My ex-husband was a very kind man when I met him. Sometimes I think it was an act to trap me in marriage. Sometimes I think he changed over time. I’ll never know for-sure because he lies better than anyone I have ever met.

When we were dating, he flirted with me at parties.

This is important because when a man is clearly into a woman, other women notice. My ex-husband and I attracted many people who wanted to be part of our relationship; even if only for a moment. This was possible because he treated me with kindness and respect, and he worked hard to be charming. We had threesomes, got invited to play parties, and generally had a really good time.

When we got married, he began to disrespect me.

It started with ignoring me in favor of flirting with other women online. Then, I threw a kinky mixer at our house in hopes of getting him to behave like he did when we were dating. Instead of flirting with me, he spent the entire night flirting with some girl he just met.

Obviously, the result was that no one had any sex that night.

The girl didn’t mind being flirted with, but she had no interest in a man who would disrespect his wife. The way to turn a woman all the way off is to disrespect other women in front of her. You’re basically saying: “I’m only flirting because you’re new. If you were mine, I’d treat you like I’m treating my wife right now.”

Then he had the nerve to complain that:

• I no longer felt like topping him (because he was disrespectful to me).
• No women wanted to play with us (because he was disrespectful to me).
• We didn’t get invited to parties (because he was disrespectful to me).

I gently tried to explain the situation. I tried talking to him first, but he acted very haughty and refused to admit to having done anything wrong. I tried writing him a letter, but he refused to discuss it. I tried writing a blog post about it, but he wouldn’t read my blog.

I continued to try to communicate, explaining that when he ignored me to flirt with other women online or when he wouldn’t even acknowledge me at a party, it made me feel bad. As a Domme, I do all the work. I set up the scenes, I create the headspace, and I make the magic happen while he sits there tied up or in a submissive position. I explained that I simply could not get into the headspace to do that much work when he refused to treat me with respect.

For a while, I thought it had to do with the Madonna-Whore Complex. Psychologists often say that men cheat because they don’t want to do “dirty” things with their wives (who they wish to see as pure). The theory is that there are some things a man will only do with a stranger.

When I thought that was the case, I tried to get him into role play. I thought that if we were different people, then we could overcome the problem. I suggested we “meet” at a bar, and that he “sneak me into his house” while “his wife was asleep.”

He refused to discuss it, saying that he would never consider doing any kind of role play. He also said we could not talk about it.

I tried writing love letters with lots of sex in them. I tired sending him porn. I tired all kinds of things to communicate. And let it be said that he did “act nice” sometimes. Though -to be honest- the strain in his voice and movements was so obvious that I couldn’t reconcile it with him saying things like “you look nice.” It was clear he was only doing it because I told him to be kind, not because of any genuine feeling.

In spite of this, I convinced people to spent time with him. I outright asked friends to sleep with him. I got him play dates. I continued to try to act the way I did when we were dating, while he continued to find new ways to be horrible.

For a while he would point out other women to say they were attractive, but never anyone that looked like me. Only Asian women. I am mostly Polynesian and Swedish. I can’t change my genes. It’s not as though I could have tried to look more like the women he pointed out. I’ll never be Asian. So, what it amounted to was really just him finding another way to put me down and make me feel bad, and then still expect me to want to top him in bed.

So, what do you do when a partner changes? When they will no longer do the things they did before?

Well, we were polyamorous, so I tried to just date other people and be his friend. I have some long-standing relationships that I enjoy with people around the world, so I put energy into them. I flew to Las Vegas to give a talk on kink and sell my romance novels. I worked on my blog and things that were important to me.

Yet, I never gave up on him. I kept thinking that he was just going through some things and that we’d be able to sort it out when he had a little more emotional maturity. I waited, and we had kinky sex that wasn’t a power exchange. Just little things. I’d choke him. He’d fist me. Whatever. It wasn’t bad sex, and I liked him as a friend and companion. I thought that was enough, I guess. But all along, I missed when he flirted with me and treated me with such care and attention that unicorns flocked to us and we got invited to every party. We had that energy that everyone wants, and I thought we’d get it back if I kept trying.

There were moments when we did. He bought MDMA from someone on his ship, and took it. I don’t do that shit, but I was happy to have him being flirty and sexy again for once, so we played out a fun scene with me as the Domme. It was a great night.

