Bad romance

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/01/2019 (2750 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

First, we should talk about what happened.

According to police, shortly before 11 p.m. last Monday in Toronto, a 20-year-old man deliberately drove his car through the large glass windows of a downtown Porsche dealership.

News reports state the man’s car slammed into one of the Porsches on the sales floor, which in turn hit another one of the luxury cars. There were reportedly a total of four Porsches damaged in the incident.

Now we should take a moment to talk about why the unnamed man drove through the window in the first place.

After crashing through the window, according to CTV News, the 20-year-old driver explained to employees of the dealership that he was “having a bad day” because his girlfriend had just broken up with him.

Seriously! Employees told CTV the driver, after smashing through the window, exited his car, walked through the dealership and scribbled the name “Eve” on several of the cars that were unaffected by the crash. The name was believed to refer to the man’s ex-girlfriend, but police wouldn’t confirm that detail.

It may be cold comfort to this lovelorn Toronto driver, but at least he’s in good company, as we see from today’s heartbreakingly historic list of Five Famously Bad Breakups:

5) The star-crossed lovers: Louis J. Billittier Jr. and Christa M. Clark

The really bad breakup: What? You’ve never heard of this ill-starred couple? Ha ha ha. Of course you haven’t.

In fact, no one had heard of this tragic duo until they started making headlines around the world in 2014, offering proof you don’t have to be a big-shot celebrity to be a loser in love. Billittier is also proof of an old saying we just made up: If you want to get your US$53,000 engagement ring back, don’t say anything monumentally stupid. By way of background, Billittier, then a 55-year-old Buffalo restaurateur, met Clark, a 38-year-old nail technician, at a golf tournament in 2009 and sparks began to fly. Things turned sour when, in July 2012, the obviously classy Billittier broke up with his then-fiancée, Clark, via text message.

The restaurateur reportedly ended the engagement after his much-younger would-be-bride refused to sign a prenuptial agreement, although Clark’s lawyer claimed that wasn’t true. Whatever. After ending the engagement, Billittier decided to rub a little salt in the wound, firing off this heartfelt followup text: “Plus you get a $50,000 parting ring. Enough for a down payment on a house.”

Legally speaking, this was a poor choice of words because, according to the Buffalo News, when the bitter Billittier tried to get the ring back in court, a New York judge shot his claim down, saying the snotty text message proved the 2.97-carat sparkler was a gift outside the promise of marriage. Of the text referring to the “parting ring” — the words that ultimately cost him more than US$50,000 — Billittier claimed in court that he meant it as a joke, according to news reports at the time.

“I was being sarcastic, like a game show host — you get a parting gift,” he told reporters. Nice joke, Louis, but we’re not sure that one has the ring of truth, so to speak.

 

4) The star-crossed lovers: Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb

The really bad breakup: Byron was one of the greatest British poets of all time, a leading figure of the Romantic Movement in early 19th-century England. He was famous for the beauty and brilliance of his writings, but arguably even more so for his notorious sexual escapades, the most famous of which was with Lady Caroline Lamb, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist who was married to William Lamb, who eventually became prime minister of England.

Byron and Caroline Lamb met in 1812 when Byron was 24 and she was 26. She initially spurned his attentions, famously branding him as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” This was not a match made in heaven. By all accounts, Byron loved to pursue women, but once captured, he longed to leave them.

In August 1812, near the end of their relationship, “Caroline chopped off a hunk of her pubic hair and sent it to him,” author Jennifer Wright wrote in her bestselling 2015 book It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History.

At one point, William Lamb took his wife to Ireland, but that didn’t end the affair. Notes Wright: “Lamb wanted a miniature painting of Byron that was in the possession of his publisher, John Murray. So she forged a letter from Byron that said Lamb could take whatever painting she liked. The forgery was so convincing that when she gave the letter to Murray, he gave her the painting, no questions asked. Byron was not pleased. After months of negotiations, Lamb agreed to give back the painting for a lock of Byron’s hair. Byron agreed to this — but instead of sending his own hair, he sent a lock of his new girlfriend’s hair.

Lamb bought the ruse, and sent the painting back.” The pair wrote hateful poems about one another, and at a ball in 1813, insulted by Byron, Lady Caroline broke a wine glass and tried to slash her wrists, but was saved by the intervention of her mother-in-law. It petered out eventually, but according to at least one website, she is remembered as the “ultimate crazy ex: unhinged, obsessed, stalker-ish.”

 

3) The star-crossed lovers: Emperor Nero and Poppaea Sabina

The really bad breakup: By modern standards — OK, by any standards — it doesn’t get much weirder than this one.

“Nero definitely handled his breakup the most violently, because he had the unrestrained power of a Roman emperor,” says Wright, who rated this couple’s breakup as No. 1 in her hit book on historically bad breakups.

According to historians at the time, Poppaea Sabina was thought to be the most beautiful woman in Rome, whereas Nero is widely considered one of the craziest emperors in history. According to the Washington Post: “Wright describes Poppaea as looking like (actress/model) Christina Hendricks — in addition to being wealthy and clever. Naturally, the Roman emperor Nero decided that she was his soulmate. Small wrinkle, though: Nero was married to someone else, so he married Poppaea off to his friend Otho, hoping that Otho would be too busy with other women to pay much attention to her.”

