Seventeen days before the tragedy of September eleven, two thousand and one, a chilling event unfolded in a tiny New Hampshire town. A pilot weaponized an airplane, intentionally crashing it into his own home. The attack made national news. Who was this pilot? Why would he do such a thing? Now the pilot's wife is speaking out. Joe Fonda, who was married to him for twenty years, says their relationship was characterized by emotional and financial abuse, infidelity, and instability
from the very beginning. Less than forty eight hours before the plane crash, Joe obtained a restraining order against him and fled with their eight year old daughter. Joe's terrifying story is a powerful reminder of what lurks when toxic relationships end. In fact, ninety percent of survivors experience post separation abuse, which can escalate quickly and violently, even if the perpetrator has never been violent before. Ending a relationship
doesn't end the danger. From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which
may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individual participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Joe, it is such a pleasure to have you hear. Your story is actually one of the most profound and extreme examples of post separation abuse I've heard. Let's talk about the man you ended up marrying. So how old were you when you met?
Sixteen?
How did the two of you meet.
I was out for a walk with a girlfriend of mine and we were going by Union College, which is close to my home, and we were just like, I've never been in a fraternity house. Have you ever been in a fraternity house? Like, let's go check it out. We just wandered in, thinking it was like going into a Starbucks or something. I don't know what we were thinking, but we started going up the stairs and just maybe a few steps up. This guy stops us and says, hey,
excuse me, ladies, can I help you? And he was smiling and was like we were just looking around and he's like all right, and he let us go, and then when we came back down the stairs, he introduced himself and it was my husband to be Lou. We stayed for dinner and we chatted and called my house the next day and asked me out on a date. Okay, so we went out to dinner. I made it very clear before when we were even talking that I had a boyfriend, Gino, and I wasn't looking to date anyone.
He said, I have a girlfriend too. I'm like, okay, you know this is this is fine. We can be friends.
Okay, So how did how did the relationship unfold from that point going forward?
So it kind of went off the rails pretty quickly, actually, even just as friends. So he had wanted me to go to a fraternity picnic maybe a couple weeks later. So at the time, Gino was still my boyfriend, although it was a long distance relationship, and I said, oh no, Gino's coming to visit so I and he was clearly not happy about it. Though. Gino came with a friend and my friend and I went to meet with them
and they had to go home for something. I came back where we were supposed to meet and he was gone, and there were no cell phones back then. There was absolutely no way to get in touch with someone back then who you didn't know where they were. And I was distraught. I was totally abandoned by Gino. I was irrationally looking all over town on foot with my friend and the only person I knew with the car was.
Lou Okay, and lou Is the guy from the fraternity house.
Yeah, gave me a ride home. But then the next day he called. He wanted to talk about what had happened. And from my perspective, I had just called a friend
for a ride. From his perspective, this woman that he was dating had blown him off on a date, gone on a date with someone else, and then called looking for free transportation, and instead of it being a conversation, he was driving fast and erradically, and like at first I was apologizing for what I did because I saw it when he said, all right, you did this thing to me, and I saw it, and I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, You're right, that was kind of a crappy thing for me to do.
So the crappy thing you did was called him for a ride because you had been abandoned by Gino, right? Was that why he was driving fast? Did that seem like a reaction to that? Because he was so old?
He was mad about how I treated him, So he was embarrassed that I didn't go on this picnic with his friends. I was scared to death. He wouldn't let me out of the car. He did take me home, but I shut the door and like, have a nice life. I thought I was never going to see him again.
Okay, and you're sixteen, you're young. How old was Lou at this time?
He's five years older than me, So.
Twenty one, sixteen to twenty one big developmentally, it's big in every which way. You were still a kid in many ways. He was coming into adulthood. So you have a lot going on. You've been abandoned by one guy who was having a tantrum, and then and honestly, this other guy was having a tantrum.
Good point.
I got to say this, though, Joe, that fast driving thing, that's actually a red flag. Everyone can pay attention to There's actually some interesting research on this that these kinds of antagonistic narcissistic personality styles are associated with dangerous driving, and that can show up early in a relationship because somebody's mad, or even if they're showing off or they
get mad about another driver. And I'll tell people, if you see someone driving real angry early in a relationship, when it's easy to get out, get out because this is a marker for a bunch of other stuff. So you slam the door, get out of the car with Lou. You think you're never going to see him again. So then what happens.
Then little time goes by, I get a call he needed to come back to Schenectady because things weren't going well with his parents and they were kicking him out and he needed a place to live, and did I know a place that he could live? So I went and looked for him, you know, and then tried to get back in touch, saying how I found this place, that place. I called the house a few times, left messages with his family, didn't hear anything back, and I was like, hey, whatever, and then went about my way.
By that time, I had broken up with Gino.
Interesting though to me, throw the tantrum, drive the car that. But then he doesn't think anything much of calling you up, because I think that's actually a big ask of someone didn't find a house, especially a sixteen seventeen year old right to say, hey, help me find a place to live. It's a big it's a big thing to ask. And so you do, and he comes back in September. You've broken up with Gino. So what happens now?
So what happens now is I can't explain why I thought it would be a good idea to go visit at the fraternity house was totally emotionally a wreck, and I wasn't looking to have a new boyfriend, at least not consciously, and for whatever reason, thought that Lou and I could be friends.
Okay, Okay, So I want to frame that a little. Okay, because you were sixteen years.
