My ex-wife [30] of four months called the cops on me [29] after we had a fight & I got arrested. She deleted threatening texts she sent me the same day off my phone, but I recovered them. Case was thrown out because of them. How can I ever trust someone again?

Relevant screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Qu8EfLA/

I’m American-Pakistani & so is my ex-wife. My family had known her family for over 25 years. It was a semi-arranged marriage after only a few meetings & I thought I knew who I was marrying since we grew up around each other, but after we got married she behaved & acted much differently than I expected.

The night before she called the cops we had an argument about travel plans to my brother’s wedding across country on the West Coast. The wedding was on a Sunday, but I would be getting off a 24 hour ICU shift by 6am that Saturday morning & the only flight I could take would be a $600 multiple layover flight later that same afternoon. I recommended that she fly out that Friday night not only so she could get more acclimated to the different time zone more easily, but she could also have the comfort of flying with my parents since she said she had only been on a plane only few times in her life. However, she told me she did not want to fly out Friday night because of work – she’s an elementary school teacher & said she could be grading report cards late. While initially skeptical, I said okay that’s fine & next suggested taking the only direct flight that Saturday morning at 7am that, importantly, would be $400 cheaper than the less-than-ideal flight that I would be taking later that day after my call ($600 vs $200). However, she did not want to take the 7am flight because she would be “too tired” & told would fly with me because, “This is our first trip together & we should be flying as husband and wife. This should be romantic.” She also implied she wanted to fly first-class as well. I simply told her since I would be paying for our tickets there was the practical cost of the airline fare that I was taking into consideration (I was only a resident physician & I didn’t have much money in my bank account since I spent quite a bit on her wedding ring). She then proceeded to argue with me for what was nearly an hour & a half about these “rules” she had about marriage & being husband & wife – telling me I needed to “be a better husband”, to stop being cheap & pay for the expensive ticket because “the husband needs to treat their wife with nice things,” & even brought up our religion to explain her statements. It also seemed like she really didn’t want to fly with my parents which I will admit hurt my feelings. Regardless, after about an hour of hearing all the ways I was not doing the right thing, I was fed up & emphatically told her, “You know what, you buy the ticket yourself & tell me what flight you are taking.” I left our bedroom to finish some notes from the hospital. I will concede I was pretty upset at her & how unreasonable I felt she was being. Later that night she tried to be intimate with me. I was still pretty upset at how she had again gone on a a long diatribe about all the ways I was not living up to her expectations as her husband & told her I did not want to be intimate. I had to tell her several times, but she persisted to the point that I had to unfortunately push her off of me as she literally laid on top of me to get my attention. She went to her side of her bed & we both then went to sleep.

The next morning she had to go to work three hours earlier than me while I was planning to go to the hospital later. She woke me up to continue arguing her points from last night – she did not want to buy the tickets herself & she was also upset that I rejected her overtures for intimacy. I was still wearing my eye mask & was half asleep as she was starting to argue with me. My wife quickly did something that she had done already several times during our short marriage together: she ripped the blanket off of me to get my attention. I got up & grabbed her wrist to get my blanket back. I also yelled at her to stop treating me as she was doing & we exchanged nasty words with each other. I then took the blanket back & laid back in bed. She slapped my left arm twice, but I didn’t care at that point as I just wanted to sleep. She left for work shortly thereafter. This was about the tenth or so time she had done this with the blanket as she had done this before over the previous months over some pretty petty stuff.

