After he suddenly abandoned her, Chimene Suleyman bonded with other women who had also been tricked by her ex-partner
The day I found out, I was sitting in a bar alone in Brooklyn. A woman on the other side of the world had drawn a picture of my ex-partner’s face and posted it on Instagram. Beneath the stark black and white image of him, she had hashtagged his name and alongside it came the warning. Beneath that, women who had previously not known each other were now commenting. “So sorry he did this to you, too,” one woman wrote.“Took $5,000 from me. Lived with me for a year while he impregnated me and stole from other women. He’s a piece of garbage and I bet you’re wonderful. Be kind to yourself as you work through this.”
The comments all read the same. Tens of thousands of dollars stolen, items from their homes gone, women who had become pregnant, suicide attempts, dead relatives, lie after lie after lie, until finally the man was gone. The women, it seemed, had all found the post the same way: abandoned and confused, they had searched his name on social media looking for answers. Beneath an illustration of their ex’s face, they had finally got one. This is how I, too, had come to understand what had happened to me. How a relationship that had started with so much potential had descended into horror.