Old this time. I had turned seventeen, just turned a whopping seventeen.
Not thirty. You're sixteen, you're seventeen. There's a guy who's older than you. You had a nice encounter. He clearly throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. You saw that drives erratically asks for a favor. You do it at sixteen? He doesn't communicate Joe. The vast majority of adults wouldn't pick up those red flags. Okay, so you're getting into.
It with him.
This still doesn't sound like a relationship to me.
No. It was after a few weeks of him being back at college and he knew I wasn't seeing Geno anymore. He started to press for like, well, so why aren't we going out? Now you're not seeing him anymore? Okay, this is I didn't have a good reason, and so it kissed for this first time okay, and started acting more like boyfriend girlfriend.
Okay, let's fast forward a little bit. You do get engaged to this person? How did that happen?
Following year, a girlfriend of mine wanted to go on a cruise and that would be fun. Agreed to go with her, and obviously Lou was not. Now it's obvious that he would not be happy with me doing such a thing, right, He pitched quite a few fits about me going on this trip, but I didn't care about his complaints. I was going. This was something I wanted to do. I had known tension of being long term
in our relationship. So I went on the cruise and while I was on the cruise, I got paged getting paged on it.
The overhead overhead Joe, please come and there's a phone call for you. Yeah, okay, yep.
When I got the call through, it was and it's weird. It sounds like a sonic thing. I've never even heard it on a on a movie kind of what it sounds like. But it was like, will marry me. It's like a really bizarre sound on ship to short calls back then, I was like that was like but like
he was barely speaking to me when I left. He was so mad because you were going on because I was going on the on the cruise, and so my reaction was like, you know, this was it was dread But what came out of my mouth was yes.
When you think back to that, Joe, are you able to connect back into yourself in a way emotionally to think about where that yes came from?
Even for that amount of time, I had the sense that he was dependent on me.
Ah, okay, okay, he.
Was dependent on me for his well being, so whether it was talking him down from being upset about something, so he was always upset about something with somebody. A People do what they do, and he would react very strongly to whatever people would do, And so there were all kinds of offenses that I would run interference to keep things from bothering him. In the first place, I helped him with school work. He wasn't doing well in school. I would if he was reading a book for a paper,
I read the same book. I took a lot of the same classes. Basically, even though I was going to school, also, I was helping him along. He was estranged from his family. He was all on his own. His dad had stopped supporting his school financially when he hurt his knee, and he had a stop playing football, so financially I was also supporting. So I was working full time and going to school full time. I felt very needed. And it's not like in a good way, Like it's not like, oh he needs me.
No, no. I understand the trauma bond can often begin through the belief that we need to help someone. For somebody as young as Joe, who subsequently did feel needed with time, she then felt responsible for him, which would keep her stuck. She had a role and function in this relationship, and this sense of responsibility is often what underlies people getting stuck in unhealthy relationships, and so since he needed you, it seems like that was a big
driver in you saying yes. I guess the corollary that would be, what did you think might have happened if you said no?
Just like saying I'm going to go on this one week cruise was a big deal, right, And there's so much anger. Yeah, so many fights, like he would get physical and he wasn't physical with me. He was physical with stuff, you know, rip stuff, bang on stuff. Yeah, you know, just visceral feeling from these these fights. I knew that if I said no to getting married, it wasn't going to be okay, have a nice life. I knew all hell would write loose.
Okay, So you're you're seventeen, Okay, he just turned eighteen eighteen, she that makes him twenty three. You're kind of taking full responsibility for another adult who sounds like a petulant, tantruming child, who is reacting strongly, who is always angry about things, who's huffing and puffing, who is financially reliant on you. I'm gonna say it again, an eighteen year old girl and I guess my question then, is there was some fear. Were you afraid?
Well, I had seen what happened when he doesn't get in his way, and it's not pretty. Anytime he was mad at somebody, he wasn't shy about showing his disappointment and his anger and replacing blame. And if he would have just said, you know, I'm just going to leave you behind, I would have been I would have been okay with that. I wasn't afraid of him leaving me ever, right, right, I was never afraid of him leaving me.
You were afraid of his reactions.
I was afraid of his anger.
It's interesting early in the game, you already saw what that post separation abuse was going to look like. If this guy doesn't get his way, the consequences are so dire that it's easier to appease him. And that's where I call sort of tantrums as manipulation. One of the things in it I take fault with the field of even health of well, a person has a choice when someone's having a tantrum, they can step away. But it's not that simple, right, There's all the psychological dynamics in
us of we like to feel needed. We want to feel helpful. We might feel obligated if you're on family roles, gender roles, whatever. And having these tantrums became a form of manipulation because over time you would live in your life to keep the tantrums at.
Bay, especially the ones that seemed to be my fault.
Correct which over time I'm sure everything became your fault. Oh yeah, okay, so you get married. Once you got married, what was your relationship like?
So he got accepted to Duke University to their MBA program.
That's a big deal.
Helped him write his application.
So you got accepted to Duke University for their NBA program. Is what happened? You own that?
So? Yeah, helped. I worked and he was going into school like I used to just I would wake up in the morning and just have this help me, Like like my first thought in the morning was like a silent scream of help me.
You waited a while to have children. You didn't have a child until twelve years into the marriage. You get pregnant, And can you tell me about the day that you found out you got pregnant.
