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October 2013. My birthday came and went, I got shitfaced and made poor decisions. After that, I started working on getting better. Weeks later, I found a package notification in my mail. It was dated on my birthday. Sent from Taiwan.

I was puzzled, who would send me something from Taiwan? I know my friend had recently went back, but he would never send me anything. I immediately went to the post office to retrieve my package. In the back of my mind, I had hoped, it was from her. Just maybe, she realized I wasn’t the terrible person she thought I was.

The lady handed me a small box. It was from her. I walked to my car, and sat there staring at it. It was pretty small, I wondered if she had just mailed me back some belongings of mine.

Hesitantly, I opened it. It was a present. Wrapped in a blue box, with a bow on top. A card was in an envelope, with my name on the front.

I was in shock. I opened the card, and read the message. She had got me a gift and wished me happy birthday. The gift turned out to be some beats by dre ear buds. Honestly, I didn’t care what the gift was, I was elated that she still cared. I frantically tried to find her phone numbers. I tried to message her on all the different chat apps we used to use. No response. The disappointment I felt was immense, I wondered if she gave up after weeks without a response from me.

Days later, she would reply. I was so excited and scared at the same time. We chatted a bit about what each had been up to, in this fake sort of “I aint telling you shit” manner. I was confused, she didn’t seem to be that interested in seeing me again. Why send me a present then?! It threw me back into the shit hole I had just crawled out of. What a bitch.

November. She messages that she would be in LA this month. Maybe we could meet. I debated this with a few close friends, should I? What was the point? Maybe she just wants to tell me about her new bf and how happy she is, to rub it in more. I told her very honestly, “I don’t think we should meet if we aren’t planning to get back together again. I don’t think I can be friends with you, at least not now.” She agreed.

Shortly before she was arriving, she reached out again. She really wanted us to meet. I’m weak, so I gave in.

We met up for dinner. It was just like old times, I picked her up from the hotel near LAX and we went out for dinner. The familiar things brought me comfort. She was still so beautiful. I had missed her so much, her smile, her laugh.

Things went well, we both seemed to be different since the breakup. We talked about what we had been doing, still just surface things. We later broached the topic of our relationship. We both admitted things we did poorly and could have been better at. I felt like it was progress. It really made me want to try again. After all, she was the person I had loved the most in my life. We met again the next night, and we decided to give it another try. We both had the optimism of naive kids, like “this time will be different” and “we’re both smarter now.”

I told myself, things needed to be different this time. We couldn’t keep the same situation and hope for different results. I needed a better job. We also needed to be in the same place. We discussed me moving to Taiwan and living there. I gave my word I would try, and I did. I scoured LinkedIn and other recruiting companies in Asia. I sent resumes to people, applied for jobs in Taiwan for a few months. I pestered friends and acquaintances for possible opportunities. No luck.

We then discussed plan B, which was for her to transfer to the US and fly out of LA. On paper it was great. She could still go see her parents regularly. She’d also have a more stable schedule and less stressful work life. We could find a place together and start to build a life together.

Things started out so smoothly; it felt like we would make it.

We had gone into the relationship with the understanding that the past was past, including our breakup period. I didn’t care what she had done, I regretted what I had done. I wanted to move on. I will admit that I was not totally truthful when she asked me about this the first time. I was afraid I would lose my chance if I told her the truth. I’m not without fault, and I recognize that this might have been a poor choice.

During this year, I tried to make things different. I planned surprise trips for us. We never got to travel much before because she told me she didn’t care for it and secondly I was a broke ass. One time we fought and this topic came up. I remembered it, and wanted to make sure I didn’t take it for granted. Some places we went: Solvang on July 4th, Hotel Del Coronado, Palm Springs, The Lion King musical, etc.

Every one of these outings we had, we ended up fighting.

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Palm Springs

I had bought a groupon for this hot springs resort in Palm Springs, I wanted to take her out more. It was a surprise, when she arrived on Friday night we would drive out to Palm Springs from the airport. The place was not too bad. It was newly renovated but not in a really developed part of Palm Springs.

We had some good times together at first, but by the second day her curiosity got the best of her. She spent the entire day pestering me about the separation period. She kept reassuring me that if I told her the truth, she wouldn’t get upset. She promised.

