True Romance: Woman Leaves Groom To Be For Maid Of Honor, Model Finds Love With A Felon & A Noisy Affair
Welcome to another messy week in the world of True Romance. We're picking up right where we left off last week. That is to be expected, given how affairs of the heart often play themselves out.
We have more twists and turns as people try to figure out where love is taking them. Nothing illustrates that better than the first woman who called off her wedding and left her groom to be.
She had fallen for her maid of honor, who at the time was a married woman. It sounds complicated, but I have a feeling these two figure things out.
We also take a dive into a model who found love with a man serving time in prison. The "eye candy felon" and his pen pal turned wife have, against all odds - including no conjugal visits - been making their relationship work.
If that isn't a ray of sunshine on a cloudy, confusing day of romance, I don't know what is. The week wraps up with a noisy affair that pushes a neighbor over the edge.
He eventually takes matters into his own hands and exposes the cheater. We've got quite a bit to get to, enough with the introduction. Let's get to it.
Woman called off wedding to be with her maid of honor
We start in Florida where a woman by the name of Kayla has a story about a called-off wedding leading her to walk down the aisle with someone else a few months later.
There were a few signs along the way that the first marriage was never going to make it. She tried to push through and make it work, but then realized her maid of honor was the one she was meant to be with.
Kayla had met her eventual fiance, Harry, when she started college at the age of 18. The two were friends, and it wasn’t until five years later that they started dating.
"I felt settled and comfortable, but I knew in my heart I wasn’t madly in love with Harry," Kayla explained, according to the NY Post. "It felt more like companionship than what my friends had – they were so passionate about their partners."
A woman calls off her wedding and leaves the groom to be for a relationship with her maid of honor. (Image Credit: Getty)
In 2021, while working as a personal trainer, she became friends with a client of hers by the name of Dan. Roughly a year later, she met Dan's wife, Erika, and within a few months the two were best friends.
In early 2023, Harry proposed to Kayla while the two were out hiking. She always wanted to be a bride, "But, at the same time, I felt stuck, like Harry was my only option. I was smiling as I said ‘yes,’ but inside I felt trapped, as if I was just making the best of things."
Well, definitely push that down and move forward. You wouldn’t want your desire to be a bride to get ruined by not being into a guy and feeling stuck. That's silly.
Erika was happy for the couple and soon after Kayla asked her to be her maid of honor. A few months after she accepted the maid of honor offer, the door to a very different life opened up.
The maid of honor had kissed a girl and liked it. She wanted to divorce her husband Dan and pursue a new life. Kayla says she was "immediately jealous of this other woman, and suddenly realized I had feelings for Erika."
These feelings weren't going to be pushed down as easily as those feelings of being stuck had been months earlier. Suddenly, there was a spark between the two best friends. One thing led to another and the two realized that they were supposed to be together.
Kayla called off her wedding and Erika asked for a divorce. They had kept their heads on a swivel and their hearts open and found each other. These two didn’t want to hurt anyone, that's simply an unfortunate side effect.
The two are now happily married and will remain that way forever. Or at least until one of them finds another person they have a spark with, then all bets are off, and we're rinsing and repeating this story.
But that will probably never happen. These two are soulmates and all of that.
Model found love with eye candy felon
Now, from one relationship on bumpy ground to a love with a foundation as solid as a rock. A model and an "eye candy felon" found each other in the most unlikely of ways.
The two are married and making it work despite enormous odds against them. In fact, they tied the knot and haven't been able to seal the deal on their marriage because the prison the man is incarcerated at doesn't allow conjugal visits.
Where is Kim Kardashian? Isn't she busy righting wrongs in prisons? We're going to need the skills of her deceased father to help these two out.
Their relationship started out like a lot of relationships. Lithuanian model Gabriella met her Detroit-born husband Jamal through a pen pal program. The two started writing to one another and fell in love.
A model fell in love with a felon she describes as "eye candy." (Image Credit: Getty)
A classic tale really. The beautiful model and the wrongfully convicted felon who is 12 years into a 22 to 45-year sentence for second-degree murder. Garbriella believes her husband's claims of innocence.
"I believe my husband was wrongfully convicted 12 years ago at the Michigan Department of Corrections," Gabriella told The Sun. "It was for second-degree murder, and he was imprisoned by hearsay and sentenced by bench trial."
If she believes it, then he must be innocent. Am I right? What are we doing here keeping these two from sharing their love freely?
Gabriella and Jamal were married in 2022 and weren’t allowed the basic decency of consummating their marriage. But they make it work.
"Getting playful on the phone works mainly when you can implement toys and other things, and it gets spicy," Gabriella, who travels three to four times a year to see her husband in a Michigan prison, said.
"You can not have sex on a visit as Michigan does not have the conjugal visits option," she explained. "Anything sexual could get you a sexual misconduct ticket and lose your visits, and it is for prison safety reasons."
Who knew life in prison was so hard for a married couple? These two have connected in other ways and if his conviction isn't overturned, she'll be waiting for him when he gets out. She's still young and will have plenty of years ahead of her when he's eventually released.
Some of these tug at your heartstrings more than others. Going into it, I never really know which ones will get me. This is one of them. Let me just say that I'm rooting for these two.
Noisy affair exposed by a neighbor
We're going to put this week to bed with a lesson on how not to conduct an affair. The goal for most is to have your cake and eat it too. Very few go into it hoping to get caught.
These two likely don't fall in the "hoping to get caught" category, but they weren’t exactly trying to keep it to themselves either. The neighbor who exposed the cheater explains why he got involved.
He didn't set out to be in their business, but felt like he had no choice. The man said, reports the Daily Star, "My upstairs neighbor has been having an affair with a married man for about four months now."
The neighbor continued, "I wouldn't care, but because it's an affair he comes over at odd hours of the night and they have sex very loudly (I can hear a lot) and it wakes me up/prevents me from sleeping. How do I know it's an affair? He's never spent the night and his car has baby car seats in there."
A noisy affair leads to the affair being exposed by a neighbor. (Image Credit: Getty)
This isn't the first time he's had issues with this particular neighbor. She's a 40-year-old woman who has hosted parties during the week, gets home very late and paces the floor of her condo. She's also had several affairs in the past. He describes her as "living like a teenager."
To say he's not a fan of his upstairs neighbor is an understatement. She hasn't used her past run-ins with him to change any of her behavior as is evident with the loud affair she's been conducting late at night.
So he decided to get some revenge and got to work trying to figure out who the cheating guy was. He explained, "I looked up the license plate, found an address, searched the address and found a name. Took the name and did some social media stalking and found the man and his wife's profiles."
After finding the wife's social media accounts, he messaged her from a burner account to let her know about the affair. Did he cross the line and ruin a perfectly good story of romance? Maybe, but he doesn't care.
The problem has been resolved. He said after exposing the cheater, "I haven't seen him now for a few weeks and I'm sleeping really nicely."
Not the typical sort of happy ending we're used to where the cheater gets caught and then the mistress joins the relationship, but a happy ending nonetheless. Going out on a high note, that's all you can really ask for.
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That's it for this week. True Romance will be back next Thursday afternoon as we continue to unpack all that surrounds the complex world of relationships. Send questions, comments, stories, and whatever else you like my way. The inbox is open sean.joseph@outkick.com.