CLASS WARS AT HOME

Two months into the marriage, the wife decided her husband's biggest problem was an ex she had never even met.

The fight began after something may have "popped up on Instagram," and suddenly the wife was fixated on the woman he dated before her. She called that ex "low class," said she was disgusted by the relationship, and kept circling back to it with the intensity of a grievance that had just been unearthed.

The husband, 33, tried to explain who the ex was. She came from a poor family, grew up without a father, and was raised by a single mother. He said she now earns quite well. Their breakup, he said, had nothing to do with class and everything to do with habits he did not like.

Then came the comparison game.

The wife, 28, came from an upper middle class family, had been the top student from kindergarten through university, earned more than the ex, and came from what he described as a strong family culture. He said he was from a middle class family, studied in private schools, earned well, and spent much of his childhood with his grandparents while his parents worked abroad.

None of it calmed her down.

She had never met the ex. He said he had barely told her anything about her. Still, the wife kept returning to the same point, saying she could see other men of "higher" quality than him. She threatened divorce. She refused physical contact. She said she was disgusted that he had ever considered dating that woman.

"I don't understand her," he wrote, adding that he also did not want the divorce. The fixation had gotten so heavy he said he had a psychiatrist appointment because he did not know if he now had mental health problems.

He asked the question plainly: does class status really matter that much to some people when it comes to a partner's past?

Then came the update.

The husband said he agreed to the divorce. The rings were being sold to pay whatever needed paying. And the blame started moving in every direction but his wife's own.

She told him it was because of him that she was like this, that she "never was like this." She blamed him for not trusting her, for going to the same places he had gone with the ex, for not telling her everything about past exes, and for not listening to her.

"It was my fault that I didn't trust her," he wrote. "It was my fault that we went to the same places I went with my ex." "It was my fault that I didn't tell her everything about my past exes." "It was my fault I didn't listen to her."

By the end, he said, "suddenly everything wasn't about my ex."