Ooma and I were in court on Monday. We had each applied for restraining orders on the other – she accused me of stalking her (ridiculous) and me accusing her of dating violence (not ridiculous – she physically assaulted me twice in November). Both were denied.

So how did things get this bad? Let me try to recap. She will have a different account, of course, but I am very honest and this is how I see it. Besides, this is MY blog. She can give her side on her blog, if she has one.

First, when the TS8 ended, on 23 September 2022, I expected that we would have a post-mortem meeting where we would have a heart-to-heart discussion of what had gone wrong. She refused, so I was left to wonder about her strange, cold behavior on the auto trip (TN8/TS8). But while I was absolutely certain that the romantic relationship was over, I believed that we could continue as good friends. After all, we traveled together for over 5 weeks after we acknowledged to each other, in Worcester, that we could no longer be a couple. We continued to have fun during those weeks and finished the trip with very little rancor. But she shocked me by declaring that we could not be friends. Then she further shocked me by launching into an email and text exchange that was dripping with acrimony.

I couldn’t understand any of it – why we couldn’t be friends, why she was so cold on the trip, why she was insisting on an acrimonious split. She refused to discuss any of it, so I was left very puzzled. But there were moments when she was very friendly. For example, for a time I called her at bedtime and read a book to her – an activity that we both enjoyed a lot while we were together. But then there were other days that were not so sweet. And some that were just horrible. A roller coaster for sure.

We bumped along with some good days and some bad days without making a lot of progress in clearing up my bafflement as to what had gone wrong. Then there were 5 days in November that really encapsulated our post-breakup relationship.

• Nov 5. We had a back-and-forth text conversation about our time together. It wasn’t particularly enlightening. But then I mentioned that I thought it was possible that she had deceived me as that would explain a lot of the coldness that I had seen. Maybe she knew before the trip began that we were done as a couple and she went on the trip anyway to have a cheap way to visit friends and family in New England? Well, she blew up. Even the possibility that she had deceived me enraged her. She issued a long series of harassing text messages, then arrived at my RV, unannounced, berated me and physically assaulted me. It was humorous at the time – she threw about a cup of water on me – but took on a more sinister hue later when her behavior got much worse. After she left that night we continued to text until 4am. It was mostly contentious but did resolve a few of the questions I had about her behavior on the trip.
• Nov 6. After the nasty ending to Nov 5, I was a bit surprised when she was as sweet as could be the next morning. I was making arrangements for my Thanksgiving trip to Oregon and she offered to drive me to the airport. And she asked if I would drive her to a medical appointment (yes, I would). But the good times didn’t last and she once again launched into a long series of abusive text messages that afternoon.
• Nov 7. Her son attempted suicide so her attention was elsewhere. I was supportive – I even offered to pay airfare to CT if she felt she had to go. She declined. I read to her again at bedtime.
• Nov 8. The day began with text messages in which we thanked each other for the reading the night before, but nothing else until evening when there was an intense series of text messages and phone calls which ended with her driving to Punta Gorda (about 25 miles) to fetch me away from a group social event (which included Marlene, whom I had just met) to take me to her condo for an attempted reconciliation, I was hoping it would be the long-awaited post-mortem for the relationship, but it turned out to be a demand from her that we resume the relationship on her terms. I said I would sleep on it. She got very angry and shoved me out the door, screaming “I HATE YOU!”
• Nov 9: Early in the morning I sent her an email declining her reconciliation offer/demand. She replied with an email entitled “I hate you” and stating that we were “done” (which I already knew). This was followed 13 minutes later by an email in which she requested that I continue to read to her at bedtime. Whiplash.

Not much happened the rest of November. In December I was surprised to receive a Christmas gift from her – a CD of music by Tommy Lee Cook, owner of the Buckingham Blues Bar (BBB). A thoughtful gift or a twist of the knife (because she had told me that she did not want me at the BBB)? You decide.

January was pretty quiet, too, until the 25th when brother-in-law Ray came to visit me. Both Ooma and I, while in Worcester, had told Ray about our wonderful blues bar and he wanted to experience it. I sent Ooma an email informing her that Ray and I would be there that night. That shouldn’t have been a surprise and I expected no response. But she replied with vitriol, telling me that she had stolen compromising photos of me and would show them to Ray, to staff and to other patrons of the BBB if I brought him there. I responded with the disgust that I felt and took him anyway. Ray, to his credit, approached her and greeted her in a friendly way. She was civil and did not show him any photos.

I should mention that by January I was dating Marlene, who also loved the BBB. She had requested, at least half a dozen times in December, that we go there to dance and listen to the music. I had put her off, not wishing to provoke Ooma. But denying my current lady out of fear of offending my ex is a losing strategy. I had no choice but to go back on my promise to Ooma and go to the BBB with Marlene. We went there at least 4 times before January 25 and Ooma was there twice (January 25 being the third time we were together at the BBB). There was no apparent conflict – Ooma sat at the bar in the back and Marlene and I sat in front, near the dance floor. But I suspect that the sight of me dancing with my new woman incensed Ooma.

After the ugly email exchange on January 25 I sent Ooma one final email to inform her that her attempt to intimidate me into staying away from the BBB was a crime (theft and blackmail) and that it was ineffective – I intended to continue to attend the jam sessions at the BBB. Perhaps even more frequently.

