A Carefully Constructed Narrative
Dear Tish,
You told me that it wasn’t worth your time to figure out why this happened. You said we should go our separate ways, but you never provided a reason why.
I think what happened and how things played out is shockingly unfair and unjust. I never stood up for myself. I fell on my sword for Kendra to protect the relationship between you and her. I was very patient, but Kendra never returned the favor. Instead, was wrongfully forever cast out and treated like a criminal.
I’d like to tell my story, now.
While you were in Palm Springs and in the lead up to my phonecall with you, Kendra’s actions and demeanor had all the hallmarks of cheating behavior. This wasn’t a fully formed realization in the moment. I just knew something was very very wrong, and I came to you with concerns in an almost disassociative state. The call was not pre-meditated.
You and Kendra were the most significant people in my life. I counted on you as a support system, and I felt so much fulfillment in just knowing you. I was experiencing distress and confusion, because it felt like something awful was happening. I was terrified of losing the most precious people in my life.
Tish, I wish I never made that phonecall, but I also wish I had not walked back what I said. What I observed was actually a very fucked up thing, but I was made to doubt my perceptions in the aftermath. Kendra employed gaslighting and stonewalling to great effect.
I’ve done so much work to process and pick apart what happened. I had to check my sanity. I checked every text message, every memory, the things Kendra had said that I have written down verbatim in the journals that I keep.
Every word of what I said to you on the phonecall was truthful and accurate—surgically fucking precise, actually.
At Mad Hannah, I had witnessed Kendra make advances towards Nate over the course of seven beers. Just one example of many, she said you, Tish, allow her to stay 1:1 in hotels or go on camping trips with men. She was holding up the relationship that I had with her, but it was very clear she was saying this to entice Nate. She was saying: see what you can have.
I know she told you about a couple of the Nate hangouts while you were in Palm Springs, and this was her, “see I’m not hiding anything” get out of jail card. But there were other Nate hangouts, trips to St John’s, etc, I’m willing to bet she did not tell you about. I think the frequency would have made you say, “hey, that’s really weird.”
With a couple of the stories Kendra told me, it was clear she was getting messy drunk or unsafe drunk one-on-one with Nate. Kendra had also told me Nate, a married man, had “free pass” nights from the wife. Nate had started kind of booty-calling Kendra randomly in the evenings, asking her to come out and drink when she was already in her PJs. Let’s not forget that Nate would purposefully buy another round after Kendra told him she was leaving to go home.
Those things alone(That’s the tip of the iceberg. I have a list 36 concrete things) go a long way towards making my outburst understandable and yes, defensible.
It wasn’t just details like secret hangouts, dishonesty, and heavy flirting that pointed to a big problem in what was happening while you were in Palm Springs.
The big problem was that overnight Kendra seemed to have become inexplicably intensely enamored with a married man. And by overnight, I mean this happened the very first night you spent in Palm Springs! Her demeanor changed severely and unmistakeably the next day after hanging out with Nate that first night. I pieced timelines together after the fact, but a picture emerges. It has the appearance of a campaign to pursue or seduce him with a runaway compulsivity.
I was Kendra’s best friend. I’d like to think that I was so close and very attuned to little shifts in what was going on with her.
I saw something flip in her mind. Kendra had developed BIG feelings for Nate. The intensity of this attraction was shocking and confusing to me. These were brand new feelings and they were definitely not normal feelings that you would have for a friend.
Fast forward to today. Kendra has a relationship with Nate that replaces the relationship that she had with me. Do you remember the pattern or the thing that I pointed to by saying before me there was Mark and now I have a fear that Kendra is replacing me with Nate? I take no pleasure in saying, I told you so.
This is a really good place to pause to ask the question, other than being intoxicated when I came to you with concerns, what did I do wrong? If I was exactly right, how am I the bad guy? The way they were relating looked an awful lot like two people at the start of an intimate relationship. What I was noticing was real! Their flirting evolved into what I was worried it would.