Yeah, so we had been we had been trying for a few months and then I did pee on the stick and it was positive, and I was like so excited. And Lou was getting ready to go on a trip. He was a consultant at that point, and so he was traveling a lot, and by this point I knew he was cheating a lot. He came in the bedroom and I came out with the thing and I said look, and he's like, oh, okay, oh yeah, just oh.
And I said, oh, you showed him a positive pregnancy test after you'd been trying for months. And his reaction was.
Oh oh, And I said oh. And he goes, all right, well, I don't know what you congratulations? What do you expect me to say? And then he gave me a little peck and said I gotta go, and he went on his trip. I think the part I haven't really explained is he was also very charming. Okay, so I haven't really explained the forward facing persona. When anybody would meet him on a professional basis, he's the big smile, glad hand. He was an expert in his field, so to speak,
normal people when they would meet. He was laughing and joking around about things. So he wasn't just this grumpy jerk until somebody irritated him.
Okay, so he would be charming and charismatic. People were drawn to him. I maybe did that play a role in him back when he was at Union and he was a student.
He had it back then. So when he met my parents, they were impressed.
Okay, all right. So he had this charming charisma and only when he would be frustrated or disappointed would this kind of crack show up, and then he would be quick to react.
Yeah, so you know, doctor Jackyll, mister Hyde, Mister Hyde would come out when SOMETHINGE didn't go away.
Did other people see that?
People saw one or the other for the most part, So there are plenty of people who never saw that side of Lou that was angry. Like a lot of times he would bring it home and then other times he would flip out in a store.
Okay, okay, all right.
So he would occasionally flip out a in a public setting and I would be like, you know, dial it back, you know, okay, we still need to get our food here.
Kind of thing, do you feel like? Mostly he brought it home.
Mostly he brought it home, or he was covert about how he would get his revenge on someone.
In these twelve years. What I'm hearing is there wor some good times Mister charm would show up and you would have fun. Was every morning waking up with dread for twelve years before you found out you were pregnant?
Oh gosh, no? No, okay, now did We did lots of things. We would go hiking. Okay, within a certain week. There would be good in a bad time.
But so there were good times. There were also these tantrums. You get this lukewarm reaction from him, and you're pregnant. Now tell me about the day then your daughter was actually born.
He was miserable throughout my pregnancy. He projected a horrible life to follow. I was gonna get fat. Oh, I was gonna get ugly. We were gonna have He called it a life of crumminess ahead Okay.
Was he not in on the wanting to get pregnant in the first place? Or was that just was that something you wanted and he agreed to. Was he ever enthusiastic about there? I'm a little bit confused because it seemed like he was into it.
He wasn't to it before we actually got pregnant. Okay, even during the process of getting pregnant. He was one hundred percent into it, were right, But that was a light switch moment when I showed him the stick and interesting, and then after that he just got increasingly down about the whole thing.
So it was more of that withdrawal again. I mean, it almost feels like that that pattern got reproduced again there as well.
I was sure he was going to leave me.
We will be right back with this conversation. Oh okay, all right, I was okay with and you're okay with that. Despite we had fun hiking and there was this charming guy by and large the dread woman from the early years of the marriage that never left. So the entire marriage, it was sort of I kind of wish this guy would just go away, but I'm not going to end it. Yeah, okay,
so you have a baby. Did you stay in the same house that you were in or did you ever have to do anything like that like look for a house together.
So that whole process was a complete disaster. Every house that we looked at was unacceptable, and from silly little things like, oh, that has a dead tree in front. If they would leave a dead tree in front, what kind of things are they hiding inside? The house. You couldn't have neighbors being too close to you. You couldn't have it can be the best house in the neighborhood, couldn't be the worst house in the neighborhood. You can't have
neighbors too closed. And I picked a spot in the middle of an eleven acre lot, and that's where we determined that we could build. So we were living in temporary like a condo.
And how did all of that go awful?
The builder at one point sent it an email saying that he was no longer willing to talk to Lou, or communicate with Lou, or see Lou. He was micromanaging everything on the property, and then he would blow up, explode to the point where at one point he damaged his vocals courts by yelling so much and thought he broke bones in his in his hand from like pounding his fist while he was yelling at the guy.
Okay, so you're back to traditional reactive tantruming, Lou, how are you feeling emotionally?
I was furious with you, angry. I was angry. I knew he was cheating in all kinds of every every port in the storm he was he had something going on wherever he was going.
So he was still traveling for work, and so he.
Was constantly on the hunt for people locally and people like if he had a client out in Pennsylvania, he'd be hunting there. If he had a client and he had one in Oregon, he had one in California, he was hunting all the time. And you know, so even though he was telling me, you know, no, I'm not doing anything, but if you keep pestering me and nagging me about this, it will happen. You're gonna make this
a self filling prophecy. So yeah, at this point, he had taken up bodybuilding as a as a hobby and he found a new girlfriend. Okay, but he wasn't hiding it from me anymore.
Okay.
So it went from undercover relationships that I knew about but for whatever reason you probably know, I don't but didn't call him out on him, to in my face relationship.
What does it mean? In your face?
Like like I knew and we talked and he knew I knew, and he actually would make me clear out from our poundhouse sometimes for she had an open relationship with her husband, so it was kind of sanctioned on her side at first, but then when they got to chummy, then her husband was calling it out.
Okay, So I need to understand this. You're renting a townhouse, you're building a house, you have a daughter, you're married. You didn't call him out on past infidelity, so there's no conversation there. There was never like an explosive I know you're cheating. Nothing. He would cheat, You knew it, and you look the other way.
