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My first truly serious relationship after my divorce, now almost 20 years ago (man, time flies!) was with a woman I’ll call Aria.

I was in my late thirties, she was in her early thirties. She was the exact Caleb female physical template I am most attracted to: very short, blonde, small body, big giant ass, brown eyes.

Aira was smart, funny, and one of the few women in my entire history with a sarcastic streak that could keep up with mine.

She was a single mom and had a daughter who was about the age of my daughter at that time (around age 9-10 or so), which I considered a negative but not a show-stopper. Her relationship with her daughter seemed strong and healthy (as much as is possible when you’re a single parent, that is, which is never optimal).

Aria was amazing. We had fantastic personal, emotional, and sexual chemistry. We were two peas in a pod and feel in love with each other reasonably quickly (at least for me; I fall in love very slowly).

There was one thing that bothered me though: she constantly complained about her ex-husband.

Of course, it’s not unusual to hear people complain about their exes. It’s what normal people do, unfortunately. (I never do that but I’m not normal.)

What was odd about this, at least to me, was that her divorce from her ex was ten years prior. I mean, shit, shouldn’t ten years be enough time to get over whatever anger you felt about a divorce or break up?

Around the same time, my divorce was quite recent, so if there was any of us who should be complaining about their ex-spouse, it should have been me, not Aria.

Yet I never talked about my ex-wife because I didn’t care.

I emotionally got over my divorce within three months. Yet here Aria was, constantly bitching and complaining about her ex-husband from a decade ago.

And she wasn’t just complaining about ex. She was angry about the entire situation.

Ten years prior when they were married, her husband at the time had an affair as soon as their baby daughter was born because long-term monogamy doesn’t work.

Once he was caught (and men always eventually get caught because they’re stupid about cheating), he explained to Aria that he was in love with this new woman, left Aria, divorced her, and married the new woman.

This was clearly a traumatic experience for Aria and I think it would be for any person, especially a young, inexperienced, traditional, mid-Western, right-wing woman in her early twenties which is what she was at the time.

Ten years later, her ex-husband was still married to this woman… and Aria was still single.

And ten years later, Aria was still furious about the entire thing.

She would complain about everything he said, everything he did.

She would carry on long arguments with him over stupid little shit over texts and emails, like arguing over which coach her daughter brought to his house. (To be fair, he was indeed a super-anal touchy bastard and started a lot of these stupid arguments himself, but she would fully engage in them when he did.)

She had his wife’s name in her phone as “Home Wreaker” and his name as “Asshole.”

And so on.

While all of this was going on, I wasn’t even talking to my ex-wife because I had cut off all contact with her many months prior. That’s why I was happy. And again, I never brought her up in conversation.

I didn’t like Aria’s bullshit with her ex, but I just blew it off as her one negative quirk and didn’t give it any real thought. I was still new to this woman stuff back then.

As soon as Aria and I started getting really serious, she ghosted me. She just vanished, stopped seeing me, and stopped responding to my texts. There was no argument, nothing weird, and no warning. She just did it out of the blue.

This is very rare for a woman to do. Almost always when a woman leaves you or does a LSFNTE there is either a clear inciting incident you can point to or you can see it coming from a mile away.

At the time, not understanding what was going on, I was very confused.

The good news is that I have a 94% return rate with women who leave me, so several years later Aria came back into my life.

We started seeing each other again and it was great. She still bitched about her ex but I still didn’t care because of all of her other positives.

In talking to her, I started to realize that she had a habit of either staying single for long stretches or, at best, starting a relationship with a man she liked and then ghosting him. I wasn’t the only one she had done this to.

I spoke to her daughter about it and she verified all of this. Interesting.

Predictably, as soon as we started getting really serious, she ghosted me again. Same exact scenario.

All of this was a very long time ago. To this day, Aria is still single (I’m still Facebook friends with her and her daughter so I verified it this morning).

Little did I know that all of these things; her bitching about her ex-husband from over a decade ago, her staying single, her ghosting me (and one or two other guys) as soon as things started getting serious, etc, was all because of the same problem…

She was still in love with her ex-husband.

Most people don’t understand that if you absolutely hate someone of the opposite sex, to the point where you’re thinking about how much you hate them all the time, that means you still love them, or at least still have strong positive feelings for them.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t care, and you wouldn’t give this person a second thought.

This was the huge contrast back then between Aria and me. She was still furious about a divorce that had happened 10 years prior, and I didn’t even think about a divorce I had just had a year ago.

This is because I no longer loved or had any feelings for my ex-wife, but Aira was still holding strong feelings for her ex-husband.

As a matter of fact, there was a similar contrast between my ex-wife and me.

I moved on from my divorce within three months, and never brought up the topic of my ex-wife after that unless someone else did first. Yet my children reported to me at the time that my ex-wife was still constantly complaining about me to them and everyone she knew… for five years.

During those five years, she didn’t date anyone while I was having the time of my life dating all kinds of women, including some serious MLTR relationships.

It took my ex-wife about 12 years after the divorce before she started dating again. I was getting laid within 6 weeks after the divorce (literally). And I had a serious relationship (Aria) a year later, in addition to being non-monogamous and dating many women.

If you think just women do this love/hate thing with exes, wrongo! Hordes of men do this too… perhaps even YOU.

I have known many guys who are still regularly complaining about their ex-wives or ex-girlfriends three years or longer after the breakup or divorce.

Hey dumbshit, this means you still like her.

This “bitch,” “cunt,” and “demon from hell” you keep screaming about? You still love her. You still probably want her back. You still have a variation of oneitis for her.

In other words, you’re being a pussy and you need to move on.

This also means that if you get into any serious relationship (high-end MLTR or OLTR) with a woman who is still regularly complaining about or is regularly upset about any ex from her past, you’re making a huge mistake.

She still loves that asshole, and moreover she probably loves him as much or more than she loves you. Yes, I’m 100% serious.

If she’s an FB or standard MLTR then none of this matters and she can complain about whatever she wants. I’ve had tons of FBs who complained about her ex-guys (or current guys!) and I didn’t give a shit.

But attempting a serious relationship with a woman like that is just going to blow up in your face, at least eventually, no matter how awesome she is.

And that’s the thing. Speaking objectively, Aria was fucking awesome. Other than this one problem, she was damn near a perfect match for me, and I for her. She was great! So sometimes this can happen with otherwise high-quality women.

One last thing. Some of you might be thinking that this is one of the dangers of dating single mothers so if you just avoid them you’ll be fine. Incorrect again!

Over the past 18 years, I have encountered many other “Arias” and the vast majority of them didn’t have any kids. This has nothing to do with whether or not a woman (or man) has a kid.

So if YOU are like this, you need to stop being a fucking child and move on.

If SHE is like this, make sure she’s just an FB or low-end MLTR and that’s it.