I had rights in relationship with you, Tish. I had rights in relationship with Kendra. The relationship I had with each of you was significant. This thing with Nate was a secretive courtship I had every right to talk about and bring to the floor.
No I wasn’t Kendra’s boyfriend, but I was her super best friend. I didn’t understand the horrifying depths of it at the time, but this was a willful and on-purpose best friend betrayal. My response was commensurate with the ugliness of the reality. Just look at the outcome!
When I sent you an apology, your response via text was to say we should go our separate ways. We never had a conversation.
Kendra told me “space and time,” but gave no timeline. Even with an earnest apology, a show of loyalty, and a fierce eagerness to repair, Kendra offered no reason why for the silent treatment. Space and time turned into forever exile. No actual friend breakup where we talked specifically about parting ways.
This is a punishment that is so extremely harsh. Exile and ostracism are the meanest thing you can fucking do. It causes extraordinary psychological torment. When there is no path to redemption and no talking about what happened, it is something that can absolutely destroy you. When chosen family cuts you off, it is a serious thing. It is every bit as awful as telling someone that they should kill themselves. To do so without cause or a fair trial should be fucking crime, Tish. It is a monstrous thing to do. I’m still experiencing immense psychological pain every single day. Even one honest and fair conversation would have go so far to prevent and reduce permanent trauma and harm.
And I didn’t deserve to be shut and denied contact. I don’t deserve it now! It’s ugly and unimaginably cruel.
I want SCREAM! Kendra is the bad actor. It was never me!
So with this terrible punishment, it felt really unfair that I never got to talk to you. Never got to defend myself. We never got a chance to say things to each other that would at least help us land in softer spot. I don’t know why you chose this path, but I suspect it had a lot to do with whatever narrative Kendra constructed in the aftermath.
Kendra’s motive for the “John, go kill yourself” punishment took me a very long time to pick apart, to find definitive proof, and to finally have some understanding of her “why.” I had previously known Kendra to have no capacity for cruelty. It was unimaginable to think her “why” could be pure malice.
I spent a year where besides getting sober, I did everything imaginable to make amends, to become a better person. All of this because Kendra led me to believe that I did a terrible thing and maybe I really was a terrible person. Kendra was telling me “space and time,” saying, “I’m still not in a place where...” She was feeding the you did a terrible thing narrative. Come to find out, the entire time she was saying this—and I think this started almost immediately after the rupture—she was spending all her time with Nate. The hypocrisy is astounding and infuriating. It was a scene like they were freshly dating, but they had to kill someone to do it.
I don’t think it is a new news to you that Kendra treated me a lot like a boyfriend. I thought it was harmless, and to me, it just felt good to be loved as someone who doesn’t have a lot of love in their life.
There’s a pattern here with Kendra. I’ve talked to Sonia about all of this, and it was the same story with Mark. Mark has admitted to being very much in love with Kendra. There were some hurdles for Mark and Sonia early in the relationship because Mark was still in love with Kendra.
Tish, I need to break it to you, and maybe, I’ll try to say it in a few different ways. The nature of the relationship between Kendra and Nate is romantic—at least quasi-romantic. Kendra has big feelings for him. I can see in her eyes that she seems to be very infatuated. This part is out of your view, Tish, and Kendra is not going to be honest about it with you.
The “pure malice” reason why Kendra pushed me out of her life is because she WANTED to treat this married man as her boyfriend—oh and maybe to entertain the idea of sharing a hotel room with him. With the callousness and compulsivity of sex addict, she pulled every lever she needed to pull to get there. She had to stomp me into submission and silence.
It felt a lot like I had no rights as her long-time best friend. She showed no reverence for our deep friendship, no caring, no compassion, and as you know, she accepted no accountability or role in any of this. Kendra has some narcissistic traits and one of them for sure is an inability to ever admit culpability.
