My Husband’s Mistress Canceled the Food Order for My Daughter’s Sixth Birthday Party

- The Night Before

Photo by Carolina Heza on Unsplash

Itwas 5:55 pm. I had just dropped my five-year-old off at a Trader Joe’s parking lot where her father was waiting in a parked car for her, a neutral territory only those going through a not so amicable divorce can appreciate. As I was getting back into my car and he was strapping our daughter into the car seat in his car, he yelled, “I called to pay for half of the food order, and they said it was canceled.”

It was less than 17 hours before my daughter’s 6th birthday party held in a park next to an amazing café that was to cater it.

“What?”

“The food for tomorrow. For the party. It was canceled.”

“I didn’t cancel it. Why is it canceled?”

As he looked me directly in the eyes, he shrugged his shoulders and stared a little longer than necessary, which in retrospect, I thought odd, still not sure what it meant.

I jumped in the car and pulled up the website for the café. They closed in four minutes, and the party was tomorrow morning at 11:00 am, in a park, next to the café, and apparently, there wouldn’t be any food for the kids or the adults!

Yes, I could have made some things that night, but this was a café we went to all the time; my daughter requested it and was looking forward to the thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and almond joy coconut chocolate chip scones they were known for to share with her friends.

When you have a child going through a divorce, you don’t want to let them down more than you already have; even when you aren’t going through a divorce, you try your hardest to keep your word, so when they’re older, they know the value of someone’s word and the value of their own.

I didn’t like to let her down, and the separation from her father was the first big blow to my child that every parent tries to avoid. Guilt was mounting.

I dialed quickly, held my breath, hoping they would answer the phone at 5:56 pm on a Friday night. Someone answered. He was annoyed already.

I told him the situation. He said, “yeah, someone canceled it.”

Me: “Do you know the name of the person who canceled it?”

“No. Hold on, I’ll ask. (seconds pass) Yeah, it was someone named Melissa, she said she was your assistant.” (This is my husband’s girlfriend’s name. Yes, she had the temerity to use her real name.)

I couldn’t be mad at the café. This is LA. People have assistants, although, they aren’t usually the woman who is fucking your husband of ten years.

I’d like to say that this was something unusual that happened during my three-year divorce, but this was not. Underhanded, manipulative, toxic fuel poured on the fire that was our divorce nearly every week by a woman I didn’t know, never met or ever had a conversation with, but whose three children from two other men attended my daughter’s school was the norm. Frankly, my husband didn’t know her well, either.

Nor had I ever met someone so unaware and willing to inject herself into a situation she has no business putting herself in the middle of, the separation and subsequent divorce from my husband, and what my daughter was or was not entitled to eat for her 6th birthday party. Ironically or not, this woman runs a website that deals with spirituality and has the word “evolved” in the title of her business.

Fortunately, during my not-so-short life, never had I come across a person who suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder. Or at least if I’ve met someone like this, I’ve had the good sense to run the other way. I know no one close to me who has the unmitigated gall to involve themselves in something they have no right to have any say over, putting themselves squarely in the middle of something that the very act of doing so would make the situation worse, until this woman. Then I got a full education in dealing with a narcissist. An education I didn’t want or have time for.

According to Jodi Clarke, MA, LPC/MHSP,

Narcissists find it difficult to build or maintain connections with others because of their manipulative tendencies and lack of empathy. They often feel entitled and lack compassion, yet crave attention and admiration.

After I convinced the bakery to make the canceled order, they were willing to come in earlier the next morning to get the quiche for the adults baked, the scones and the PB&J made, I wrote Melissa a pointed text saying we needed to have a chat (it was about time) after the party about not interfering with my parenting or my child again.

She didn’t show. Like, to the party. She did, however, invite two of her girlfriends who did show, with their children (no, my daughter didn’t know them either). My husband thought this was perfectly fine and normal. Instead, she went to the hospital with stomach pains the morning of my daughter’s party. Her children came because they were now a permanent fixture in my daughter’s life, with her dad parenting them most of the time, after knowing this woman less than six months (lack of boundaries). Her two friends, who I have never met before or since, stood there with their arms crossed the whole time while giving me the stink eye at my daughter’s 6th birthday party in the park.

I can’t take credit for putting her in the hospital. She was always going to the hospital for stomach problems. According to my daughter, who was with my husband every other weekend, they often took this woman to the hospital. I found out when my daughter told me about these outings and asked me, “why would someone go to the hospital all the time for stomach problems?”

“No idea, honey. I hope she is OK.” (through gritted teeth)

Here are some of the elements of narcissism

• They find it difficult to build or maintain a connection with others. She was already divorced twice and not 30 years-old yet.
• Manipulative tendencies — When she met my husband, she told him she saw me crying at my daughter’s school and asked me what was wrong and “hugged me.” Never happened. I don’t cry in public. And I would never allow a stranger to “hug” me. My husband knows this about me, and after some convincing, admitted it was probably a lie she told him.
• Lack of compassion — She laughed at my child because my five-year-old was having trouble leaving her father and getting into my car during one transition. My daughter was having an understandable temper tantrum due to the upheaval in her life. Her father was suddenly living with three children she knew from school and not at home with her.
• Feel entitled — Who the fuck cancels the food order of the person who’s husband you’re sleeping with. Isn’t that bad enough? Why cancel the woman’s food order for her daughter’s birthday party on top of that?
• Feel entitled — After knowing my husband all of three months, he invited her into our home while I was on the east coast. She took a dress from my closet. They ransacked my attic and took my daughter’s art and baby mementos that I had lovingly packed in boxes and labeled, did I mention, while I was trying to process my marriage falling apart IN ANOTHER STATE. Sadly, my husband took my childhood stuffed animals instead of our child’s — he had no idea which ones were our daughter’s.
• Crave attention and admiration — Constantly having stomach problems and having my husband (with my child along for the ride) take her to the hospital since the day they met.

My ex is not a narcissist. His main issue that crept into our relationship and to the detriment of our marriage is he does not know how to set boundaries for himself. And because of this, over promises and underdelivers with friends and family, pissing off everyone is his can’t-keep-his-word wake.

I’m still not 100% sure my husband didn’t know she had canceled the order when he gave me the five-minute warning on that Friday night.

You see, my ex is a people pleaser; death to him is someone being mad at him or not liking him (even as he is trying to leave and blowing up your life). I couldn’t be more different. I think “nice” is an overrated trait. I prefer kind and reliable.

Even though we weren’t getting along then, he may have felt bad about the canceled order (as he should have, after all, he claims to love his child: why would he want to negatively impact her, but hey, he was doing so much of that already) and because come on man, it is a shitty thing to do to anyone to cancel the food order for a child’s birthday party.

If he knew she canceled it, and then told me, as somehow to *not* be the bad guy, and please both parties, which is typical of his personality, that is the most fucked up thing I have ever heard, and I’m so grateful to not be married to a person who has so weak of a spine that they would do that.

The way he handled his divorce from me cured me of any regret about our marriage not working out and my culpability in its failure. When you divorce someone, you find out who they are.

Disclaimer: Names have been changed to protect the guilty, horrible, narcissistic-borderline-personality-disordered woman.

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