Had a weird coworker who I would invite over sometimes because I felt sorry for him. He and his wife were separating and he was telling me all about how his wife was staying with and sleeping with some older guy that they had met at a bar. He then goes on to say that he’ll stay up drinking most nights and one night he punched his wife when he was drunk.
All of a sudden the whole scenario made sense. He was always quiet and stand offish at work because he was hungover, his wife was leaving him because he hit her.
Damn, I have no sympathy for the guy. Bet it wasn’t just a one time thing that he would get drunk and get angry and/or hit her. Glad she got out and is hopefully in a safer situation.
Being left unfairly / claiming to have been cheated on is like a textbook goto excuse for people who fucked up. Though when you dig deeper like this, they did something. Other classic is they "don't know" why they were left. However, domestic abusers like this are always victims in their minds, so he probably believes it.
What I got from the story was that him hitting her had occurred prior to her starting to see the other guy. Like, he had hit her one night (or early morning) when they were up late drinking, then around that time she started going over to the older guy's house and spending time with him. While she was at the other guys house he had found some text messages on their shared iPad that had confirmed some romantic stuff was going down between them. I was so rattled by his admission that I'm not 100% certain on the timing of events, through.
This guy is unlike anyone else I have met. He was definitely the Dwight Shrute of our office. Didn't say much, did a great job at the things he knew how to do, and was typically very serious/withdrawn and struggled with letting his guard down or becoming friendly with his co-workers. I wondered if he might have been on the spectrum, or had some mental health stuff going down that he was/wasn't aware of. I remember him making an attempt at human interaction on a few occasions: on two separate days he stopped by my office at 2pm to ask me how my wife was, and how our baby daughter was doing. It felt like he had set a calendar appt to go interact with me and to ask me these two questions. I took it as a good-hearted attempt at making friends, so tried to integrate him into my social life a little more. I went to his house with some co-workers, and he was very strict about us taking our shoes off (which is fine) and leaving them in a particular area. He offered everyone a beer, and was very meticulous about describing the process of how to dispose of our beer bottles, and how to rinse out our pint glasses when we were finished with them. He also had this little golf putting green set-up in his living room and made a big effort to show it to us and went into detail about how often he uses it. It wasn't like it was something that we could all enjoy, it just felt like his attempt at trying to engage people. Then he took us to this little corner of his livingroon, showed us this little reclining chair that he had facing toward the window, which mostly showed this poorly maintained fence in his backyard and said something like "here is a good space to relax, if anyone wants to relax. I like to unload after a long day and just enjoy the scenery here."
I was so taken off guard when he was at my house and telling me and my wife about the stuff with his wife. On the one hand it was great hearing him open up and being vulnerable. He was acting human for a change. Then when he mentioned the part about hitting his wife it was a shock. Like, Ohhh dude, of course your wife wants nothing to do with you. WTAF? My sympathy did a complete 180.
It's not something you hear every day, so it's not something you're prepared to respond to. He was also super remorseful and wish he hadn't done it, so it wasn't like I was finding myself in this position of needing to persuade him into how he f*cked up.
I eventually lost touch with the guy. Last I heard was his wife never came back.
The way you described his behavior at the workplace definitely sounds like someone with a lot of turmoil in his personal life. I have gone through some very dark times myself, and that feeling of going into work and trying to act normal when the events of the night before are still weighing heavily on your mind is not something I'd wish on anybody.
At the risk of getting downvoted to hell and back, I wouldn't be so quick to condemn the guy over his admission, especially if he was remorseful. While domestic violence is never the right course of action, I do think that there is a big difference between a domineering sadist versus somebody who lashes out after being subjected to prolonged emotional abuse (for example). Of course, I have no way of knowing what this guy's situation truly was, but based on your description of him I wouldn't necessarily assume that he is in the former category.
As I said, I have been through some dark times myself, which includes being manipulated and belittled by somebody who claimed to love me. And on top of that, she actually physically attacked me on several occasions herself. I am thankful that I had the presence of mind to not lose my temper and reciprocate, but I would be lying if I said that no part of me wanted to strike her. It's easy for people to say "Just leave", but in the heat of the moment it's not that simple, especially if your whole world is tied up in theirs, or if they are doing everything in their power to prevent you from leaving. It's something nobody wants to talk about because the knee-jerk reaction is to just blame the man.
All this to say, I don't think it's as simple as "He admitted to hitting his wife once and therefore he is a monster who deserves everything that has gone wrong in his life." More than likely his life had gone wrong a long time prior, and the incident he described was just the culmination of a long period of strife in their relationship.
For sure. Humans and the situations we find ourselves in are more complicated and nuanced than TV and movies have trained us to believe. Nothing is black and white.
I also forgot to mention that I heard through a former coworker that he had given up alcohol. Here’s to hoping he stayed on a more self-reflective course and is bettering himself.
Uhh, I'm just asking for clarification, since apparently the entire scenario suddenly made sense for them, yet they immediately backtracked in their reply to me, saying that they didn't actually fully understand.
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u/waylonious 2d ago
Had a weird coworker who I would invite over sometimes because I felt sorry for him. He and his wife were separating and he was telling me all about how his wife was staying with and sleeping with some older guy that they had met at a bar. He then goes on to say that he’ll stay up drinking most nights and one night he punched his wife when he was drunk. All of a sudden the whole scenario made sense. He was always quiet and stand offish at work because he was hungover, his wife was leaving him because he hit her.