I could go so deep into what kind of ethical cancer this is on her part, but I’ll just say this: deleting your closest friend from your life, going so far as to DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) him, then gaslighting and lying to your girlfriend and pretty much every single person in your life about all of it — doing all of this to somehow get away with doing the exact thing I described to you on the phone— well, only a sociopath or someone with a love and sex addiction could be capable of such a thing. Hint: it’s the latter.
I think you may have heard Kendra repeat the refrain, “he’s a happily married man,” or say other things to minimize the significance of their relationship. I have no idea what she says to you, but you should know that whatever it is, you can bet it is gaslighting. Sure he might be married, but the capital T Truth is that Kendra has a romantic relationship with Nate.
I’ve written down a dozen examples of absolutely appalling gaslighting that she used on me throughout this ordeal. Make no mistake, gaslighting is a thing Kendra does and she has an almost supernatural aptitude for it.
I want to insert another thing here. You should believe me. I know what my lived experience is with Kendra. It would be deeply inappropriate for a married man to have the same relationship that I had with Kendra. Tish, just let me know if you want the tell-all on the Kendra Hinckley Girlfriend Experience(GFE).
When Kendra and I met ten days after the phonecall, there was an expression on her face I still remember clearly. It only makes sense to me now in retrospect. She was talking about not being in trouble with you for the Nate hangouts and how my USPS letter to you had helped clear her. She was smirking and looking a bit smug. This was an impossible for her to hide piece of malicious glee in having gotten away with it. In that moment, I think she knew she was going to do exactly what I had described on the phone. All of it. The inappropriate relationship. The swapping me out for the next in the trilogy. The sexuality in question stuff. The exact things that made you uncomfortable, Tish. The things you said caused you confusion, anger, and pain.
Back to present day, it seems like this “happily married” man who has a family and runs a business is very motivated to make time and travel sacrifices for Kendra. I’m pretty convinced he’s living the Kendra Hinckley Girlfriend Experience(GFE).
Tish, Kendra and Nate’s relationship exists entirely in private. One thing I know about Kendra is that she compartmentalizes relationships. You have zero insight into the actual nature of their relationship. Nate has referred to their hangouts as, “date night,” FYI. Their relationship started while you were on vacation. Their relationship came about as part of this carefully constructed narrative that involved dumping and demonizing someone you know Kendra liked a whole awful lot. Kendra and I were thick as theives. For Kendra to be so quick to toss me out of her life forever over an easily resolved matter, I think that should tell you the Kendra Nate relationship is maybe be a little suspect. Like, what happened? It seems to me she fell head over heels with him. Did they have a history of sexual relationship? I’m not discounting that as a very real possibility.
I typically have a pretty good read on people. The read I get from Nate is that he’s very rape-y.
Has Kendra talked to you about the dozens of perverted easter eggs he hides in his instagram posts. Jokes about anal sex that are hidden below the fold in the hashtags. Lots of stuff that is 100% misogynistic and then some other things that are just lightly or borderline homophobic.
Tish, did you know that Nate’s wife, Christine, had previously kicked Nate out? They were separated for a long time because of Nate’s bad behavior.
Do you know whether or not Nate and Christine have an open relationship? I asked Kendra, and she didn’t have an answer. You’d think she’d know.
I don’t think Nate’s close friend, Ryan, from Imperial knows about Kendra and Nate’s hang out all the time relationship. That’s smart. It would be bad look for Kendra if her other employees knew the nature of the Kendra / Nate relationship. At the same time, relationships that you have to keep secret look a lot like affairs.
I am happy to go on the record to say, Nate is a disgusting predatory pervert. I think he’s a terrible fucking person that you should be ashamed to have associated with your household—let alone have your girlfriend looking like she’s his sidepiece.
I don’t think it is just random or coincidence that person I said was a problem is the person Kendra spends all her time with now. It’s a lot like when someone runs away with the person they are having an affair with. If you have to destroy a person because you can’t help yourself from pursuing an outside-the-household relationship. What is that?
Please tell me something in here gives you pause.