For the most part. Yeah, I would call out the hunting behavior and he would deny the hunting for somebody okay, and then say, if I kept it up, I was going to cause the relationship. Okay, God be my fault.
I understand that.
But no, I didn't even bother saying okay.
So now he's got this new one. You're all living in a townhouse. He's asking you to leave the townhouse so he can have his girlfriend over to have sex.
With her because she made him happy, because.
She made him happy, Okay, so now there's no not seeing it like here I am. This is to me, the read I would have on this as anyone listening to this is he is trying to make you leave the marriage.
Yeah, and it gets worse.
Okay.
He was like, oh, you know her husband is a bad guy, because you know he said. No, She's like, this is abusive. She should actually move in with us, and we should you know, pay for her to go to college.
Okay, Holy sister wives, Like, what is happening? So he is saying, I need to take this in. Okay, I need to up till now I gotta say. I'm like, okay, this just sounds like an unhappy relationship until let's run the girlfriend mentorship program in our house and move this woman in pay her tuition. You're not in an open relationship.
No, how are you not voluntarily?
How are you responding to this?
I'm pushing back, saying no, we can't be doing this, and then he would get mad and he would blow up, and then I would get beat down verbally, emotionally. You know about how horrible his life is and this is the only thing that makes him happy. And you know, because we're living in a townhouse, how horrible.
I almost feel like a student in question. Okay. In any story like this, okay, a person who is so enamored of their side person would move out. They'd say I've met someone I love them or I fall in love or whatever, and I'm going to go rent my own place by.
Will.
My lawyer will be in touch with you about the details. I've heard that story before, and it's a devastating, heartbreaking story. The idea that someone's leaving you for someone else is the ultimate in abandonment. I understand that story.
He's asking you to adjust to this correct And he didn't want to leave, and I don't think she wanted him. I think she could see what an unpleasant person he could be, so she was getting all the good stuff. But I think she could also see how he was acting towards me. So it's not like she was wanting to leave her husband. Lou asked her to leave.
Her husband to move full time into your townhouse with you and your daughter, a new house.
Because a house. Yeah, And then he asked me to talk to her and encourage her to do so.
I just, okay. So here's the thing.
You can't pick it up.
You can't make it. I mean, my head is spinning with the utter lack of empathy. You know. I've heard variance on this, the father having an inappropriate relationship with like a living nanny or an au pair, right, But this is a person he gets into a relationship with. But it seems like there's almost zero self awareness that this is a completely inappropriate thing to ask for that. Did you understand what I'm saying?
Like, Oh, he thought he was better than most husbands that go out drinking and go to bars and hang out with their friends and go place, you know, go to sports games. He thinks.
This is so having a girlfriend that you move into the house is on the same level as having a beer with somebody and watching a Patriots game. Better than Yeah, it's not planet Earth, at least not the United States planet Earth.
And if I cared about him, I would want him to be happy.
Okay, so this is manipulation on such a high level. I've got to tell you you might have broken a new sort of world speed record on navigating narcissism. And that takes some doing because we've heard stuff here. But the idea that you are in a presumptively monogamous marriage with someone who was asking you to do this, how were you feeling at this point?
So this is when I started having spells of lightheadedness and my heart was racing, and I would feel dizzy and I would have to like suddenly sit down. I thought I was having a heart attack. A few times I went to the doctor thinking, all right, there's something wrong with my heart, and lou knew that I was having these physical reactions. The physical tests came back negative for any issues. Then they asked her, well, what's going
on in your private life? And I talked about the stress of moving, trying to find a house and move and build a house, and that we've been fighting because of the stress of the move. And then they said, you have anxiety induced depression.
It sounds like you're having panic attacks. I mean those lightheaded, dizzy and heart attack moments were panic.
Attacks, and that those episodes were panic attacks. So they basically said, do you have depression, anxiety and you're experiencing panic attacks? And then they started medication.
Did you mention to the medical team you're working with And by the way, my husband is having an affair and wants to move his affair partner into the house while we remain married. Did you share that tidbit with them?
No?
Okay, because that's a big one, right, and it's interesting you didn't it really really is, What do you think drove that decision to not share that piece of it.
It's embarrassing even to talk about now, because I objectively I would say that anybody would just say screw this and leave.
See. I want to put your feet to the fire on that, Joe, because this isn't about you. This is about that somebody thought this was okay to do this to you. You're absolutely right. A lot of people would say, come on, now, get up, find your you know, get out of there. What's wrong with you? You know? Absolutely not. I think I am having this shocked reaction because what this person did was shocking and remorseless and unempathic. And when we are in the wake of that kind of behavior,
we have panic attacks. It's almost as though a short circuiting in the system starts to take place. We're experiencing this cataclysmic fear, but we can't give word to it. And so I fully, fully empathize with the sense of embarrassing that one would feel about sharing this. But I really want to put a fine point on this. You weren't doing anything. You were living a life, and there's
nothing foolish about what you did. You had a family, you had a child, and we had a guest On this podcast named Doctor Jennifer Fried talks about betrayal blindness, that when we are betrayed, there is a not seeing it that can happen and not acknowledging it, and she even uses this interesting term of it woshes away. Just you see this guy. There's no not seeing this he is,
I'm going to move this person in. And while there was certainly this moment of in the doctor's office not wanting to share with them the wholeness of what was happening, there was a placing it aside. So how did you talk about this in your marriage?