Of course, Otho fell in love with Poppaea, so he was banished to Lusitania in 58 CE, leaving her able to marry again. Notes the Post: “However, Nero still had that pesky wife lying around. He eventually divorced her, and when the public objected, he had her killed — making room for Poppaea and Nero to get together. They had a daughter, who died shortly after being born.” In a word, their relationship was tumultuous.

“Finally, one night, after Nero had been at the races, Poppaea, who was pregnant at the time, began yelling at him,” Wright writes. “And so he jumped up and down on her belly until she was dead.” It is wise to take ancient history with several grains of sand, as some historians buy into this account, whereas others do not. Whatever, it didn’t end well, and Nero reportedly rebounded “by castrating a slave boy, Sporus, who looked like Poppaea… and made him pretend to be the new empress of Rome. (Nero) dressed him up and referred to him as Sabina,” Wright writes.

Forgive the pun, but fiddling around with Nero ended badly for everyone.

 

2) The star-crossed lovers: Norman Mailer and Adele Morales

The really bad breakup: Norman Mailer, who died in 2007, is widely remembered as one of the greatest American writers of all time, whereas his second wife, Adele Carolyn Morales, is largely remembered for being the woman he almost stabbed to death at a drunken party.

An aspiring painter and writer, Morales moved in with Mailer in 1951 and they were married in 1954. The couple had two daughters. “The relationship, marked by heavy drinking and ancillary love affairs on both sides, was stormy. Adele’s notion of romantic life was along the lines of the opera Carmen — she said ‘you lived from crisis to crisis, sang love duets and had screaming fights,’” recalled an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald after Morales’ death in 2015.

In 1960, the Washington Post recalled, Mailer and Morales threw a wild party where Mailer announced his intention to run for mayor of New York City. “That night, Mailer was drinking heavily and wearing a ruffled bullfighter shirt. He began challenging people to step outside and start fighting,” the Post noted. Returning to the party with a blackened eye, Mailer boasted about being one of the greatest writers ever, prompting Morales to reply that he was “no Dostoyevsky,” then piling on further insults. Mailer grabbed a penknife and stabbed her in the stomach and back, puncturing her cardiac sac.

As she lay there, hemorrhaging, one partygoer reportedly reached down to help, but Mailer was said to have snapped: “Get away from her. Let the (expletive) die.”

Morales refused to press charges and Mailer pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree assault and received a suspended sentence. In court, Mailer argued, “Naturally I have been a little upset, but I have never been out of my mental faculties. It is important for me not to be sent to a mental hospital, because my work in the future will be considered that of a disordered mind… I insist I am sane.”

The couple divorced in 1962. “No matter how good you are at writing books, it doesn’t really give you a free pass to go around stabbing your spouse in the heart,” author Wright told the Washington Post. In her book, she declared: “Male writers, especially male writers during the 1960s, somehow tricked people into thinking that they were demigods because they had an understanding of language.”

 

1) The star-crossed lovers: Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren

The really bad breakup: What puts Tiger Woods’ breakup at No. 1 on our list? Well, let’s just put it down to the fact that he’s one of the most famous athletes in history and one of the most recognizable men on the planet. At the peak of his powers, Tiger dominated the game of golf. He was the world’s top-ranked player for an unprecedented 683 weeks.

The guy had the world by the tail, but that world came crashing down in spectacular fashion when, on Nov. 27, 2009, after a tabloid published a story about his affair with a nightclub hostess, the world’s best golfer crashed his Cadillac outside his Florida mansion. His then-wife, Elin Nordegren, supposedly used a golf club to smash one of the SUV’s back windows. The world looked on as sordid details of Tiger’s secret life as a serial philanderer leaked out in the media.

In 2013, the New York Post published a lengthy report. It stated: “On Thanksgiving night, after Woods, an insomniac, took an Ambien and fell asleep, Nordegren took his phone and scrolled for (nightclub hostess Rachel) Uchitel’s number. She clicked on it and found a text from her husband: ‘You are the only one I’ve ever loved.’” At that point, Nordegren texted, posing as Woods, and received a reply from Uchitel.

“Nordegren’s screaming woke up Woods. He was woozy, but he grabbed his cellphone and ran to the bathroom, locking himself in and texting Uchitel,” the Post wrote. In the end, Woods re-emerged, and his wife seized his cellphone, saw his last message and reportedly threw it at Woods, chipping his tooth. Woods then tore out of the house barefoot, and their shouts awoke the neighbours. The golfer hopped into his 2009 Escalade, pulled out of the driveway, crushed some hedges, careened into a curb, then hit a fire hydrant before smashing into a tree.

In the wake of the scandal, Nordegren divorced Tiger, who saw his career spiral downward. It is arguably the most publicized breakup in history, but on a happier note, Tiger pulled himself off the ash heap of history last year and did something few thought possible — winning the PGA Tour’s season-ending championship, his first victory in more than five years.

His story was a tragedy, but it appears the final chapters are still being written.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca