It's Kind of a Long Story... about MY SISTER EXES (Part III)
In which I find out how Susan knew what she knew.
Thank you to everyone who voted and let me know you want me to continue the Sister Ex Saga. I’m not sure how many parts it will be. It will be as many parts as it needs to be.
Thanks too to those who offered their support and concern. This project has been so helpful and healing for me in many ways.
Not only for getting my stories up and out of me but also for learning to navigate vulnerability.
I migrated this stuff from Facebook to Substack for a lot of good reasons. I’m glad I did. I also acknowledge I miss the sweet, sweet hit of dopamine I got from likes, hearts, and comments. Sharing my writing isn’t hard. Not getting feedback on it is. I wondered why so many people were opening and reading, but so few were commenting or replying.
It felt like I handed someone something I made with my head and heart and hands and they just grabbed it and ran away. No one would do that with a cookie.
A wise friend said, “Cookies are for eating. Substack is for reading.”
She’s right. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” Facebook is for interacting. Substack is for consuming. Putting it out there means not knowing where it goes or how it will land.
And putting it out there I am.
New subscribers will want to catch up with
I’m so glad you’re here,
-Lara
The Real Housewives
Short story:
My exBF Cris stupidly left his passwords on my Sister Ex’s computer, giving her access to his secrets, lies, and deplorable behavior. What she learned concerned her enough to try to warn me to nip my relationship with him in the bud, and to worry about me for more than six years.
Long story:
The one thing from the “Alarming History” email that didn’t make sense, and that I clung to as evidence that the whole email was an act of vengeance by a woman scorned, was, “There is reason to believe he may be hoping to be able to move into your house so he doesn’t have to secure his own housing.”
How would anybody know that? I replied to the email:
Can I ask how you and/or this 3rd party found out I was seeing Cris? Not a lot of people know we're dating and this is all very strange and upsetting.
The sender replied:
Lara - as I understand it he may have been drinking and bragging/shooting off his mouth to people (friends?) and word got around. That is all I know. I wish you the best, truly.
When I read that, I had a vision of Cris sitting at a bar yelling. “I just started dating Lara Starr! I’m hoping to move in with her!” and someone who knew me just happened to overhear it and send me a weird, warning email.
A very, very, unlikely scenario was the excuse I needed to discount the whole email. Which I was looking for a reason to do.
No, he wasn’t sitting at a bar yelling. He was sitting at a computer typing. To the Housewives.
***
When Cris and I first started dating, he told me that he had a group of women friends he had known since high school that had been on a group chat for years, “We talk about everything.”
It seemed like a green flag. He had women friends! He talked about things with women! He called them “the Housewives” which seemed like an affectionate nickname. Now I wonder if they know that’s what he called them.
When he left Susan’s house, he also left his passwords on her computer. She discovered them in late 2016 when she was going through her files to get rid of every trace. She stumbled on the password manager. She was stunned. She could read his messages and emails. And like any normal, red-blooded American ex-girlfriend, she did.
She learned that within a short time of Cris moving out of her house in July 2016, Y came to visit him in his new apartment. Y was a Bulgarian woman whom he had been involved with before he left Alaska to move in with Susan.
(I know. A Bulgarian woman from Alaska. I sound like a crazy person)
He told me he didn’t have much furniture when he first moved into his apartment, but he did have a king-sized bed. He and Susan had bought it together, and to his shock, she told him to take it when he left. She didn’t want it or any trace of him left in her house.
The bed may have been all he and Y needed.
When we first started dating, he told me, “After I broke up with Susan, I waited an appropriate amount of time, got on Match, had a few months of bad dates and no dates, and then I met you.”
He later told me that Y had come from Alaska to visit him in October 2016, a few months before we met. He made it seem like she was lovesick for him, lonely, and he was sort of doing her a favor by spending the weekend with her. He told me they went to the Echo and the Bunnymen concert at the Regency Ballroom. One of the photos on his Match profile was from that night, presumably taken by Y.
What Susan learned from reading what he was saying to the Houswives, was that Y was some sort of submissive. He had a pair of leg restraints and other gear they used together. Susan said he brought out the leg restraints once, and when she suggested they use them on him, he got flustered, put them away, and never brought them out again.
I have no idea what really happened between Cris and Y. Or how many times she came to see him. Or why he kept in touch with her while he was living and in love with Susan. I know what he told me. I know what he wrote to the Housewives. The truth could be any combination or none of those things.
He also later told me about another woman he was sleeping with during the fall of 2016. He met her at a bar. She left her underwear at his place, which earned her the nickname “Skank Panties” which I’m embarrassed to say I laughed at at the time. She drove him home from a nose surgery he had in November to treat his severe snoring. He didn’t have anyone else he could ask to do it. He spent the painful recuperation alone.