I struggled with this internally. I wanted to trust her and tell her the truth, in hopes it would make her trust me more. I told her about the birthday one night stand. She flipped, of course. (Later, SY would tell me I was an idiot and should have denied till death.)

We fought most of Sunday. It was terrible, the rest of the time there was spent in awkward silence. Little did I know, I would have many nights like this to come.

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Taiwan Trip

I wanted to marry her. I told her I wanted to meet her parents. I had never been to Asia before, so we planned a trip in April 2014. She had applied for an unpaid leave (essentially an unpaid vacation). The plan was, she would come to LA for a few days then we would fly to Asia together. We would spend a few days in HK, a few days in Taipei, then about 5 days in her hometown. We agreed that we would meet her parents, and I wanted to take that opportunity to get to know her parents and ask for their blessing.

(I never got to meet them.)

When she arrived in LA before the trip, I already knew something was up. At times, LC would be very transparent about what she was thinking about. I remember picking her up from the airport, and the first thing she said was, excitedly: “You have to listen to this song!!!”. She played it for me on her phone, it was some slow Korean love song I had never heard of. (We were into kpop music and Korean dramas at the time). She then said longingly, “It reminds me of Toronto…”. I instantly knew, she was thinking of the Korean ex bf. I just let it slide, but I felt uneasy. The days go by and she would be a little distant.

It was time to fly to Asia. My friend H Dogg and his wife would take us to the airport for our flight. We had dinner together before we left. LC would try to ask H Dogg about me whenever she had the chance. He didn’t say much, he knew she was fishing. Once we were dropped off at LAX, she became a total bitch. We were fighting in the check-in line, and were pretty close to cancelling the trip altogether. I think that was her motive to be honest.

We flew business class, she got us discounted rates. I had offered to pay for my flight, she refused and said she would cover it as a gift. I agreed on the premise that I would pay for the hotels and food on the trip to make it fair. She lightened up once we got on the plane. Perhaps it was familiar for her and she felt comfortable. She mingled with some of her colleagues and got me snacks. We watched movies and slept. Things seemed to be ok again.

We arrived in Hong Kong, we would stay there for a night then go to Taipei. We stayed at her company provided apartment in HK. I distinctly recall seeing her hide her laptop from me when she went to shower. Sneaky. We went out that night, met her friend and her friend’s husband. We had a good time, I felt like maybe the trip wouldn’t be bad after all.

The next day, we fly to Taipei. She had two guy friends she had known since they were little, like brothers to her. I understood that, I never had an issue with these two. However, it got weird that day. The instant the plane lands in Taipei, she was on her phone. She was voice messaging one of the guys pretty much the whole day. We were going to meet this guy later at night, I couldn’t understand why they had to chat, literally, the whole day. She paid me no attention while this was happening. I didn’t say anything until, 6 hours later, we are at dinner, and she’s still messaging him. I got upset and asked why they had to talk so much, especially since we are meeting them soon. She stopped, not without giving me shit, of course.

After dinner, we meet her two guy friends and one of their girlfriends. We decide to just walk around and shop. I kid you not, I felt like the 5th wheel. She was walking with the guy she was talking to all day. I was walking alone for the most part. I figured, they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, let them have fun. I just minded my own business, sometimes they would chat with me. LC would ask me “Are you bored?”, every 5 seconds. No lie. After the 30th time, even her friends were annoyed. They told her I was fine and to stop asking me. I did my best to fake a smile and shrug it off. Eventually, she got upset at me. She ignored me the rest of the night, we went back to the hotel in silence, then went to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep much that night. Partially cause of what had happened, partially because of the time difference. I got up really early, like 6AM. LC was still asleep. I decided to go out and walk around, find a Starbucks and bring her a coffee. I used Google maps and found one maybe a mile away. I headed out and walked the streets. It was empty, there weren’t many people out. I found out the Starbucks wasn’t open until 8AM. I wandered the streets for two hours. While waiting for the Starbucks to open, I texted with SY and H Dogg about what happened the night before. We chatted for a bit, I told them I was wandering the streets of Taipei alone.

I buy the Starbucks, head back to the hotel. LC gets up, doesn’t say thanks or anything. Goes to shower. I decide to check her phone.

