I woke up as my hubby sang and laughed in bed. When I turn on the light, he doesn’t move, but he does start to flap his arms. I call 911, and they take him to the hospital. They informed me he had a mild seizure, which might have been caused by a lot of stress or not getting enough sleep, and I was horrified.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My heart was racing in my ears as I sat there in the emergency room looking at his lifeless corpse. He was hooked up to machines, and a plastic mask covered his mouth. His chest lifted and sank slowly. “Has your husband been acting strangely lately?” the nurse said.
I wanted to say no. But something stopped me.
The last few months have been odd. Not scary, just weird. He had started to stay up later than usual, always saying he had work to do. I don’t like to pry, but I would notice him close his laptop when I walked into the room. I heard him say a name I didn’t know on the phone: “Nadia.” When I asked him who she was, he said she was just someone from procurement.
He normally kept his phone on mute and took it with him to the bathroom.
I believed it was because I was worried. We had a hard time with money. During the outbreak, his little logistics company almost went out of business, but we were just starting to get back on our feet. I thought he could be embarrassed and trying to get me to stop worrying.
But now that I see him like this, limp and quiet, I can’t help but suspect that something else is going on.
The doctors wanted to keep an eye on him overnight. I went home to grab a new clothes, and for some reason, I took his laptop with me. I told myself it was so the doctors could see what he was working on and what he had been doing before the episode.
I opened the laptop at the table where we eat, and my hands were shaking a little. There wasn’t even a password.
The first thing I saw was a folder on the desktop with the name “Invoices_2022.” There is simply one paper inside. But when I opened it, it wasn’t bills; it was a list of things. There are a lot of names, dates, and cash numbers in the document. I went down. The total for the last nine months was $48,700. And every agreement has a “N.L.” on it.
I didn’t know most of the names. But one entry made me sick: “E-transfer—Nadia L.—$4,200—’Tuition Payment.'”
What is the cost of tuition?
I opened his emails and typed “Nadia” into the search box. There were a lot of emails in the inbox. Some folks are simply submitting videos or articles. Some others penned long, complicated sentences describing how they felt, what they wished they had done, and the hopes they had “when things were simpler.”
It didn’t sound like shopping.
I clicked on one that stated, “Still thinking about your necklace in Santorini.”
That was all there was. I lost it.
I looked at the screen and felt dumb. Sayed, my husband, had been sending thousands of dollars to another woman. He called me “his lighthouse.” Maybe even paying for her school. And the romance wasn’t just a fling for one night. They remembered things. Jokes that only you and your buddies understand. Photos. There was an image of a ticket to fly. Last October, he flew to Montreal for “a conference.” But he had a picture of them in a café in his inbox.
She was younger. Maybe in their mid-twenties. A combination of races, with pink hair and gold hoop earrings. She looked right into the camera. He kissed her on the cheek.
That night, I didn’t sleep at all.
He was awake at the hospital, drinking juice and watching the news like nothing had happened.
Right away, I didn’t say anything. I waited. Looked at. He did what he always does. He joked around with the nurses in a playful way. He sent an SMS while he thought I wasn’t watching.
When we got home that night, I made him sit at the kitchen table.
“Who is Nadia?” I asked in a quiet voice.
He put his phone down. “What?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” I found the emails. The moves. The whole story came out.
He had a blank look on his face. There was simply a cold, flat silence. He then stood up and said, “That’s not what you think.”
That saying. You assume this statement means what it says.
He said that Nadia was the daughter of an old family friend, but that wasn’t true. He thought of her as “like a niece” after her mother died and her father went missing. He had been helping her finish school and giving her money.
“And what about the pictures? The kiss on the cheek? Was it the “necklace from Santorini”? I shot back.
He had trouble speaking. He said he felt “confused emotionally.” That he felt bad for her. That things “got blurry.”
I questioned him straight out, “Did you sleep with her?”
He waited too long, three seconds too long.
I didn’t scream. Don’t weep. I got up, grabbed my keys, and left.
I drove about for hours. In the end, I parked in front of my cousin Rukhsana’s house. She opened the door in her pajamas, looked me in the eye, and said, “Stay as long as you want.”
The next morning, Sayed wrote me a note:
“Don’t tell anyone about this.” We should talk. I’ll cease talking to her. I made a mistake.
I felt different at that point.
This wasn’t just about lying. It was about lies. He slowly made me think that I was just watching my own life. I trimmed coupons as he handed thousands of dollars to a girl who wore Chanel perfume and posted pictures of her doing yoga.
I stayed with Rukhsana for two weeks. I learned a lot at that time. I looked for Nadia on social media. She tagged him in a picture from 2021, but she called him “Shawn” instead.
My partner had created a completely new person.
That made everything clear.
I called a lawyer. Quietly, without telling him. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to divorce him, but I wanted to know what my choices were. He took out a second loan on our house without telling me, saying it was important to “keep the business going.”
I got home that night, walked in gently, and said, “I want all of your money.” All of them. Now.
He was angry at first. Protective. But things changed when he saw I wasn’t going to give up. He didn’t talk anymore. Quieted. He walked into the study and came back with a box full of documents.
There it was: 60% less business income.
– There are too many credit cards. Nadia wasn’t just a one-night stand; he promised to help her turn into a “lifestyle brand.”
– The worst thing was that he exploited my Social Security information to get one of the loans.
That was it.
I requested for a divorce.
But here’s the surprise that no one saw coming, not even myself.
Three months into the legal morass, I got a letter in the mail from a law company in Vancouver. Nadia really did file a fraud charge against Sayed. She said he fooled her into thinking he was divorced, gave her money, and then “disappeared.”
She had photos of the screen. Messages left on voicemail. He even left a voice message in which he said he had signed his name.
In the end, that letter rescued me.
My lawyer used it to prove that someone was lying to me and other people also. I was able to keep my portion of the assets, get my credit back on track, and even—this makes me smile—keep the house.
Sayed’s brother took care of him. Everyone heard about it on social media from Nadia. She put a video online called “The Married Man Who Lied to Me and Stole My Twenties.”
It got a little bigger. People in our region knew him. His business fell collapse completely.
I won’t lie and claim I didn’t feel good at some point.
But I also felt free.
I went back to teaching music classes at the community center, but only part-time. I got back in touch with some old pals I hadn’t seen in a long time. I went to a Lutheran church basement every Thursday to meet with a group of women who were there to help each other. We drank tea, spoke about our exes, and cried when we needed to.
I met someone at a craft show one day.
His name was Teo. He was a retired technician who taught kids at risk how to weld. We talked about plants, how mint is really just a weed, and how Facebook Marketplace can be incredibly annoying.
There were no sparks. No violins. Just… peace of mind. Keep chatting. He helped me put my bags in the car. He called me back two days later.
We haven’t rushed things. I’m not in a rush. But this time, I’m on the lookout for the indications.
And maybe that’s the most important thing to learn.
We don’t always see whether someone is lying right away. Especially when they are hidden under kindness or years of trust. But the truth, no matter how terrible it is to hear, will set you free. At last.
If someone is making you feel like you’re crazy or that your gut doesn’t matter… You can trust me: it matters.
Don’t forget about those little modifications. Think about the times when your phone doesn’t ring. The emails come in the late hours of the night. They act kind to mask how sorry they are.
Everything will change when you turn on your laptop one day.
Thanks for taking the time to read. Please like or share this if it speaks to you. Someone out there might need the help.