So a man comes into my office and he is distraught and suffering the results of his fiancé’s having left him. As two people couple up, they grow together, getting more attached to each other as time passes.
The more they grow together romantically toward a common goal, in this case, marriage, which fewer and fewer couples entertain as a possibility these days, the more emotional ties they build between them. It’s as if they are being emotionally sewn together by a giant needle and thread or rope of emotion.
Ideally, this would be taking place between both parties but in some cases, one develops these ties, while the other? Not so much, as is the case in this gentleman’s circumstance. The story continues.
A friend of the man reports to the man that he witnessed his fiancé getting out of another man’s car in a local supermarket parking lot. His fiancé kissed the driver of the other car, then proceeded to go into the supermarket. As the other man drove off, the witness and friend jotted down the license plate of the departing man.
Concerned for his friend who was engaged to be married, the witness arranged to relay the information to his friend, including the plate information of the automobile.
Confused and dismayed, the man let the information obtained from the witness roll around in his head for a few days, trying to make sense of it all, which left him only with more unanswered questions the more he thought about it.
They, one day, unable to help himself he took his fiancé with whom he had been cohabitating for a couple of years for the term of their engagement, out to dinner. Confronting her, he asked her about the information that had been related to him by the witness/friend, whose identity he withheld.
She, the fiancé, denied everything, except that she had gone to the supermarket to “get him groceries” for meals she cooks for him. She further accused his unidentified friend of wanting to break them up and accused the husband-to-be of having an affair. She maintained that he was accusing her of having an affair to justify his own. The man said there was no infidelity on his part, that he only wanted her and no one else.
Obviously, at an impasse and not wanting to create a scene at the restaurant, they agreed to sleep on it and decided to talk about it after he returned home from work “tomorrow,” the following day.
The next day, the man returned from work to find his fiancé and her belongings gone. No goodbye note, nothing.
He tried to locate her via family and friends and was met only by responses regarding calling authorities and getting restraining orders, as his fiancé had already planted the cover story of his being an abusive and controlling manipulator from whom she was afraid for her life, so the friends and family pledge to help protect her from the man.
Hungry for answers, only armed with a copy of her driver’s license, a sales receipt from the supermarket, and an unknown man’s license plate, contacted a private investigator.
The results from the investigation concluded that the license plate number did belong to a man who she may have had sexual relations with, but if so, only the one time. This was not a long-term affair. Then, there was an extra sizeable retirement account. She had one built from her service to the State, and the other from an unknown origin.
The last bit of information, the one that held the biggest impact on the man, his fiancé was an active prostitute and had been prior to their engagement, throughout their cohabitation, and ever since she had left.
The investigator provided him with the current address of the former fiancé in a neighboring state.
In an attempt to reach out to her, he sent her a note stating a time and place for them to meet not far from where she lived. He showed up. She did not.
Now, the man is in my office wondering what he should do next, as he is still very in love with her. He is aware that she has had a traumatic past and sees the prostitution as a potential coping mechanism for the pain from her past trauma.
I asked the obvious question, “And you weren’t picking up any clues?”
He says, “No, I never knew I was engaged to a prostitute.”