“Don’t ever marry unless the other person has just as much money to lose,” my childhood friend warned as we dismounted Chair 23 at the top of Skyline ridge, Mammoth Mountain.

He had been recounting his acrimonious divorce during the ride up the chairlift. I had never heard him so angry and upset in all the years I had known him. He had always been the lanky, goofy, jovial, wise-cracking kid.

My friend’s family was extremely wealthy, like F U wealthy, and as the sole heir, he stood to inherit a fortune, including the family business—one of the largest private companies in Southern California.

His soon-to-be ex-wife wasn’t just targeting their shared assets but also going after the family jewel, a multi-generational industry revered business his grandfather had founded. He spoke with bitterness and rage, describing how she was using their daughters as bargaining chips. There was shame in his voice, a guilt for involving his parents, who had warned him from the beginning.

In my early twenties, it was the first time I had heard anyone share the messy intricacies and nasty rawness of a divorce. No one in my immediate family had divorced, separated, or to my knowledge, been unfaithful. We never talked about such things and I never suspected anything was amiss. My friend, about seven years older than me, was someone I’d grown up with and long admired. We had both grown up in the sheltered comfort of our beachside community.

I hadn’t known his ex-wife well, but I always thought she was extremely attractive, well educated and sweet natured, the complete package. On the surface, they seemed like the perfect couple. That’s why his confession felt so jarring, so deeply emotionally unsettling.

He questioned if she had ever loved him, or if it had only been about the money from the start.

As I stared out from the edge of Cornice, my skis hanging over the drop, I felt the heaviness of his heartbreak, the loss of innocence, and the bite of betrayal. I felt a parallelizing fear that the same fate might one day befall me.

Over this past holiday weekend while heading down the 405 toward South Orange County, I asked my mom about my friend and his family, since I hadn’t kept in touch for years. She told me he had remarried and started a new family. Later, I looked up his daughters’ Instagram accounts and noticed none of them had a single photo with him. I felt a deep sadness for my friend, for his girls, for his ex-wife, and for his family.

For most of my life, I carried my friend’s divorce as a cautionary tale to always be wary of women. My naïve, not fully formed mind couldn’t fathom how two people who looked perfect together, at least on paper, could still fall apart in something that seemed so completely compatible.

Witnessing the joy drained from his spirit terrified me and it still haunts me today.

I struggled to reconcile the twin images of this woman as both a nurturing mother of girls and the manipulative, vindictive, Eve-like figure I’d constructed in my mind. At the same time, I was blind to how my fun-loving friend’s self-centered, perhaps even spoiled, boyish immaturity would eventually breed resentment and leave most partners feeling abandoned, left to parent alone.

The truth is, I don’t know what truly happened in their relationship. I know it wasn’t just about money.

There’s no singular, definitive account of what happens between two people in a marriage, a friendship or in any relationship. There are only the stories we cling to in order to make sense of what unfolded. It’s essential that we take responsibility for our part in the story and seek to make amends, including the silent witnesses who felt its ripple effects. When we don’t, we risk getting trapped in an inescapable shame spiral, especially when our narratives no longer align with our integrity or we keep living the same lie, hurting others along the way.

Looking back, I realized how my friend’s ugly divorce and the story I had concocted cemented my fear of failing at love. I’d be lying to myself if I said that I was free from my subconscious suspicions, free from my self-limiting stories. Living in integrity means embracing the ancient, shameful parts of myself and holding them with unconditional compassion and unwavering grace.

Thank you for reading.