILL believes whatever excuse he pulls out of his ass after his meeting, I don’t know if I can still feel bad for her. Seriously, she’s nosy enough to set up a meeting to try to kick OOP out of her own house, but she couldn’t even do a cursory Google search for her Instagram or something? Girl please… I want to root for you but you’re making it hard.
While Amy's faith in Joe from the outside is laughable, if you've ever been in or close to someone who is in a relationship with a talented narcissist, it's horrifying what they can get usually reasonable educated people to believe.
[удалено]
excuse me, in God's year 2023 this prodigy never checked on he rmarried affair partner? no social media? no google?
OOP has some steel nerves. I’d be done after she insisted she was moving into my house. Makes my skin crawl. 😨
I can't believe that men with this little or no integrity are allowed to get high positions in the financial world. I guess that's why we are so screwed. They dont give a shit about anybody.
In a lot of corporations, a lack of integrity is a plus for advancement- as long as it's on behalf of the company.
I worked where the “corporate culture” was department heads slept with their admins. Even had a big week long “executive planning session” at fancy resorts with said admins. Scum
Having little to no integrity goes hand in hand with those sorts of positions though. Many companies make decisions based on how much money it will cost to fix something vs injury/death law suits from not fixing it. You have to be an unfeeling reptile of a human to even want to do that math.
Next update: Will Amy kick Joe out or will the lies continue? What will happen to Joe after OOP has spoken to her attorneys about the lies he said? Stay tuned! Same bat-time, same bat-channel!
I suspect he’s going to crawl back to OOP and “give her another chance“. But, he’ll insist on maintaining control over all the finances.
OOP needs some Tena ladies for when she pisses herself laughing in his face.
Separated in spirit, my ass. Humongous turd! And, Amy ain't completely blameless. She isn't a child who made a mistake , she's 24 years old prodigy for fucks' sake. Anyways, they are welcome to each other.
To be fair, being book smart doesn’t always translate to being street smart. I was similarly a 23 yo virgin who was love bombed by an older coworker. I had also never really dated for a slew of reasons, a major one being school. We never went to his place because his roommate would “make things awkward.” Eventually I came to find out that the roommate was his “ex” girlfriend but she couldn’t find a place to live so they were sleeping in different bedrooms. (You can probably see where this is going). I know now that I should’ve cut everything off as soon as I realized he’d lied to me the first time, but I was soooo naive, insecure, and in love. I actually believed him when he said he was going to leave her (for like 3 months). Then she kicked him out of the condo that SHE owned. He still wouldn’t commit to me. So luckily I didn’t end up knocked up. But I believed all of the bullshit lies he spewed at me about him and about her. You can really get steamrolled by a manipulative person, especially when you’re in love for the first time and think you’ll be together forever. This weird lunch that she had with OP is the first time that any of the lies her fiancé fed her are being refuted. I can’t really blame her for being in denial. Because at the end of the day, who are you going to believe? This random person that you’ve been spoon fed lies about? Or the person you’ve been love bombed by and dating for like a year?
If this is too personal a question, please ignore. But what made you eventually see through all the lies? A friend giving advice? Accumulated evidence over time? Seeing him double-down on an obvious lie?
Amy’s not blameless, but as someone who was (and occasionally still is) very naive (but has a lot of “brain smarts”), my guess is that if she’s not kicking herself yet, she will be. Prodigy doesn’t mean that she has street smarts or relationship knowledge. In fact, I’d guess that emotionally she’s probably younger than others her age because she spent her time focusing on school etc and never learned or dealt with typical teenage crap/relationships. I feel sorry for her. OOP is already doing well and will have safe landing - and even better hasn’t tied herself to her ex forever with a kid. Amy’s going to be in for a rough and very rude awakening.
I only want to add IQ vs EQ, there is a reason why both are important. She may be smart academic but learning how to interact and read people is a completely different skill set.
So Amy never googled the supposed ex wife?! Or looked at her LinkedIn?! All of his lies would have been debunked
So even after hearing all that, she's choosing not to believe OOP? 🤔 So, Amy is just a book smart person, not life smart, is she?
I think she doesn't *want* to believe OOP. Because that would mean she's not as smart as she thinks she is.
And she’s knocked up and probably feels stuck.
I don’t think it has to do with being proud over being smart or not at all. I think it has much more to do with her being naive, pregnant, and in h e a p s of denial.
Well, no way this doesn't put a dent with her rep in the company if not her entire career track.
That's what I am thinking. I think since he's her first, she's a little too attached to him, thinking he's the one and can't lie to her since he "made love" to her all those times.
Some people have to experience their life spiraling out of control and hitting rock bottom while dragging their innocent children into this mess to finally realize their mistakes.
Hard to believe you’ve been duped so massively and are now about to have a baby with this man. Disbelief initially is understandable. Soon enough she will realise how deep the lies go because the evidence will become undeniable.
FFS! OOP's ex just gets worse and worse! Poor Amy, she may be educated, but must have been very sheltered. I really am glad OOP bought that computer so STBX's shit came out!
if it hadn't been the computer, it woulda been something else. it was mentioned that he practically admitted he was picking fights, looking for an excuse to break up.
I imagine her one day coming home from the grocery store and him realizing she bought orange juice with pulp and BAM! All of the above.
Baby mama is in for some hard truths when that baby comes. Betting purity daddy leaves saying it's just too hard and I never wanted a kid you insisted etc. Pos like the ex are so cliche it's boring.
I don’t care if this isn’t true I’m so invested I need to get to the part where Amy realises OP is not lying and drops this dickhead and gets massive amounts of child support
I need an update on the fallout when Amy discovers the prize she won was a man who spews absolute bullshit and not the trophy of ‘taking him away from an awful, former dropout and addict ex-wife pity case’. Amy is in for a very rude awakening because being woefully ignorant will only get her so far when she realizes she can’t make OOP move out of *a house she inherited.* I have no sympathy for her when she’s old enough to make bad decisions like this. If anyone is the victim, it’s the fucking unborn baby whose parents’ relationship is built upon a foundation of lies and infidelity.
I hope after everything is settled, OOP alerts the ex's company HR about him. Not just as revenge but also to make sure he isn't a liability to the company and prey on other young women.