So how did I reconcile that he had told me he waited “an appropriate amount of time” before dating, with his later telling me about Y and Skank Panties? All I can say is I let a lot slide, and I told myself he wasn’t really “dating” them. Y was someone he already knew, and Skank was a non-serious bar hookup.
Susan read about all of these antics in the Housewives chat. She and Cris had gone to high school together, which is why she had confidence that their quick trajectory from old friends who reconnected on Facebook to living together was safe. He was a known quantity. They had a lot of mutual friends, including the Housewives.
The Housewives chat was a place where he could brag and swagger to an eager audience of women who were, depending on which one and what he was up to, amused by him, enthralled by him, and occasionally mildly disgusted by him. They seemed to be there for the entertainment value.
He flirted with all of them privately and talked about all of them behind their backs. He coached one on how to lie about her cheating on her husband. Some of them shared photos of their boobs and crotches. He didn’t share a photo of his dick.
The chat wasn't really a close circle of supportive friends. It was more like a gossipy clique whose members didn't always like, trust, or respect each other.
In February 2017, Susan saw that he told them we met. He told them he hooked up with other women while I was in Japan on vacation with my son that March. The Housewives sort of scolded him for that.
Before I left on that trip to Japan, he told me stories about his adventures in Tokyo. He gave me a guidebook and said with a big smile, “It’s mostly good for standing there reading it and looking confused. If you do, a Japanese person will help you.” Darned if he wasn’t right. That did happen more than once. When I landed back at SFO, there was a welcome home text from him waiting for me. I brought him back a gift.
In his (sort of) defense, we weren’t exclusive then, we weren’t even sleeping together, but we were clearly into each other and spending a lot of time together. He made it seem like he was taking dating seriously. He’d put in his Match profile, “I want my next serious relationship to be my last.” I assumed that meant he was only pursuing potentially serious relationships. I assumed a lot. I was led to believe a lot.
Later that month, I went on a business trip to New York. Before I left, he said, “I’m starting to fall for you.”
Sometime in March, I believe it was between my trips to Japan and New York, he came to my house for the first time. He picked me up to take me for a drive and dinner in Pt. Reyes. He brought me flowers and a birthday card. It was a fantastic day. At dinner, I joked, “So, when are you going to cook for me, Chef?” He looked sheepish and said, “I don’t have plates.”
”Excuse me? You don’t have plates?”
He said when he moved in with Susan, she had a complete household, and when he moved out, he took very little. He ate meals at work or out and had paper plates from wort at his place. “And even if I had plates, I don’t have spices and things like that. Left to my own devices, I have the taste of an eight-year-old boy.”
At the time, I thought it was… sweet? Funny? I had plates from an old set of dishes I gave him. During our relationship, he cooked for me at his place and mine. Delicious meals beautifully presented. He also ate a lot of Jack-in-the-Box tacos and no lie Spaghettios with Meatballs. One time he sat next to me on the couch eating them out of a pan. I rolled my eyes and said, “I guess the honeymoon is over.” He looked at me and said, “No, this is intimacy. This is me being myself with you.”
I now know that not having plates wasn’t sweet, it was one of the many ways in which he was immature. The first time he broke up with me he said, “I don’t have the emotional maturity you need.”
When Maya Angelou is right, she’s right.
It was around this time, late March 2017, that Susan saw him write to the Housewives:
If I move in with Lara I won’t have to buy my own house. She’s got a big house in Marin. She’s a famous author. Her kid still lives at home, but he’s going to college in a few months and will be out of the picture, so fuck that kid.
Susan read that and thought, “Oh. That poor woman. A widow with a son. She has no idea what she’s getting into."
That’s what prompted her to send me the Alarming History email on April 4th, 2017.
She also saw on the Housewives chat how enraged Cris was that I had been sent that email. Terrifyingly enraged. So enraged she feared for her safety and took steps to protect herself.
Susan and Cris’ ex-wife K were still in touch then and stayed in touch for a couple of years. They were worried about me.
Can you imagine? While Susan obviously went on with her life, she also had to wait six years to find out what happened to me after she sent that email. To learn how I reacted to it and why. To know if I was OK.
***
Getting all of this over dinner was a lot. A lot. I was reeling and wish I had taken notes. And also? I was having a good time. Susan and I laughed a lot. We were still feeling each other out and also had a good feeling about each other.
I told her I had a scheme up my sleeve. Would she be willing to have the server take our photo? I had an idea of how I might be able to send it to him anonymously. No note. Just the photo. I wanted him to know She and I had met. I wanted him to know we knew what the other one knew. I wanted him to know he didn’t get away with everything he thought he had. I wanted him to feel just a tiny bit as scared and vulnerable as he had made so many women feel. I wanted him to live his life knowing his lies could be exposed at any time.
