Wives and Honey Traps

Chris and I had a lot of parallels in our lives, one being that, before we had met each other, unbeknownst to us, all our our respective former partners – boyfriends, girlfriends, and in his case, two ex-wives – had been honey traps, apparently, all ultimately linked to CIA/FBI. There appear to be a lot of people world wide who would love to minimize the significance of such a thing, but from my perspective, it is a terrible thing that should never be minimized. Keep in mind that we were artists and civilians, not spies – so the idea that we’d be snared by such an endeavor never even crossed our minds. There’s a lot more to say about this as well.

On August 23, 1991 Chris married Valarie Rea Cauldwell. Valarie seems to have been a honeytrap in the making for Chris since she was a young child, and I suspect that Chris’ family members fully knew this, though Chris never did. In January 2005 Chris and Valarie divorced and on February 14, 2007, Chris married Denise Hackett Smith. Chris and Denises’ relationship was long distance, they never shared a household (though Chris believed that one day they would), and they didn’t get along for more than a few days at a time. Denise was, from my perspective, deliberately emotionally abusive to Chris. After 15 months, Denise filed for divorce.

Chris, until the day he died, believed that Denise practiced “radical honesty” – but that was never true, and if Chris had truly thought about it, he too would have realized it wasn’t true, being as long after their divorce, Denise had a habit of contacting (and/or responding inappropriately to) Chris behind my back. I am not saying this as a specific criticism to Denise – but the truth is, that the kind of deception that has surrounded both Chris and me is so thick, pervasive, systematic and damaging – I think at the very least I should be free to air it out a little bit.

Chris and I met in 2007, and became a couple in March 2009, about three months after his divorce from Denise was final. Our intentions to marry officially were deliberately thwarted in different ways by a number of different people.

The truth is, considering the big picture, Chris and I should have met much earlier than we did. I am not necessarily defending the structure into which we were placed, but if you are going to have a system in which two people are destined from birth to be together, it is unkind to keep them separated and set up with honeytraps year after year after year.