So we would go through these cycles where I would say, all right, you can't keep doing this. This has to stop. I need to have some self respect and you need to show me respect. I understand this is what makes you happy, but it's not fair to me. Imagine being me. And then he would just blow up and beat me down and then claim that I had set him up for this, that somehow I was responsible for him being in this position of having this relationship that he now
cannot live without. And then he would claim that I had said everything was okay and that I was fine with it, and I was like I never. I never gaslighting, never ever, never ever did I ever? So yes, I had a couple of times I went along with it because you beat me down.
And what did going along with it look like?
Like me leave in the apartment?
Oh, I see, And so somebody's gaslighting you. Someone's manipulating a eure upside down, so you'll sometimes almost seem like it's agreement right, like you're you're in it. That's actually that's the end. That's the end of the gas lighting cycle. Very few people get all the way down into the sort of the bottom floor of the whole gas lighting process.
I remember just like literally being on the floor during these arguments and him, you know, beating on a chair, you know, and insisting that this was my fault and that my emotional problem goes way back and it has nothing to do with him or her, and that it's you know, this is all about like when I got pregnant, that you know, my issues date way back then and
it's got nothing to do with now. And like, yeah, right, I agree that I've had emotional issues for a long time, but this has taken it to a whole new level.
He's making it about your emotional issues at this point, your emotional issues, emotional issues, tracking them back to the pregnancy. You're even sitting here saying I acknowledge I have emotional issues. You do realize that the vast majority of these emotional issues sound like they were caused by being married to a man like this. Oh okay, so I'm not you know what I'm saying.
I didn't.
Now you weren't present with the history of anxiety and depression by your reports even growing up. He's telling you you're the one with the problem. So where do you go with that?
So I wrote a long letter because like whatever I say, he said it, I didn't say it. So if I send an email, then I'll have it in writing and I could like pull out my documentation and prove no, this is what I said. See it says it right here. So I wrote this really long letter saying you know exactly how I felt about everything. I acknowledged you know my part, to the extent that I have a part, but I let it happen. I acknowledged my part and said this isn't healthy for me. It's not good for me.
I can't do this. If you want to pursue this, I will be a good co parent. Basically with you, I wish you all the best. I want you to be happy. I want me to be happy too, though, so I cannot live this way, okay, And so don't be thinking that I approve in any sense. I never have. You know, there are times when I said do what you want, but I didn't say I'm okay with it. It was a very loving letter.
Writing long letters in order to feel heard is a telltale sign you're being gaslighted and maybe dealing with a narcissist. Remember, narcissists are all about power, control and domination. Arguing just to get your point across can be destabilizing and unsettling, as they use tactics like gaslighting and fast paced, pressured speech to overwhelm and dominate the conversation. They always try
to win the argument. If you find yourself writing long letters or text messages to explain yourself, it may be a sign that you are in a toxic relationship.
His response was, first of you didn't even acknowledge that he got it, And then he said, oh, yeah, yeah, I got that. We decided that there's too much pressure on us, so we're not going to see each other anymore. Like this means you're going to go underground basically.
So he's going to go seek out new supply. I mean, because that's what these other women are. They're sources of narcissistic supply or you know that. That's really what it sounds like. So this is the too much pressure is basically your letter saying if you want to pursue this, pursue this, but I'm out, and him saying then, well, that's too much pressure. In essence, he can't have both things. He can't just basically openly have this relationship in this
townhouse in your presence. Meant that he actually had to make a choice. So he said, Okay, I'm going to end that relationship with her. How did that feel?
I was so proud of my letter and I I really thought, okay, this is he's going to like have his aha, you know, like I guess it now, I see what I yeah, No, it was it was I was like, now what you know?
So now what?
Now what? And so now he pretended that they weren't seeing each other anymore, but they were, but they were. At one point he gave her an ultimatum basically because he wasn't happy with sharing her anymore with her husband. So he gave her an ultimatum, and she's like, yeah, I'm just going to focus on my marriage now, and she ended it with him.
Okay, so she ended it. When we're talking about mechanics, we're talking about, you know, the absurdity of it all. Were you hurt?
I was hoping that they would decide to be together. I was thinking this was my potential out.
So you really were looking for the out. But it seemed that him ending that relationship meant you didn't have your out. Correct, even though you always had your out, I didn't see any you didn't see now because you were afraid of what.
That's the same reason I said yeah to getting married in the first place, the vague I'm gonna deal with your.
Wrath, okay, So you're still afraid of his wrath. You're afraid of his anger. And so if he was with the new gal and theory, well, he's got a safe place to land, he's got his person, he's all sorted. So then you could get up and leave and it would be less of a there'd be less of this reaction. This house ever get built.
Yeah, so the house got built. She stopped seeing him, but he went right back to hunting, sure for relationships, and I saw that and I'm like, all right, I don't I didn't even unpack my stuff. So we moved into the house and I unpacked just about everything, but my stuff was still in boxes. I started to talk to people more. So I talked to one of my sisters.
I shared with hers, you know, some of the relationship issues with him, and how he was behaving with the house hunting and the build and the other women, and she was supportive, and it was like amazing to me after all these years of not talking to anybody, that there was support. Right, So now suddenly people are starting to give me advice, but also saying, well, that's not cool. The way he treats me is not okay, it's not normal. People don't do that, and it's bizarre that you need
somebody to tell you it's not your fault. And you know they're not acting that way because of what you did. They're acting that way because of who they are.
So now you've got support, you're talking to people, but you're still living in the same house as this guy. Okay, your stuff isn't fully unpacked. There's a part of you that seems psychologically resistant. At this point, the wheels are off right. Your husband is basically having a series of multiple relationships with other people. Another piece of this story is also that Lou was a private pilot.
We owned up private airplane.
So I know that there was a part of your story that I'd like to have you share is that you and your daughter and he were on an airplane and something became very clear to you at that point. Could you share some of that?
Yeah, So I said, all right, I want a divorce. We are going to divorce, and he wasn't having it. He admitted to a sexual addiction and he would only go to counseling of any sort if I agreed to stay together. But the counseling he wanted to sign up for was sexual addiction counseling.
Just as an aside. Sex addiction is it's there's a phenomenology there. There's no two ways about it. Okay, it is. We see it come out in multiple different ways. Pornography hiring people to have sex with somebody going on like nowadays, is a million different ways you could find a person to have, you know, sex anywhere with you. It's disregulated. The addiction term is meant that the person feels that they almost can't control the earth. While there is some
talk of love addiction, it really is sex addiction. Is it's not relational, right. It is about sex, masturbation, pornography, short term sexual hits, whatever. It's not about somebody showing up and saying I want to move my girlfriend into our home. That's not sex addiction. And I think that the commandeering of the sex addiction defense people who study it,
they'll see that there's a whole picture there. There's often a lot of remorse, there's often a lot of shame, and in therapy there's often a lot of work on trauma and all. It's just very complicated, right.
And so at that point I had moved out of our bedroom and he was just getting increasingly weird and weirder and weirder and weirder. And then he had made appointments for dental work for all three of us back in Delaware. Haul ourselves back to Delaware, and while we were on the plane, I'm in the in the co pilot's seat and Angelica's in the back and he's flying. All of a sudden, I had an overwhelming clarity that he intended to crash the plane with all three of
us in it on purpose. And so I'm just sitting there and I'm like, because you know, he had been getting weirder and weirder the more it became clear I was determined to leave and had made threats vague, that's but nothing, nothing specific. And I was like, oh my god, he's going to kill all of us. And I sat there and I'm like, if he's gonna put the plane in a dive, all right, all right, there's a knife here.
I'm going to grab this knife here. I'm gonna I'm gonna blind him, and then I can once he's blinded, I I could kill him because I can't fight back from that. And I know how to operate the plane myself. I'm not a pilot, but I can do it, and I can dial for help and dial in for help. And figured all that out, and none of that happened, clearly, none of it happened, okay, But when we got back that night safely, I was determined that there was serious, serious danger.
My conversation will continue after this break.
Got sense that it's not safe. It's not okay to leave. It's not safe. To leave. So we got back home. I finally got my stuff together to decide to leave and came up with a plan. I called my sister had given me the phone number for the domestic violence support and called it and explained not everything clearly, but enough and got the feedback that you're not crazy and if you don't feel safe, you're probably not. You should
leave with a safety plan. Yeah, So I decided that I was gonna pack up a few things in the back of the car and go see a lawyer, which I was forbidden from doing, but I did it anyway. But in that one day, I found a lawyer to see me agree to help me. I gave him a retainer and my intention was to go pick up Angelica from camp and then just take off with her before
he even got home. Okay, but I don't know if he had a sense that something was unusual, and for the first time ever, he went and picked her up from camp. So I got to I gotta figure something else. And then we needed to take a car to service, and so Lou and I met up. I got Angelica in the back seat with me my car, which was a bit of a trick because Lou's like he wants to drive that car, and I was like, oh, I felt like an actress. I'm like, oh, you drive it
on the way back. You know, I'll follow you over there. You drive, we'll drop the car off and then I'll follow you back. And then when we were getting off an exit to where the car dealership was, I slowed down and then I kind of darted back down and on the highway and just gunned it. And then he noticed I wasn't behind him after he made the turn, and then he called me on the cell phone and like, oh, you missed the turn or you know. I'm like, yeah,
I need a break. This has just been too much and I'm gonna I saw a lawyer filing for divorce. I suggest you go see a lawyer too. I let him talk to Angelica. I explained to Angelican the drive before I took off what was going to happen, and just said, you know, clearly we've been fighting. He called. I just kept saying I just need peace, please, I just need peace. And went to one hotel.
So now you and Angelic are staying.
And we stayed at a hotel that night one night then and then the next day went to the back to the lawyer's office as planned. The attorney said, this is clearly emotional abuse for him, domestic abuse. So he yeah, he was someone who had been trained. So then I go to the courthouse. Right, we had written up in affidavit and I wrote up a petition for a restraining order.
I didn't want to get a restraining order. The attorney is the one who told me you really need it because this is the only thing that you can use to stop him from constantly calling you and harassing you. And this is how you can have temporary custody of your daughter.
So you take the paperwork for the temporary restraining order to the courthouse and.
Meeting with the judge. He hears it all and he said, I'll grant this. This is a one month temporary restraining order.
And so you got it. So now how did that work? That they were they would still serve him to let him know that it's in.
Yeah, So around ten thirty at night, I got a call from the police saying they were getting ready to serve, to serve okay, and they wanted to know details about the house and guns and stuff, and I explained all that and he's not somebody that you want to disregard. If he takes like a you're not going to take me out of here stance, he means it okay, you know, and they're like, oh, you know, we deal with this stuff all the time.
