The moment I changed my status to "single," his friends slid into my DMs like they'd been waiting for clearance from command.
"Sorry to hear about the divorce…"
"You were always too good for him."
"What have you been up to?"
"You're still hot as hell."
"Wanna hang out sometime?"
Translation: Wanna hook up now that you're not off-limits?
I shouldn't have been surprised. But it still felt gross.
One message, though, stood out. It was from a mutual friend, Seth. He and my ex had deployed together.
"Hey," he wrote. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about everything that happened. I also thought you should know… when we were deployed, John was talking to another woman. That's why he wanted to break up with you. I figured it might help things make more sense."
And honestly? It did.
At first, I believed him. I wanted to. I wanted at least one man in that unit to care about the damage he'd helped cause. But I should've known better. He wasn't offering closure, he was offering bait.
I'd always wondered why John announced our breakup with a public Facebook post. Why he didn't have the decency to say it to my face. Turns out, he already had someone else in mind. I just wasn't invited to that part of the conversation.
So I asked Seth the obvious question:
"Why didn't you tell me that when it happened?"
He gave the classic answer: "Well, he was my friend. I didn't want to rock the boat."
I blinked. "Don't you think it would've been polite to tell me, though? I thought we were friends too."
He threw out a few half-hearted excuses— deployment stress, loyalty, timing. I cut him off.
"If you wanted to get in my pants, you should've sent that message a year ago. Not now."
Because make no mistake, this wasn't some brave act of conscience. This wasn't justice. This wasn't closure. This was Seth trying to cash in on a little trauma-flavored flirting, hoping I'd confuse "truth" with "trust."
He swore that wasn't his intention. "No no, I just wanted to do the right thing."
The right thing. Over a year later. In my DMs. Right next to a heart emoji and a comment about how I'd always been "the kind of woman men regret losing."
He kept messaging me. Telling me how beautiful I was. That I was sweet. Strong. "Too good" for John. Really laying it on thick.
I'm not proud of it, but I liked the attention. I knew I shouldn't. But I did. Just one selfie. Just one photo, hoping for nothing but maybe needing everything. I wanted to be the woman who hit block. Instead, I hit send.
I sent him a selfie. Just one.
And of course, he told me I looked amazing. Gorgeous. "Radiant," I think was the word he used.
Was it sincere? Maybe. Was it calculated? Absolutely. Did it work? Sort of. But it didn't mean what he wanted it to mean.
Because here's what I've learned:
In most careers, your husband's coworkers might stay friendly, offer condolences, maybe even awkwardly avoid you altogether. But in the military?
They're loyal to him...Until his wife is single.
Then suddenly, you're a "free agent. "A hot widow with a pulse. And everything they once called "respect" for your marriage becomes a waiting game they think they've finally won.
They're not checking on you. They're circling.