When it comes to love, we all want to be that person who throws caution to the wind, looks before he leaps, goes with his gut and various other cliches. But while we're doing that, it's good to have a practical little angel on our shoulder who whispers, "Put the house in your name."
Mamie was working on a project that involved contacting all her high school classmates from Wisconsin. One of them, a guy named Jason, started writing to her.
"His letters talked about how pretty I'd been and how he'd had a crush on me in high school," she says. "He'd never actually spoken to me back then, but he used to come by the place where I'd baby sit and just hang out outside."
As time went on, the letters started getting more and more serious, more and more intimate. Jason told Mamie that his marriage had been dead for over 30 years. During that time, his wife refused to have sex with him or even sleep in the same bed.
He told Mamie that they were now separated. He worked in a town 120 miles north of his hometown, and he had a small house there in which he lived.
"I visited him there a few times, and we became very close," she says. "He said he'd been planning to get a divorce, but never actually filed the papers 'because I didn't need to.'"
Things were going so well that Mamie sold her house in Illinois and spent a lot of money moving into his small house in Wisconsin. That was just a temporary move. She bought a home for them ("In my name thank God!" she says.) in a town near his hometown.
"By then, he'd lost his job," she says. "I let myself go into debt for things we'd needed, like a riding mower. The yard was a full acre. I'm still paying that off."
And then everything fell apart. She says: "His stories were all built on lies. He was not separated from his wife. He was staying in the small house weeknights and going home to his wife on Friday nights. And he had no intention of separating from her. Then she found out he was seeing me. Just before Christmas of 2015, he called and I could hear her voice in the background telling him what to say. He said he couldn't see me anymore.
"I cried my eyes out for a long time, but then I tried to carry on. What else could I do? I was glad the house was only in my name, because I sold it and moved home.
"I love Wisconsin. I still miss it terribly. I have friends there, too. But I couldn't stay. Jason's youngest son was stalking me. It probably started when he was trying to find out where his father was. And I was terrified of going outdoors after dark and it was very dark at night in this very small town. Finally, there were too many hurts to stay."
Have you been involved in a long distance relationship? Send your tale, along with your questions, problems and rants to [email protected]. And check out my e-books, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front" and "I'll Call You. Not."
View Comments