Checkered Pasts : Falling in Love with a Felon

Yup. I did it. I found myself in a relationship with a felon. And I'm not sure how I feel about it now.

I'm not talking about someone who committed murder or was a drug dealer or something, but the crime nevertheless was heinous, and I still have difficulty processing just how complicated my life could've gotten had I not ended that association. When I started dating after my divorce, I never fathomed that with all the other things I could've had to deal with, that one of the things I'd be facing is "what happens if I find out my girlfriend is a criminal???"

To be honest, when I first started talking to her, I didn't remember the incident from the local news, and it wasn't something we tackled in those early conversations. Years had passed since her story (and her mugshot) graced the papers, news and internet, and even though the incident was not entirely forgotten (how COULD it be?), I didn't put two-and-two together about a lot of the details until some time into the relationship, after taking a few elements from the vague story she told me and doing a little personal research to find everything I could ever want to know (and more).  Yes, within about an hour of watching courtroom videos and reading news coverage of the incident I found myself sick to my stomach and questioning everything.

Imagine this situation, from a strictly black-and-white perspective: someone you care about tells you she had what she claims was an "episode" where she gave birth to a 6-pound baby boy in a restroom stall, passed the placenta and everything, and high-tailed it out of there. If she hadn't been questioned during a hospital visit 24 hours later (due to the nature of her "injuries"), she may have never been caught. She ended up not serving any real jail time, and was offered a plea deal of house arrest and probation in exchange for the parental rights to the child, but she is officially a convicted felon. Now, a few things really bother me about the idea of being told about this incident outside of the obvious (the "obvious" being "what the hell is wrong with someone who abandons a newborn and tries to go about business as usual?")...

First thing, when someone tells you she was in a "state" due to her mental health issues at the time caused by abuse of various types, but her official defense was that (and this is in the court records) she "didn't know she was pregnant" and "doesn't remember giving birth"; some very compassionate people even suggested that the "blood loss" might have caused the alleged memory loss and/or failure of judgment (and her mother used the "amnesia" argument too). But she even tells you from the start that she knew she was pregnant, so one can only presume this person has honesty issues. Allegedly this child was conceived under less-than-ideal circumstances, and one would be pretty sure she simply didn't want the child, at this point; and when the same person has very eccentric/selective ideas about what "assault" was, and she might've hinted that this guy "took advantage" of her, but among the potentially DOZENS of other instances she also referred to as "assault" (including instances where she admitted outright that she put up no resistance and never bothered saying "no" in any form, and just did it to silence begging/whining, purportedly), it's hard to know what to believe there. This is a really, really messed-up thing out of the gate, but imagine if you were told, and read, completely different stories, how that would really weighed heavily on you. What was the whole, real truth? And how do you KNOW?

Secondly, we all have known women with the body type where you "can't tell" they are pregnant. But imagine if this person was NOT one of them. Someone of average build, not overweight, and with no chance of hiding a baby in her frame. When the official statements by family were that no one knew, and how do you buy it? Because while the child wasn't huge, he was still significant enough to have caused a noticeable bump at the very least. And when the boy's father (who was confirmed, and who took custody of him after his release from the hospital) evidently went on record as saying she had even posted things on social media about having morning sickness and having talked about the baby, it raises even more questions and concerns. Even if you didn't know someone at the time of such an incident, and her old social media accounts are locked-down, so you could not confirm, this was obviously in the records somewhere already. But I personally would question how anyone could have been purportedly "fooled" into not noticing her belly. But when the overall account of things by the family was just that, it makes you wonder if that is in fact the truth, or a cover-up attempt. Which brings us to number three.

And number three is that what if this person's parents, who stand vigilantly on their faith and who took "moral issues" with you, me or anyone else (despite never having met us or talked to us) because that person did not subscribe to their religious lifestyle choice, appear to have full-on lied under oath? Now I get it, a parent will sometimes try to not think the worst of their kid, and sometimes will go to bat for them even if they don't 100% believe them, but this was a pretty serious scenario. And I personally could never respect people who cast such strong judgment against me for having a different spiritual ideology yet would break, of all things, a vow of truth/honesty. It'd sobering also to see a video of who very well could've become your father-in-law get into a scuffle with paparazzi all over the internet also, I'm quite certain.

So a situation with any of these these things alone would probably enough to make most folks say "nope...nuh-uh". I suppose in that kind of situation one might be hoping to help her turn her life around for the better, and the first step in that would be to give her the benefit of the doubt. In my scenario, at first she was elated that I was willing to do so, but over time, like so many other things, it was taken for granted, forgotten and abused. Not to mention that also, the deeper discussion of the topic, wherein some details were to be shared/ironed-out/clarified, never happened. She would never allow herself to be in the "right head-space" to have this important conversation, leaving many unanswered questions and speculation about the whole thing. With my now-defunct relationship, I will never know the truth about the events leading up to her crime, or whether any of her testimony in court was legit or all bogus. I will never know if her "bad head-space" was real or just a phony cover-up for doing something selfish and awful. And I will never know if her family outright lied in the court of law (and just as importantly, to their "God") about their knowledge of the incident.

From one point of view, our breakup really hurt me, because I'm not gonna' lie, I fell for this chick. Hard. Ultimately there would be compatibility issues (stagnating one-sided sexual routine, failing communication and some covert narcissism that she might not even realize that she has, among other things), but at one point, I saw myself being with her for the next half of my life. The relationship ended on a bad note, because (as mentioned in a previous blog) she became the center of her own universe (albeit a black hole instead of a star), and when I would neither orbit blindly or be sucked into the vortex and continue to let her feed off of my psychic energy, demanding instead that WE find solutions to BOTH our issues, that was unacceptable to her. I divorced from one single-sided relationship, I wasn't about to commit to another, no matter how much I cared about this person.

From another point of view, I dodged one helluva' bullet. Think about it: I would've had to live not only with the stigma of being the partner of someone with a VERY public scandal marked against her name, but everything that goes with it. She's faced a lot of issues with job hunting, because some companies don't want to hire a felon (and that is somewhat unfair, and unfortunate, but reality), and that could affect shared finances in the future among other things. After she showed her true colors, I was not planning on having her around my son, and any single parent out there should respect that. If someone is not stable or mature enough to be a positive influence (or at LEAST not a negative one), you cannot bring them around your children. And from a parenting perspective, imagine how your ex would respond if you were knowingly bringing essentially an unhinged person (especially one with this background) around your child.

In closing, I know everyone deserves to be heard, and to an extent, even those folks who have made really bad choices. Even those with a knack for bad decision-making and flaky judgment. I'd even go so far as to say that someone who has made some of these significant screw-ups should still be offered a chance to explain themselves and be given some benefit of the doubt. But when they choose not to discuss it, and when they hypocritically let emotional roadblocks and trauma affect their everyday lives but they refuse to actually do anything about it, or their story does not entirely match the facts, I lose all sympathy. Actually, to be more accurate, by that stage I've stopped caring altogether. This was DEFINITELY not a dynamic to dating that I anticipated or desired, and it's frightening. The lesson I learned is to be assertive and insist on finding out everything you possibly can about the other person. You can't learn too much, and you can't afford to be surprised down the road. So get to know that new "bae" very well before making the commitment, people. You can't afford not to!