Once a sex friend came to visit and he flirted with me because she was there, and that made me feel sexy enough that I did a scene with both of them. It was her first time trying out the Domme role because we duel-topped him, and she had a blast. I did, too.

Any time he flirted with me and treated me like he had when we were dating, I was able to get into the headspace to be a Domme. But it wasn’t often enough to make me happy, and I tired to communicate this in every way I could think of. I started out kind and patient, but after ten years I started to get snippy and even angry. I couldn’t understand how he still hadn’t grown up yet, and why he was still behaving like a spoiled child who thought he could treat me like dirt and then expect to be spoiled like a good sub.

Some of my friends think his actual personality changed from a series of brain injuries that he had in 2016, 2017, and 2023. Some of my friends think it’s because he was raised by alcoholic failures who were abusive to each other but stayed married, so he simply had a mindset that wives are supposed to be treated like shit (because it’s what his father did to his mother). Some of my friends think straight men simply can’t handle serious relationships or talking about their feelings.

I don’t really know what is true; only how much it hurt.

I do know that if you find yourself in a situation where your partner changes and stops wanting to do the things you need, leave sooner rather than later. I shouldn’t have wasted all those years on him. He was never worth the effort. I spent a fortune on gifts for him. I spent so much time trying to help him to be better as a human, and to teach him kindness and love. I wasted years of my life on a man who -I can see now- never had any value at all. I truly think he only pretended to care about me when we were dating.

For those who feel unsure in their relationships, there were things that I now understand were warning signs:

• I said it made me feel bad when he flirted with other women while I was there, and he kept doing it after I said it hurt me.

• I explained to him that his poor treatment of me was the reason that unicorns no longer wanted to sleep with us, and that it was the reason I no longer felt into being his Domme. He didn’t make any genuine effort to treat me more respectfully in front of people or in private.

• I would tell him exactly what I wanted and even explain why, and he seemed to always do the exact opposite (it felt like out of spite, though at first I made excuses for him in my head, and then later I thought maybe he was just dumb).

• I always dressed up and wore kimono and makeup around the house because those things give me confidence. He whined that it made him uncomfortable and kept asking me to just buy some pajamas like a normal person and stop “trying so hard.” Then when I did as he asked (after two years of protesting it) he told his friends that I laid around in pajamas and stopped even trying to be attractive.

• He did little things to undermine my confidence and make me feel bad, like only saying women of different races were attractive, but never a woman that looked like me.

• When I tried to talk to him about anything at all, he responded with anger.

People can see this list and say: “Well clearly he’s a loser! Why did you stay? That’s on you!” But the truth is, I just kept thinking he would grow into himself and see that I wasn’t his enemy eventually. Like, we started out as a team, you know? And then after he trapped me in marriage, he began to treat me as the enemy.

I thought: At some point he is going to wake up and see that I am on his side. He’ll want to be a team again.

I had hope. That’s really my main problem. Some people suffer from depression, but I have the opposite problem. I have an excessive amount of Serotonin and Dopamine. I am a cheerful person. In fact, my favorite thing to do in public is try to find one thing to compliment about each person I pass. I’m so happy that it often annoys the crap out of people, and I can’t really tone it down.

People think it must be awesome to be naturally cheerful but it’s not. Always seeing the best in people means being screwed over and disappointed a lot. Having high expectations for the world means being let down. Thinking you can love people hard enough that they will eventually be better never actually works (in spite of what my brain tells me). You can’t make people better by seeing the best in them and trying to build them up. My ex-husband never got any better as a person. In fact, the more I asked him to be better, the worse he treated me. (You might say, the more he failed, the more he failed.)

I’m not saying you should give up right away if someone used to do things you loved and now, they won’t.

Try sending each other porn, writing love letters, talking it out, and other communication first.

Many times, communication can fix things.

However, I’ve learned now that the main sign that you need to walk away is actually very simple: If you try to communicate with them and they respond with anger, you need to leave.

Every time I tried to talk to him to solve any issues, he would gaslight me by saying he was not doing the things that he was doing. Then, he would admit that fine, he was doing those things, but it was actually fine and my feelings weren’t valid. Then he would say fine, maybe I had a right to be mad, but my bringing it up hurt him so we were even. (Men being hurt by you saying they hurt you.) And so on.

It was textbook abuse, but I am hopeful and loving and it makes me a fool. Don’t be like me. Get out the first time they get angry at you for raising an issue and asking to discuss it.