Susan was absolutely down for that. She’s not only a good detective, she’s up for shenanigans. My kinda gal.
When we left the restaurant, I thanked her again for her generosity in meeting with me and telling me all of this. It was hard to hear, but I can handle the truth. She was well within her rights to say, “Lady, I tried to warn you. You had your chance to listen to me. You’re on your own.” But she didn’t. She had been where I was and was here to help me understand and unpack it. I’m very grateful.
As we stood on the sidewalk and I gave her a hug goodbye, I said. “I’m struggling with what I owe his fiance, B. What do I owe the sisterhood? I feel obligated to pay it forward.”
With a smile, she said, “Whatever you do, I’m out. My work here is done.” I said that was more than fair. She also suggested I leave it alone. Focus on moving back into my house and rebuilding my life.
I knew that was likely the right thing to do. It was the right thing for me and my life and my mental health. I had been through a lot and didn’t need any more drama.
And yet… it ate at me. How could I live with myself knowing what I did (and I would learn much, much more in the next few months) and not warn a sister?
I didn’t want to send his fiance a version of the Alarming History email. That didn’t feel right. They had gotten engaged in Paris. She was planning her wedding. She was planning her future. She was 57 years old and if she’s anything like me and the other single 50-something women I know, she figured this was her last chance at love. I could mess with him with no problem, but messing with another woman’s life wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
I wanted to somehow make myself available to her. For her to have the opportunity to know everything I had learned from Susan, and also everything I knew about how he behaved with me during the first two years of their relationship.
I wanted B to know what Susan didn’t even know yet. The day before Susan and I met, May 6th of this year, I had gotten what would be the last text I would ever get from Cris. That just a few days before that, he had told me his feelings for me were “too many and too intense to be only a friendship.” That the last night he and I spent together, July 4th, 2022, was just weeks before he moved in with B. That he invited me over on one of his last nights in his apartment. An invitation I declined when he said it would have to be “clandestine.”
That’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to make that happen.
Turns out I didn’t have to. Crystal, another Sister Ex would do it for me.
To be continued…
Know someone who would get something out of that story? Please share.
Lara sez…
Listen!
80s Deep Cut of the Week! You may know Tracy Ullman as a brilliant actor and chameleon-like comedian, but did you know she had a moment as an 80s pop star? Check out this bouncy, infectious homage to 60s girl groups. And if you like that, you’ll love They Don’t Know. Stay to the end of the video for a surprise cameo!
Read!
The Library Book by Susan Orlean is page-turning nonfiction that reads like a novel. It tells the fascinating story of the founding of the Los Angeles Public Library, the building of the stunning main branch, and the tragedy and mystery of a fire that destroyed hundreds of thousands of books, documents, and treasures.
I mean how great is this?
Buy!
This car garbage can is a game-changer! I have no idea why the auto industry persists in pretending that drivers don’t generate a ton of trash. I’ve always got wrappers, cans, apple cores, and whatever to throw away. Where are the trash can? Here it is!
Watch!
Drop Dead Fred premiered to scathing reviews, but I have always absolutely loved it. The brilliant Rik Mayall is a manic screwball with big, huge, heart and the wacky antics bellie a poignant film about adults protect themselves from childhood wounds.
Subscribe!
I have been a low-key Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stan for a long time. Yes, he’s a basketball player and yes he was in Airplane, and he is so much more. He’s a thoughtful thinker about life, culture, politics, and sometimes sports who unapologetically watches Real Housewives. He wrote three books about Mycroft Holmes. He was a producer of the Veronica Mars reboot!
I used to send Max his essays from Esquire like “Kareem's Guide to Understanding Women through the Work of Six Great Female Novelists” and “Kareem's Three Rules to All-Star Gifting: Guys aren't supposed to like giving gifts. Well, that ain't me and say”, “Read this! This is how to be a person!
I smile when I see KAJ’s Substack in my inbox. You will too!
Before I let you go…
I’d like to thank a reader for reading to the end by making one of my annual Giving Tuesday donations to the charity their choice.
To enter, please reply or comment with something you’re grateful for!
Such a compelling narrative! Fascinating and so touching...poignant, even. I was deceived by a liar, too, though my story is different. Different, yet so many similarities. (((Hugs)))
I’d suggest a donation to The Trustees, the non-profit conservation + preservation I used to work for when I lived in Massachusetts. It’s a local MA thing, not national, but they do good work.
Thanks, Lara. I continue to love reading your posts. Your honesty and vulnerability and intelligence makes me love who you are and makes my fears and vulnerability easier to bear. I wait for your writings. And now I have to wait another week