During that day, I did not speak with her. I was busy at clinic & really was processing everything that happened. Sometime in the afternoon though she began simultaneously calling & texting me. This is where her behavior started genuinely frightening me. In a span of less than 90 minutes, my wife ended up calling me 33 times while sending me extremely erratic, confrontational, manipulative, & threatening messages. With the phone calls, she had behaved like this before to the point where sometimes I would take [screenshots](https://imgur.com/a/9CyMBFC/) & actually show her them later to emphasize how inappropriate she was behaving. I cannot describe how disorientating & shocking it was to read what she was saying to me. It almost seemed she was being purposefully provocative & vindictive just because she was insulted or offended I had not texted her. I was also scared that she was seemingly trying to blackmail me – I mean she went from accusing me of hitting her when to then asking me to call her back in the span of 30 seconds. Do I wish I grabbed her wrist that morning? Of course not, but her behavior was entirely inappropriate. A part of me also wondered if she was having some kind of mental breakdown or anxiety attack (she stopped taking her Xanax after we got married). I told her to stay at her parent’s house that night (she had just spent 2 nights there recently because it was close to her work) because I honestly was not comfortable being around her that night after what she was saying & how she was behaving. After I told her we needed to see a marriage counselor, that when she stopped sharing her GPS location with me. I left clinic, picked up my mom from rehab, & went back home. She wasn’t there & so I assumed she went to her parent’s place.

Later that night my wife texted my mom, not me, that she was about 15 minutes from our house. I was not prepared for what I expected was likely to be a contentious encounter. I hopped in the shower in the downstairs guest bedroom since I decided I would sleep there that night away from her. When she got home, she walked into the bathroom while I was showering & started berating me for not calling her or texting her at all during the day. She also asked why I was downstairs showering & not upstairs. I asked her to leave the bathroom so I could wear a towel & be decent to which she retorted, “Why? I’ve seen you naked before.” After asking her again, she eventually walked out when I whispered to myself, “This is so stupid,” & she swung the door back open & yelled at me, “Don’t ever call me that again!” I apologized to her (she had said being called stupid was a trigger for her before), she left again, & I changed into my clothes. We both started talking in the guest bedroom & I told up front that I was planning on sleeping in separate bedrooms that night because I did not want a repeat of what happened that very morning to happen again. She rejected what I said, repeatedly saying, “I don’t care what you say, we are sleeping together tonight. That’s the end of it.” After my third refusal telling her no, she did something I never imagined possible: she spat on my face. I was humiliated, upset, but also scared. My first thought was, “If she just spat on me, what else is she about to do?” I told her she needed to leave & go to her parents house like I suggested. Leering at me while sitting on the bed, all she said was, “No.” I then grabbed her hand to ask her to leave, but she pulled away from me. As she did that I took her phone out of her hand & I walked away intending to call her mother to come pick her up. It was at this point she started screaming hysterically – as God as my witness almost like a toddler as she was covering her ears with her hands while screaming. I was freaking out at such screams & walked towards the living room space as she followed me hitting my back asking for her phone back. I told her she needed to calm down first. My nearly 60-year-old mom came down the stairs (she had heard my wife scream & thought we were both upstairs in our bedroom). As my wife continued to be aggressive, my mother tried to calm her down & eventually gave her a bear hug – almost like a safety hold – to calm her down as she was still yelling hysterically for her phone. My wife started crying for her own mom saying, “I want my mom! I want my mom!” I couldn’t call her mom on her phone, so I used my mom’s & when she answered, she screamed, “Come get me, they are hitting me! I can’t breath.” I was in complete shock & horror – I immediately told my mom to let go of my wife. She then ran out the house & I was about to go after her, but I didn’t. My mom & I assumed she would come back, but after a few minutes she didn’t. We tried looking for around the neighborhood – my mom even called a family friend to help us – but we couldn’t find her after an hour or so. I assume my wife’s mother had picked her up.

As my mom & I sat on our couch trying to make sense of what just happened the most unexpected moment of my life occurred: three police officers knocked on our door. They asked for our names & then handcuffed the both of us. I asked them what was going on & they said a call about a domestic disturbance was placed. At first I didn’t say anything, but I realized if I just told them what happened then they would realize whatever my wife had said was either flat-out wrong or grossly distorted. So I waived my Miranda rights & told them exactly what happened, but half an hour later they informed me that my mom & I were being arrested for domestic battery. As we were taken away from our home, I saw that my wife had been sitting in one of the cop cars the entire time. I rather not go into the details of spending a night in jail, but I will simply say that seeing one’s own mother in handcuffs is something that continues to give me PTSD nearly 6 months later.

