According to her blog, Heather Morgan is a busy homemaking mother of three girls under the age of six, a prolific shutterbug, and self-confessed foodie who enjoys working out, uninhibited weekend sex, and scrapbooking. And up until ten blog posts ago, she was also the long-suffering and dedicated wife of a husband her readers knew only as Dumbass.
Dumbass has recently been on a posting spree of his own. “I admit I started dumbassdaddy.com partially as revenge, but since then I’ve come to rely on the overwhelming support of the Daddy community. They understand better than anyone what I’ve gone through.” At this, Dumbass, also known as Mike Sharpinsky, tears up.
“I thought I was the only husband in the world going through this, but now I know that’s not true. Other men, and a handful of women, have flocked to my site to tell their stories, commiserate, and offer support. I only wish I’d done this a long time ago. Maybe things with Darlene wouldn’t have gone as far as they did.”
Darlene Sharpinsky, her husband says, is Heather Morgan’s real name. “She wanted something that sounded more modern, more popular, so she gave herself, and our kids, blogging names. At first she said it was to protect the family from internet creeps, but it didn’t take long for those names to take over in real life. Now my daughters are convinced that their names really are Coco, Elsa, and Carolina – that they were named after fashion designers and not our own relatives.”
Mike says he became “Dumbass” because, according to his wife, all the most popular Mommybloggers affectionately disparaged their husbands, and “Candyass” was already taken.
It wasn’t just the name changes that Mike found disconcerting. He says her blogging became an obsession that lasted from early in the morning until late at night. Although the two had an agreement that she was going to be a homemaker while he went out and worked, it wasn’t long before she convinced Mike that their three girls needed to be in daycare five days a week to work on their social skills.
“So the girls were gone all day, but I’d come home and the house was a wreck, the laundry was undone, and when she wasn’t ordering takeout from Rusty’s Pizza, we were lucky to get Kraft macaroni and hot dogs.
“Not only that, but the only time she’d want to go out is when she thought she could get a good photo for her blog. So on the weekends, we’d take the kids to the California Living Museum or to the park, but as soon as she got the pictures she wanted, she’d want to turn around and go home so she could get them uploaded.”
Mike says that while he and Darlene once enjoyed an intimate relationship, he and Heather did not. “She talked a good game online, but when it came down to brass tacks, my blogger wife was more interested in eating Mallomars in front of the computer than in anything remotely sexual. I remember on our anniversary, she wrote this really sexy and romantic post, and all her readers were like, ‘awwwww isn’t that sweet, we could really learn some lessons from you’. The truth is that on that day, I got home from work, took the girls out to dinner, came home and gave them a bath, read them a story, and went to bed alone because my wife was too busy answering emails from women looking for advice on how to spice up their marriages.”
Things got so bad between the two, Mike says, that he began communicating with his wife by leaving comments on her blog. “She put her board on moderation then, claiming she was getting hit by spam, but it was me – reminding her that she should try getting off of her ass and actually doing any of the hundred things she claimed to be doing in her blog, like making dinner, waxing her legs, or getting ready for a date night.”
Initially, Mike filed for divorce hoping to get his wife’s attention. “I was hoping that if did that, she’d take me seriously,” he says. “I thought maybe she’d wake up from this internet dream life she’s been living, and get back to reality.” Instead, Mike says, Darlene once again turned to her internet fan base for support, accusing Mike of being jealous of her rising “career”. In a recent blog post entitled “Dumbass Tries to Shatter My Dreams”, Heather/Darlene wrote:
“As soon as my blog reached the top quarter million in Technorati ratings – just as it was in a position to be monetized by BlogHer ads, and noticed by companies looking to pay stay-at-home mothers for their reviews of toys and household products – Dumbass decided to pull this divorce stunt and start his own vengeful blog. He never could accept that I was a talented writer with a growing base of fans and a life that didn’t begin and end in the laundry room.”
Mike denies that his blog was started as revenge. He says that he was tired of feeling alone and keeping all of his feelings inside and blogging proved to be the solution. “I’m going to grow this thing with the help of my readers,” he says passionately. “Daddybloggers, as a market, are largely untapped and our importance as consumers has been under-rated. Within a couple of years, I think we’ll be the new Mommybloggers.”
To fulfill this mission, Mike recently quit his job and moved back in with his parents. He and Heather/Darlene are sharing custody of the kids, which Mike now calls, for their own protection, Betsy, Boo, and Bitsy. “It has taken some investment – I had to buy a new Mac Powerbook, a Sony DSLR A-300K with zoom lenses, and an HDR-CX12 hi-def camcorder to get started – but in the long run these things will pay off. I’m already getting a couple of thousands of hits a day, and dumbassdaddy.com hasn’t been in existence that long. I’ve just really managed to connect with a lot of men through my personal, insightful, humorous, and occasionally heart-wrenching stories. I see nothing but a bright future ahead.”
Does that future include Heather/Darlene? “I don’t know,” Mike says with a shrug. “There have been blogs posted that just can’t be taken back, and right now that’s just not something either of our audiences are rooting for. We’d probably both lose readers and our respective position in the markets if we went that route, and I don’t think either of us want to risk that at this point.
“And all I have to say to her at this point is: bring it on. We’ll see who ends up with the most hits and opportunities for product placement, and I’m betting it won’t be the lying, negligent, fat-bottomed Mommyblogger with the craptastic five year-old Dell and Canon PowerShot A470.”
Contacted for this story, Heather/Darlene refused comment, referring inquiries to her new attorney, Gloria Allred.
