A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal Hardcover – July 11, 2017

For women who have experienced this type of confusing, heartbreaking, and gut wrenching encounter with someone who used and discarded them, this book is a powerful memoir you can relate to. It’s impossible to diagnose someone, as Jen points out. But, when you’re dealing with someone with characteristics of a significant personality disorder (be it narcissism, psychopathy, sociopathy, borderline) I do not believe it matters. Whether they would be diagnosed is irrelevant to the impact their behaviors (which match those who would be diagnosed) have on your life, self esteem, and outlook on the world.Jen writes beautifully and the book bounced back and forth between the beginnning courtship period and terrible ending in a fluid and intriguing way. She is brutally honest about her emotional struggles throughout the process, as well as her perceived mistakes.I am very thankful to Jen for taking the time to write her story. I truly believe she did so to help others. I saw a few posts relating this book to just her personal healing process after a cheating husband. This is much, much more than that. It would be much easier to write off her ex. The fact that she took the emotional time and energy to write her experience is a true act of kindness to give others experiencing the same heartbreak a place to relate to someone else in an otherwise devastating and lonely healing process.

Though I was on board with the trauma caused by a betraying, low-life mate, after a while I wondered at how so many people would tolerate the endless, whining contacts. Guaranteed, I have experienced this trauma more than once before I learned to love and depend on myself, but most of us do not have the support system Jen had. We have to hit the floor running just trying to survive. The endless obsession of social media stalking and texts began to wear on me. Maybe if Jen had had to get a job and not rely on her parents to coddle her for so many months, she would have been forced to move on faster like the rest of us.

All the signs were there. Whirlwind, "fairytale" romance. Rapid courtship and marriage. Charming husband who needs citizenship and cash to fund his dream of owning a restaurant. Wife is blissfully happy, but notices troubling flirtations with others that quickly get brushed aside and explained away. Then they have a baby. The "perfect" spouse is suddenly distant, absent, cold and critical. He is constantly on the phone at all hours or running frequent errands. This reader could see the obvious in neon, but Waite is young, in love, and trusting. She hears her husband express his lack of feeling in a flat voice and notices his "dead" eyes. She searches frantically for a physical cause to account for his "personality change". Desperate to find out why her marriage is unraveling, Waite turns to the internet. There, she discovers personality disorders, sociopathy and psychopathy, which can manifest in people who compulsively lie or serially cheat, among other things. Waite seeks out a therapist, who appears to confirm in the initial session with her client, and never having met the allegedly psychopathic husband, that he may allegedly be on the disordered spectrum. These revelations shock, vindicate and galvanize Waite. Yet, her realizations dawn slowly. She cannot fathom her husband's demeanor, betrayal and infidelity, undoubtedly because she genuinely loved and believed him. This book will likely appeal most to twenty-something and thirty-something readers who are finding, perhaps for the first time, the harsh, unexpected twists and turns that life can sometimes take. I laughed when Waite suggested that she was probably "too old" to start over at thirty-one! The story arc is Waite's journey of self discovery, while learning to trust herself and her own intuition. People can deceive us in a myriad of ways, and it's prudent to be cautious and aware of the people that we allow into our lives. Waite was understandably devastated by the pain and loss of a relationship that she cherished, but she has gained wisdom and insight from the experience that will continue to grow with age and time. A good read.

Sometimes people surprise you in a good way. This is not one of those stories.

Hat mir sehr gefallen. Ich würde es mir wünschen, dass die jüngere Generation es auch ließt, damit wir für uns ein von der Welt besseres Bild machen können.

I expected a suffering wife with a cruel sociopathic husband. The author acts the victim and he’s the “psychopath.” All I see is a vindictive, jealous, stalking, suspicious narcissistic wife who keeps all her husband’s passwords, goes through his mail and his Uber accounts, follows him around in the middle of the night, calls him at work screaming because he removed a tag on a FB photo, gets her family involved, so when he finally says he “feels nothing” and looks for something else , I say bravo for him.

The story was very simple than what I expected. It could have been better but yet it gripped me till the end and I finished it within one day only. It was emotional for me too. It was enjoyable one time read. A married woman who is struggling to move on from her broken marriage and trying to understand the sudden cause behind it.

Honest, well written, but ended suddenly.... didn't realize I was so close to the conclusion of the book because there was still a lot of story to tell. Kind of felt like it was a rush-job to get the book published. Clearly, the author and her family went thru unimaginable hell during this experience, but I was hoping that she'd share more of how she handled custody, visitation, etc... There was a lot of in-depth descriptions of how she was unable to function, but nothing about why she was a target for the guy and what she needs to do in her own life to make sure she doesn't find herself in such an unhealthy relationship again. I was fascinated, but again, felt like the ending was abrupt. Jen, thank you for sharing your story with the hopes that other women (and men!) will be able to spot warning signs before they're in too deep with a sociopath.