Watching “Maternal Instinct” was disturbing because the woman reminded me exactly of my ex-husband
He didn’t kill anyone, but the woman in Maternal Instinct reminded me so much of my ex-husband.
He appeared in my life out of nowhere, completely by chance, just like she did. I met him at a bar, and he gave me his business card. On our very first meeting, he told me he was involved in oil drilling and copper mining and that he was an extremely wealthy businessman. He even handed me a credit card and told me I could spend whatever I wanted.
I had never asked him for money or cared about his wealth. At the time, I was just a regular 25-year-old girl. Of course, the credit card didn’t work.
I was in the process of pursuing a U.S. green card through my nursing career, but my ex showed me a fake green card and a fake U.S. passport. He convinced me to stop pursuing my own path to the U.S., promising that he could get me a green card himself. That lie ended up wasting a huge amount of my life.
The lies never stopped. He gave me designer gifts constantly and claimed he owned luxury homes in several countries, had a private plane, owned gold bars, and had multiple supercars, including Bentleys.
Whenever I tried to uncover the truth or questioned his stories, he would start explosive fights and even call the police.
Watching the documentary, I know some viewers probably thought, “How could people not know? How could she hide something as obvious as a pregnancy?”
But people like this are not ordinary liars. Their behavior is so far beyond what a normal person can imagine that they exhaust you, overwhelm you, keep you trapped, and eventually make you give up trying to figure out what is real. Somehow, they make it incredibly difficult to leave.
I eventually filed for divorce and got out. Before I did, he made terrifying threats. He told me he would have me watched and that, with his wealth and power, he could make sure I could never escape him.
Even until the very end, he never admitted that he had lied.
The designer goods were fake. The wealth didn’t exist. He had no real assets at all. In reality, he was basically living paycheck to paycheck.(He also showed me fake bank statements and fake checks.)
Watching Maternal Instinct brought back so many memories because the way that woman constructed and lived inside a completely fabricated reality was exactly how my ex-husband lived.