The next morning my mother & I were released without needing to even post bail. When we came home, my wife had moved out nearly all her things. Two days later I met my lawyer for the first time & also read the police report for the first time: my wife had flat-out lied to police. She said that my mom had choked her, that I had hit her arms, & that, “I told him I couldn’t go to the wedding,” implying I was forcing her against her will or something. The police noted a red rash on the back of my wife’s neck & she said it was from choking, but this was the most sickening lie of them all. She knew the rash had been there for days already because of a longstanding pet allergy that she had to both our dog & old cat dander in our furniture. I literally made her go see an [allergist](https://imgur.com/a/y75Yhbb/) months before because of how common she was having flare ups. Of course, she never mentioned anything she had done – most egregious of all spitting on me for no reason other than because I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as her. I later learned she gave her statement in front of her sister & brother-in-law which made it obvious that she was not going to admit to her own unconscionable actions in front of her family. Why would she?

In the days following the incident my wife & her family started calling our friends saying I would be going to prison, that “he pulled a gun on her” and “she was covered in bruises” – they were clearly, perhaps desperately, trying to play up what happened. However, everything changed after the first conversation between my lawyer & the prosecutors: they had no idea about any of the above text messages. It became immediately obvious that my wife never told told anyone about these texts – not to her friends, family, police, & most brazen of all, not her own lawyers. After my mother & I were taken away I had left my phone on the couch which she later accessed & deleted the texts off my iPhone (& disabled the iCloud backup). She clearly did not want anyone to know about her unhinged threats & behaviors just hours before her confrontation. What my wife didn’t know was the day after my mother & I were released from jail I recovered the texts since I had those messages saved on my MacBook Air. A short time after that first conversation the entire case was thrown out. No charges ever filed. No court date. No plea agreement. Nothing. Her own lawyers simply did not trust her anymore. My wife clearly thought she had gotten the upper hand against me & so her family was clearly devastated by this unexpected news. Her sister (herself divorced after a few months) tried to get revenge by emailing my hospital to get me fired. That failed. My wife’s parents tried to get my parents in trouble with our local masjid. That failed. And as more people learned of the whole story, my wife’s mother desperately & laughably tried to convince our friends that the case was thrown out because my parents donated money to the judge (even though it was the prosecutors who refused to file charges).

I had many community members ask me to reconcile with her. In Southeast Asian culture, divorce is extremely frowned upon. I’ll confess I seriously contemplated reconciliation via counseling, but with the benefit of therapy I arrived at the somber conclusion that if she had the gall to lie to the Prosecutor’s Office, her friends, & her own family how could I possibly ever trust her again? It also did not help that I later learned that only days after the incident my wife posted her [profile](https://i.imgur.com/si7MjiY.jpg) on a marriage app with her profile pic – unbelievably I might add – being the dress from our wedding photoshoot.

Sometimes I wonder what if I answered one of her 33 phone calls? What if instead of grabbing her hand, I got in my car & drove away? What if I slept in the same bed as her that night? I’m convinced, though, if it was not something with the plane tickets, something else would have lead to a similar confrontation (we already had a really bad [one](https://imgur.com/a/eGu2onp/) months before where she wouldn’t let me leave our bedroom & threatened suicide too).

After six months my divorce was finalized last week. While more community members are coming around to the truth, it’s been challenging because my ex-wife comes off as such a shy person that most people cannot even fathom she could lie & behave in such a despicable manner. I don’t know if it’s because I am a man or a resident doctor, but I think it makes some think it is less likely that my wife could engage in abusive tendencies with me. That has made my healing process all the more lonely & challenging. The threshold for a man to prove being abused is so excruciatingly high that it feels hopeless at times, but I have to remind myself my healing is not predicated on the opinions of others.