Two Years of Lies,How I Destroyed the Man Who Played Me

I stumbled across a post where some guy was complaining that his blind date was too independent and impossible to win over.

I was about to leave a comment when I noticed a top-voted reply underneath, buried in a flood of angry responses.

【Chasing women isn't that complicated. My wife used to call herself a strong, independent woman too. Said she'd never get married. Guess what? I locked her down anyway.】

【Bro, let me hand you the playbook right now.】

【With women like that, the key is simple: in the beginning, you agree with everything she says. Validate her. Once you've got what you want, none of it matters anymore.】

Maybe because the replies calling him a pathetic simp were getting too loud, the commenter switched gears and added another post：

【Guys, relax. Just tell them what they want to hear. It's not gonna kill you. Once you're married, you call the shots anyway.】

【Take my wife. Before we got married, she acted all tough and untouchable. A few sweet words from me, and she gave up the bridal gift, even threw in her own money just to marry me.】

Then he posted a photo of a woman doing housework, shot from the side. He called it "showing off the finished product."

I glanced at it, and my blood went cold.

It was me.

——

I looked over at Ken Mason, sitting on the couch. As if he could sense my gaze, he lifted his head and smiled at me.

“Sorry, babe. I'm so useless I managed to throw out my back just wiping down a cabinet. We said we'd split the chores fifty-fifty, and now you're stuck doing all of it……”

Looking at that same guileless, good-natured face he always wore, I felt a thread of doubt coil tight in my chest.

Was I reading too much into this?

Ken didn't seem like the kind of person described in that post.

Or was he just that good at pretending?

But what came out of my mouth was：

“It's fine. Just rest up.”

I walked into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and opened the post again.

The commenter had updated：

【Bro, listen. My wife was even harder to chase than your blind date. Total ice queen act. I tried to do something nice, bought her a bottle of water, and she'd calculate the exact cost to pay me back.】

【But the more uptight and proud they are, the easier they are to control.】

Someone shot back：

【Talking a big game, but that's still simp behavior. Real men attract women with their own charm, bro.】

The commenter didn't get mad. He just kept writing：

【You guys don't get it. Let me put it this way: chasing this type of woman is way more rewarding than chasing anyone else. They won't take a single thing from you for free, and they'll bend over backward to give you something in return.】

【For example, early on when my wife and I started dating, I took her to a movie. She took me to an expensive restaurant to make it even. Every holiday I gave her some little gift, and she'd go out of her way to pay me back double.

【That alone got me a $5,000 gaming rig, free and clear.】

Through the glass kitchen door, I could see Ken tapping away at his phone, grinning from ear to ear.

【And that's not even the best part. When we started talking about marriage, I just dropped one line: "Bridal gifts are an outdated tradition. Babe, I don't want your worth reduced to some price tag." She didn't ask for a single penny. Married me just like that. She even insisted on splitting the wedding costs fifty-fifty to prove she was an independent woman. And after the wedding? She does whatever I say.】

Replies came fast：

【Yeah right. What woman is dumb enough to skip the bridal gift AND split costs with you?】

【This is obviously some single dude making stuff up.】

【Seriously, what's in it for her?】

With all the people calling him out, the commenter got defensive and fired back：

【You people don't know anything. At first, even I didn't understand what my wife was thinking. Then I saw her texts with her best friend.】