Does that go off without incident?
So they call me back and say, you know, he put up a resistance at first, but he gave in, went in and got his computer and some stuff and said he was going to go to a hotel.
Okay, so he's gone to his own hotel. He just still doesn't know where you are, right, Okay. Now it's the next day. Now what happens.
Seven twenty in the morning, I get a phone call on my cell phone and I see it's low Okay, Yeah, it didn't surprise me because I really didn't expect him to abide by the order. I don't want him to get into trouble. And I also don't want them to have it opportunity to leave me a nasty voicemail because he had been leaving me like really nasty stuff.
Okay, so you seven twenty in the morning, he violates the order, he calls you, You don't report it to the police.
Then what happens about maybe a half hour later, I get a call about our alarm system and they said, the panic alarm in your master bedroom has gone off.
You're getting a phone call about them. The security from the security company got it, and.
I'm like, oh, I said, nobody should be there. Please notify the police. Nobody should be there, and if that's happening, then there's there's a real problem. So so then I'm pacing around and then call the police and I said, you know, I've been waiting for a call back. And they're like, oh my god, thank you for calling. An airplane crashed into your house and it's it's fully engulfed in flames and we need you to go to the
property now to help the responders. I got there and the entire development was just all emergency vehicles, police s, ambulance, fire trucks. By multiple times in the media, was already.
There because a plane crashed into a house. Like that's a plane.
The neighbors called it in.
Right, and that's what made the panic alarm go off.
The plane crash, made.
The plane crash, made it go off. Okay, so you get to your house, there is a plane crashed into your house.
Obviously the police had the records of me going to the police department them serving the the restraining order, so they knew that that was an incident house. So their biggest concern was that we were in the house more than anything else. So for them it was kind of like, all right, this is not as bad as it could have been because you and yourcau because we were not in the house.
Okay, So what went through your head when you got to the house.
I was scared that he somehow had managed to do this and make it look like maybe he was dead too, but that he wasn't.
Oh, so you suspected it was him. As soon as you heard a plane crash in the house, you suspected it was him, Okay, because which would be recentble because planes don't crash in the house.
Yeah. I wasn't thinking it was a coincidence.
No, no, no, no, no no. I mean a plane could crash and land in a street, or in a neighborhood or in a yard and arm ahouse. But this went right into the house.
Yeah, And this was in the middle of it was a clearing oh yeah, yeah, out of an eleven acre. It was a very precise, precision attack.
So it isn't. But that jumps out of me that what went through your head was that I know it's him, and my concern is that he is still alive.
Somehow I had to lay out the schematics of the house so to speak for them, and then explained about Low's stature and you know, identifying features and so that when they did get to the plane, because they hadn't gotten to the plane itself yet, it was all based on the neighbors saying what they saw with the airplane circling before the crocket. So when they said, yeah, we did find a body and it matches your description or the remains match your description, because clearly there was a fire.
The house was just a skeleton.
So now you know he's dead, there's a body, there's remains, you can't you know, I mean, and it was clearly him. Okay, it had to have been extraordinarily difficult time. You've lost your home, You've gone through the terror of leaving this relationship. You knew it was going to be bad. It certainly doesn't sound like you ever thought it was going to be this.
And the hardest part was telling Angelica what had happened. So that was horrible. And then later that night having to call his mother and his sister and you know, call my family, you know, but calling his mother was really tough. But then after that it was really media. Media was relentless, was very interesting to the world. That was August twenty fifth, thousand one one. And then in the morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one, my friend, one of the ones who had been a real support
person and my closest friend, he called. He said, are you watching TV? So which no channel? I wasn't, he goes any and I turned on the TV and you know, the images that were going so now I had, oh my god, like, is this this my fault? Because it had been national not just national news, it was international news. It was everywhere you know about what he had done. Kamikaze pilot and burns down his hats and crashes into
the house. And I felt responsible And even though I know it's not like I go there like, okay, they were probably just going to hijack those planes, you know, like but they got this idea from lou to like do this instead with crashing buildings, and like, oh my god, this is all my fault. Everyone's going to know it is my fault. So so yeah, little PTSD from that.
Alone, yea, I think, yeah, probably other things or years. It's it is it did trauma survivors blame themselves for things that have nothing to do with them. It's part of the architecture of trauma, a throwback to trying to attempt to make some sense of control over something that was happening, and the proximity of somethings that was such a catastrophic event in your life against an image that was so similar two weeks later. Is I mean, you were in the throes of acute trauma at that point
when nine to eleven happened. It was it was what it was like seventeen days, you know, So that's we consider that acute traumatic stress. Most people will continue to have trauma responses within that thirty day period. Most people will then, you know, sort of it will there will be a tailing off, and it'll leave a toll, but may not cause impairment in their life. But that connection of those two events took what was already your daughter's grief. It was her father, and this is not the end
you wanted. You wanted the two of you to be able to go off into your own separate lives. This is not what you would hope for. And then you also still lived in fear right until the very last moment that he was still alive and could harm you. This was a person who felt dangerous to you. But I wanted now focus in years later because your daughter, Angelica is now an adult, right, she's grown up and she will go into relationships. Now, what did you talk to her about and when she started dating?