I caught her secretly talking and texting with her Korean ex bf. She sent him that same Korean love song with a message that read: “This reminds me of you :)”. I was crushed. I had felt something was up before we left LA, but didn’t know what. Secret phone calls when I was sleeping. The messages were dated a day before she came to LA and continued up until the day before. I waited for her to come out of the bathroom and asked her calmly, what does this mean? She instantly got defensive and tried to turn it on me, like I was at fault for looking. She gave me no explanation, other than “we are just friends, it means nothing”. (I also found out later, her laptop wallpaper was a photo of her and him. That was the reason she hid it from me.)

I called bullshit. I packed my shit, and I left. I called my cousin, he gave me his address and I cabbed it over there. He took me out, tried to keep my spirits up. Met some of his friends, had dinner then went to karaoke. I ended up getting wasted, crying, then throwing up in the bushes. I was a mess. I couldn’t fly home, she had booked our tickets via her company. I was stuck. In my drunken haze, I had also texted and called SY at night to tell her what happened. We talked maybe 5 minutes. I also recall telling H Dogg, his answers were usually pretty short and blunt. “Fuck that”, I believe was his response. Lol.

She ended up waiting for me outside of my cousin’s place. I was drunk, I don’t remember what was said. I’m weak, so I end up going back to the hotel with her. The next day, she decides to look in my phone. Then starts flipping out because I was talking to SY. LC tried to compare it to what she did, like they were one and the same. Sigh. I left again, packed my shit and took a cab to the airport. I told her to just get me a ticket home. I desperately wanted to go home. She refused. I stood inside Taipei Airport, watching hundreds of people passing by. I pondered buying a ticket on my credit card and just flying home. I tried my cousin to see if his wife could help me out. No dice.

I sat on the sidewalk for about an hour, unsure what to do. LC msgs, “come back let’s talk this through.” Sigh. I get back in a cab, head back. We talk things out somewhat, and decide to try and salvage the rest of this trip.

The next day we would hop a bus to her hometown. The original plan was to stay at her parent’s old apartment. However, no one had lived there for at least five years. We tried to make it work but there was no water and the bed was filthy. I end up saying screw it, I’m going to find a hotel on booking.com nearby. It was a nicer one according to their ratings and price. Asian hotels are pretty strange, it was nice in there. But it was setup essentially to be a place for affairs. You could pay extra for private garages to hide your car, in the event your significant other came looking I guess. They also had tons of free porn on the TV and all kinds of mirrors and shit all around. Whatever, it was a nice change from the run down home.

We didn’t do much of anything those five days. We holed up and stayed in, we pretty much just slept, ate, watched TV and screwed. She would take me out once or twice, but it felt very hurried and tense constantly. I felt like I was her mistress. She did almost get caught by her dad as well. We had stopped by her parents home to get her car. In Taiwan, they live in high rise buildings. There are security guards at the lobby, and they recognized her. She told them not to tell her parents she was here.

Somehow, they had said something to her mom. Her mom said something to her dad, he called. She didn’t pick up. He sent this cryptic text, something like “of all people, how could you lie to me. I will cut you off forever”. She freaked. I sat there awkwardly while she was frantically calling friends to try and come up with an alibi. She made a web of lies and her dad believed it I guess. I don’t really know. I felt the less I knew the better. I should have realized she was doing the same to me as well.

The end of the trip she had to work. She had to fly to SFO. We argued over how to handle this, I said I wanted to fly with her to SFO. I ended up flying home to LA alone.

So I guess I can say I’ve physically been to Taiwan, but I didn’t see or do much of anything there other than have drama.

After we came back from the trip, SY became a major problem for LC. I tried to reason with her. Futile. Fine, I tell her I will cut SY off, and I did. You can ask SY herself, she didn’t hear from me in months. She finally sent a text that read “Where the hell did you go? You can’t just cut me off.” I wanted to reply, but I also didn’t. I felt bad, she had been supportive of me when I was down. But I couldn’t lie to LC either, so it was a shitty situation.

July 4th?  We saw no fireworks, we ended up sitting in the hotel room in silence. She was mad about the same old shit that was irrelevant to anything we were doing.

Palm Springs? She was upset about my one night stand when we were separated.

Hotel Del Coronado? Ruined fighting over SY.

I think the Lion King was the only one where we didn’t fight.

The thing that really broke it again was the JT concert.