Four days after that email she filed for the restraining order, claiming I was stalking her, based on a single incident of a chance encounter in Fort Myers in October, 4 months prior. Ridiculous, of course, but it was an action that required a response, particularly since her application narrative was very little more than a venting of her anger over the mistreatment she felt she had received at my hands on the 10-week trip north, all of which I denied (I felt I had treated her very well, considering how cold she had been to me). The account was salacious and filled with lies and amazing fabrications. But I finally had some clarity as to the underlying cause of her coldness on the trip. She admitted, in her filing, that she had deceived me. Yes, she admitted that what I had suspected way back in November – and which had thrown her into such a rage that she assaulted me – was, in fact, true. But it was much worse than I had suspected. I thought the deception began when the trip started or shortly thereafter but she admitted in her filing that it began within days of our meeting. That the entire relationship had been based on a secret plan to “fix” the few things that prevented me from being the perfect man for her. The coldness I had experienced on the trip was the result of my resistance to being “fixed.”

After receiving the notice of her restraining order application I decided I needed to counter by filing one on her for “dating violence”. It was thin, too, and I didn’t expect that it would be approved. But it was based on the two actual assaults by her on me – throwing water on me on November 5 and shoving me out the door on November 8. Within days of my filing I received a notification from the owner of the BBB that I was permanently banned. This, of course, was done at Ooma’s request, was likely the result of lies she told him and was clearly retaliation for my restraining order application.

The two applications for restraining orders were denied on Monday but the ban from the BBB remains in place. The original explanation given to me by the owner – that we both had legal actions pending and he felt that one of us needed to be excluded (and he chose me because Ooma had been a patron longer) – was clearly a lie. I informed him Monday that the restraining orders had been denied and asked if I could return to the BBB. His response: “Absolutely not!” He has the right to exclude me. But I have the right to pressure Ooma to get him to reverse that decision. That is my next battle.

In my nearly 6 months with Ooma I learned things about her that disqualified her from being the “last, best relationship” of my life that I had hoped she would be. Topping the list (until replaced by “betrayal” on January 25) was her inability to resolve conflict. She seemed to have absolutely no ability to discuss, negotiate or compromise. She claimed to have been married for 37 years (a claim which I doubt as I, as an amateur genealogist, have been unable to locate a marriage certificate). How can a person who was married that long be incapable of dealing with conflict? The inability to deal with conflict was on full display on January 25 when a simple notification that I was bringing my brother-in-law to the BBB resulted in her going “off the rails” and launching into betrayal, theft and blackmail. Was that an appropriate response to a simple conflict? I think most normal, rational people would say “no.”

But I also learned, in my time with Ooma, that she was often irrational. Another behavior that disqualified her as a partner was her explosive responses to benign comments. Examples:

• While traveling north on I-95 south of Richmond VA we found ourselves needing a rest area. She searched on her phone and said that there was one named “something something SOUTH”. I said – more to myself than to her – “Hmmm… I don’t like that word ‘south’”. I had had experiences, in my years of RV travel, where a search for a rest area often yielded one on the wrong side of the road and was therefore inaccessible. Her response was to scream at me “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS ARGUE WITH ME?” I tried to explain, calmly, that it wasn’t an argument and wasn’t even a disagreement; I simply didn’t like hearing the word “south” in the rest area name. She got very angry and said I should take her home RIGHT NOW if I was going to argue with her all the time. In retrospect, that would have been the best choice.
• In Worcester MA we were on our way to my favorite ice cream place on a lovely summer day. She asked to stop at a post office so I was thinking about where a post office existed on the route when she pointed at a pizza shop we were passing and said “How is their pizza?” I took a quick look, saw that it was not a place I had ever been so I said “I have never had their pizza.” Her response: “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE?” I was shocked and pulled to the side of the road. I asked “What part of ‘I have never had their pizza’ is negative?” She said: “It was the look on your face.” I was on my way to ice cream, thinking about post offices but somehow, in her very strange brain, the fact that I had never had their pizza had revealed a major character flaw in me.
• In St Louis I was treating her to a wonderful Italian dinner. We were having a very nice time in a very nice place when she brought up, as a topic of conversation, serial killers. She asserted that there are very few gay serial killers and mentioned John Wayne Gacy. I thought about it for a moment and decided that she was right. I said “Yes, very few. There’s Richard Dahmer, of course” as one further example in support of her assertion. She became very angry, accused me of “one-upping her” and refused to speak to me the rest of the evening.
• On the way from Chicago to St Louis, I was using my phone as a GPS and it froze. She then entered the address of the hotel into her phone. But I gave her the address from memory. My memory is sometimes faulty so when we stopped for her to use a rest area, I decided to verify the address. Ooma had booked all of the hotels for the trip and kept handwritten notes that were clipped to a road atlas. I took a look, verified that I had given her the correct address and put the atlas and notes back beside her seat. When she got back into the car she immediately asked “WHY WERE YOU LOOKING THROUGH MY STUFF?” I said that I wanted to verify the address of the hotel. She said “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU. WHY WERE YOU LOOKING THROUGH MY STUFF?” I was baffled then – and am baffled to this day – as to what other possible reason there could have been for looking at her hotel notes. The next day, as we were getting into the car to go to that wonderful Italian dinner, she once again asked me why I had been “going through her stuff” the day before and I once again said it was to verify the address of the hotel. This was an example of how she was incapable of believing me even when there was no rational alternative to the truth.

Other behaviors that I observed in her: an INABILITY TO TRUST, PARANOIA and NARCISSISM. She equated “disagreement” with “argument” and viewed any disagreement as being disloyal to her. I think if you could remove her skullcap you would see a bubbling cauldron of mental health issues.

The realizations that Ooma was not the person I thought she was, that she was capable of acts that I thought would be impossible for anyone I cared about and that I had let myself be so thoroughly deceived have been devastating to me. I will never trust anyone so completely again. And I will be more cautious in future relationships. There were hard lessons. But lessons that won’t be forgotten. Or forgiven.