Honestly, she's been married now for oh seven years. Who she's married to her first and only boyfriend? Wow? Okay, she started dating in high school. But before she dated him, you know, I did talk to her and one of her girlfriends, and her girlfriend was maybe a little more interested in boys than Angelica was at the time, and I talked to them about my experience and good good, you know, And I talked about the earlier times with even before Lou you know, and mistakes I made and
not things are dangerous. It's more about the self respect and you know, don't settle for things that aren't right. If something doesn't feel right, it's not right. Yeah, just basically, if you don't feel good, if in a relationship, it's probably not good for you.
Yeah, I mean it's it's tough. That's tough advice for young people to listen to. So how have you been healing? What's your healing process been?
Like, I'm married to a good guy.
Good now, gratulation.
He's a good guy and he's been through his share of bad experiences himself, so in general we're really good to each other.
Good. But you trusted love enough to get married again, which is amazing.
I never thought I would. I keep a very tight circle, so I feel really vulnerable outside of the circle, but I'm great with my circle.
Yeah, that's great. Actually, I think the small circle idea is actually very much the landscape of survivorship. I always say your relationship with trust is going to change. Right now. I want to ask you one last question, which is if you could talk to your sixteen year old self who had just met Lou in the stairwell of a frat house, what would you tell her.
Well, I'm going to preface this by you know, I'm like, to change anything is to change everything, and then I don't have Angelica.
That's good. I'm glad, so I would.
I wouldn't change thing that resulted in not having her in my life. But my instincts were right when I got out of the car after the speeding, so everything was fine up till then. You know, there's you know, even though there was a couple of awkward things, you know, with the early dates, but are not dating, whatever those were, But my instinct when I got out of that car and slammed it and said that's it, we're right. There was no reason to go back and test the waters.
Yeah, yeah, yes, and yet most people do. But I really want to come back to what you said. To
change anything would be to change everything. It was such a I've never heard anyone quite say it that way, Joe, And I'm really glad we're sort of ending in that place because many survivors will spend years ruminating if I'd done this, if I had done this, if I had done this, I'd had done this, And the of your focus on Angelica, This is the daughter I wanted, This is the human being I wanted in the world, and a whole series of events had to happen and that
put Angelica in the world. And that framing of the suffering as something larger is that whatever universal calculus is being done, that that moment happened, and no, I didn't get out of the car, and by not getting out of the car, this happened. This human being came into my life. It's a hard way sometimes to view it because so much suffering happened, but it can sometimes be the way to view it that allows us to find the psychological strength, the soul strength to keep fighting another day.
So I have to say that perspective taking is quite remarkable given what you had went through. So thank you so much for sharing your story.
Thank you, thank you for your work.
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Joe. Let's start with one of the last things Joe said. Joe ended her story with a profound quote that I do hope at some point in their healing that survivors are able to feel. She said, to change anything is to change everything. I thought that was a beautiful framing. Now, I have no doubt that some survivors may not resonate with that, but for many of you, there was something that grew out of these toxic relationships, beloved children, some
good family relationships, self awareness, and even experiences. I view it as those flowers that sometimes grow out of the sidewalk cracks. From the harshest of places, beautiful things can grow. We don't get do overs, and all we can do is take a moment and recognize that there may be some things in our life that came from this struggle.
Framing these experiences in a meaning oriented way doesn't take away the pain, but it may foster your healing in our next takeaway, When I hear a story like Joe's, I wish there was a high school class on warning signs and dangerous patterns in new relationships. The reactive sensitivity, fast driving, jealousy. These often are signs that show up early and are always a sign of problems to come. Charm and charisma can make it hard to spy these patterns.
In Joe's relationship, she said, she quickly slid into a pattern of rescuing with Joe looking for places for him to live, and this rescuing can often happen if someone believes that this may soothe the narcissistic person. These patterns can start getting set early in narcissistic relationships, and somehow we have to find a way to shine a light on these patterns so there is less risk of young
people making excuses for pentially abusive partners. For this next takeaway, this story teaches us how narcissistic tantrums and the drive to make them stop by appeasing the narcissistic person means that almost everything that happens in a relationship like this
is coercive. Being paged multiple times on a cruise ship and then having to say yes to a marriage proposal so she could make his harassment stop is not consent, but yet, over and over in these relationships, people relent to all kinds of things to make the abusive harassing
behavior stop for a moment. Then, when that gets coupled with a sense of guilt or pity for the narcissistic person, a person, especially a young person, can get corralled into a situation that is very difficult to safely climb out of. In our next takeaway, there's entitlement, and then there's entitlement. Her husband's request that she allow his girlfriend to move into their home together simply because she made him happy.
That's a whole other level of entitlement. We always think we have gotten into the far boundary of entitlement, but then we hear something like this, It's easy to take a hard line stance and believe we would never put up with something like this. However, after years of enduring emotional abuse in the relationship, a person in a relationship
like this may not fully register it. However, Joe's body did register it, and the cardiac symptoms she was having turned out to be panic attacks, which are not unusual in people experiencing this toxic and abusive a relationship. In our last takeaway, Joe's pattern of self blame after the plane crash went so deep that she blamed her elf for the nine to eleven attacks, which occurred just seventeen
days later. She was still in the throes of an acute stress crisis, and trauma survivors often do blame themselves for events that are clearly unrelated to them, but the similarity of the events, her accumulated history of trauma within the relationship, and the recent trauma of experiencing a similar
event connects all of this. While most stories of post separation abuse do not have such extreme outcomes, it is not unusual for survivors of these kinds of abusive relationships and post separation abuse to blame themselves for a variety of incidents that happen in their lives for years to come.