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Justin Timberlake Concert

I had also come up with a plan to propose to her this year. I bought Justin Timberlake concert tickets a while back, as a surprise. I saw on youtube a couple in another state asked him to help propose. At the time, he had released a song I felt was perfect for us: “Not a bad thing”. I reached out to his website staff to see what it would take to have him do a proposal in the middle or before this song. They never replied, but it didn’t matter anyway because I never got to meet her parents.

I get off work early, I hustle to pick her up and get us to Staples in time. Find parking, all that nonsense. During the car ride, all she can talk about is DbagJ1. “oh this building looks like his brother’s gf’s place”. “Oh I think I’ve been here with DbagJ1.” It really irked me, because it made me suspect she was either thinking of him or talking to him secretly.

Concert starts, we have great seats, should be a fun time. For whatever reason, she keeps commenting to me about this husky girl sitting in front of us. The husky girl had been drinking, and she was dancing, enjoying herself. Whatever. LC brings this up a 3rd time, and I say, as nicely as I can: “Who cares? Let’s just enjoy the concert”. She instantly gets upset, turns her back to me and doesn’t say a word. The rest of the concert is spent like this. She doesn’t even turn to look at me and we sit there in silence. Of course, the song “Not a Bad Thing” comes on. He sings it on the smaller stage right in front of our seats. I was seething mad. I wanted to walk out right then and there.

This would ultimately be the end of our relationship. We drove home in silence that night, and I knew it was pretty much over.

The “Bruise”

She comes to visit as per usual. But this time, as she undresses, there is a bruise. It’s about the size of a quarter, and its on the top of her cleavage. Top of her right breast, like where it would be exposed wearing a bra. I ask her calmly, what’s that? She looks, grasps for an answer, then says: “Oh, this? I was putting on lotion and I guess I pressed too hard, so it bruised”. She must have thought I was a fucking idiot or something. I stared at her in disbelief. “You’re kidding me right? You think anyone would believe that story??!!”. Tell me something crazy if you are going to treat me like a moron. Tell me North Korea shot a missile and it hit you there, but didn’t explode. ANYTHING. I think she got off on what she could get away with. The thrill of doing terrible things then getting away with it possibly gave her joy. She stuck to her guns. Fine, we can play her game. I suggest she recreate it then, if indeed it was self inflicted. She could do it again, prove it. She arrogantly agreed, it’s nothing, she could do it tomorrow. For a month I pestered her about this, she kept putting it off. Finally one day she agreed to do it. She sat at my place while I was at work, trying to bruise herself in that spot. Couldn’t do it. To this day she still sticks to her story, and it bothers me that she couldn’t come clean and at least tell me the truth.

The Strange Text

I had bought her an iPhone 5c on my plan. It made communicating easier when she was in the US.  She was happy, she bought cases for it and all that. In true FOB fashion she got the Chanel perfume case thing. I hated it but whatever. She told me she would only put “important people in her US phone”. Ok cool. One day we are at home, she’s in the bathroom. The phone is maybe one week old, sitting on the coffee table. It vibrates. I glance, it shows the message on the home screen:

Two new messages from Joe.

WHO THE FUCK IS JOE?! I unlock the phone, and look at the message. It reads:

(Loosely translated) “Hey how are you? Sorry about last time, I totally fell asleep”

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I confront her, she gives me the same old answer. He’s just a friend. Blah blah blah. She had never mentioned anything about this guy before. Secondly, he was the only guy she put in her iPhone contacts. Not even her Dad. You do the math.

NYC Guy

This story changed a few times. In the end, it went something like this. After our breakup, she went and met this guy she had met a long time ago. Some guy had hit on her at the airport when she broke up with the Korean. They had been in touch throughout via email. (Surprise). He lived in NYC, she started flying out there to hang out with this guy and some other guys. She basically flew there as much as she could. She met one of this guy’s friends, and they went on some dates. This guy was some rich investment guy or something. One night he invites her to his apartment to watch a movie. They end up kissing and making out, the guy takes off his shirt. She claims she stopped here, she cried because she wasn’t ready for sex. I disagree, maybe if NYC Guy reads this someday I might know the truth. I assume they had sex, then she cried.

He would hurt his leg playing basketball, then ask her to stay at his place for a week while he was stuck at home. Now, I’m pretty sure you would agree, you don’t just invite a random girl to stay with you for a week. You had to have some intimate things happen for that kind of offer to be extended. I wouldn’t ask someone I’m sort of seeing to stay with me unless we had sex already.

Google+ Guy

After the many years of her giving me shit for social media sites, one day I got a notification she joined Google+. Strange. I look at her profile, she has her photo up and she has one friend. Some random guy from NYC. I assumed at the time it was the guy she “almost dated”. Turns out, he was some other guy. The guy used to be in love with her but never got the chance to date her.

Side Note: Some of you guys, let me tell you something. Stop being a fucking lurker. No one likes you, the guy who secretly likes a girl but isn’t man enough to ask her out. I can tell you right now, 90% of the time the girl put you in the friend zone and you just won’t accept it. You will find out the hard way, when you are there for her as her “friend”, then you try to make your move and it gets awkward. Lots of Asian guys are like this, they pretend to be your friend until they get their shot. It’s sad and pathetic, find a single girl and get after it FFS.

I asked her about this and she played dumb. She said she didn’t know how it worked and that he was just an old friend. Later I would find out that she used to chat with this guy on Facebook everyday while she was dating someone else.

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These incidents led me to believe she was cheating on me. Maybe the entire time, maybe just at the end. I don’t know. As I mentioned, she would never post our photos anywhere. Not on chat apps, not on Facebook, not even on her phone. I always felt this was strange. Her excuse was that her dad might see it and she would be in trouble. I later found that the photos of herself that she did use for her profile photos, were ones taken by her ex bfs. smh

August 2014. I decided I couldn’t handle all the spy vs spy bullshit she was playing. I wanted to break up with her. This is where I don’t get you women, at all. She wants to come over and see me. I tell her no. She gets on a plane and shows up. Maybe I should have kicked her out, but I wasn’t that mean. She begs me to have sex with her. I refuse. This goes on, non-stop for two days. She repeatedly tells me it’s just no-strings sex, we aren’t getting back together. I’m human, I give in. We have sex.

The next day, she freaks out, packs up her shit, and just takes off.

I still am not sure what triggered this, I suspect she had my Facebook account password. She saw some photo I took of myself that was set to private and assumed I was talking to some other woman. To be honest, the photo happened when I was taking a shit and was bored. I did ponder using it for Tinder. lol.

In September she contacted me via text messages. She asked if I was seeing anyone else, I said no. She asked why I would break up if there wasn’t someone else. I told her that it was because I was unhappy with her. Nothing else. She couldn’t accept that answer and assumed I was seeing someone. The funniest thing was her blaming me for her lack of “guy friends” now. Hilarious. I’m sure her phones aren’t short of random dudes she can call. If not, she can call any one of her flight attendant friends and get a group of guys in a heartbeat. I don’t have that luxury, as you will see later in my dating misadventures.

During our time together, I met very few of her friends. I heard lots of stories about her peers and friends, about them sleeping with captains or other guys. I guess it just never dawned on me that she could be, too. I’ve come to realize that I think a certain type of people are attracted to this lifestyle. They don’t have a sense of time, life is up in the air then in a foreign land every week. I don’t judge, whatever makes you happy. But if you are dating a flight attendant, I wish you luck. I’m sure there are some who are great girls/guys. But the majority of them are not, at least not from the sample size I have witnessed. Many of them are in sham marriages/relationships where they cheat openly. It blows my mind, the notion of marriage has been disgraced so badly nowadays.

She wasn’t a terrible person at heart, but something just drove her to lie. Perhaps it was past experiences, a disorder, I don’t know.

Half of me is torn because she never admitted to it. You kind of want some resolution on this kind of thing. It sort of feels like watching a criminal run free when you know they hurt you. For a while I would spend nights trolling IG or Facebook to see if something came up (#crewlife, if you want to look, too). I wish I had a login to check her flight histories to see if she was always lying about her whereabouts as well.

The other half eats at me. I felt like if we could have just trusted each other, it would have been great. She was great with my kids, they were comfortable with her as well. When things were good, I was happy. She was everything I wanted in my partner. She did do a lot for me, for that I am grateful.

Unfortunately, sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.

Side Note: I’m pretty sure she has actually been checking this blog, quite frequently. It follows her flight patterns. HK -> TW -> HK -> <work destination> then repeat. She doesn’t know this until now, but I can see it in the site stats. The scary thing is she found this before I even published anything. I suspect she was monitoring me on Twitter. I’m pretty sure she will say everything I wrote is a lie, except for the parts I did wrong. lol.