Rejection was something Janelle didn't handle very well. Unfortunately, she received her fair share of it from her husband. Rejection was a regular part of Janelle's life, no matter where she was or who was involved, because she was so unlikeable. For Steven Stone, the longer he was with Janelle, the more turned off he became.
Steven admitted that it wasn’t easy to put his foot down and say “no” to Janelle because of how violent she could be. He never knew how she would react or if she would fly off the deep end. He admitted that while it may have been wrong and maybe he should have been more assertive, he found it easier not so much to string her along but to say what he needed to placate Janelle momentarily. If it was what she wanted to hear, she would believe it, and all would be peaceful, at least for a while.
But sometimes Janelle wasn't just angry; she was visibly hurt and not very perceptive. Like the time they agreed to get away to Laughlin, and Janelle spoke of getting “back on track” with things. Had she had an ounce of intuition—or maybe she was just too hopeful to see the obvious—she would have seen the truth. She would have picked up on her husband's lack of interest since he hadn't verbally agreed or brought up making any changes to their relationship on his own. Changes that Janelle wanted but that he wasn't interested in at all.
In their hotel room one evening, Steven was focused on the TV. Janelle pranced around in her nakedness, her thinning, rapidly graying hair thrown up in a high ponytail, which didn’t suit her older appearance. She threw herself at her husband while he sat on the loveseat.
“Come on,” he groaned, flinging his wife off in annoyance, proving her right in saying that he was more entertained by the TV than her. Afterward, he was surprised at how easily he tossed his weighty wife aside. He felt a tinge of guilt, but that was quickly replaced with the assurance that he had a right to do what he felt was best. He wasn't in the mood to touch the vicious woman and wasn't going to pretend to be either.
“Why did we get married if you just wanted a friend? A roommate,” Janelle cried, tears welling up.
Steven’s eyes remained glued to the TV, his voice silent.
With embarrassment, humiliation, and sadness etched on her face, Janelle stormed off into the bathroom. She re-emerged after a while and climbed into the bed she would be sleeping in by herself since she was a light sleeper and preferred to sleep alone. She lay there staring at the wall for a long time, feeling sorry for herself before finally drifting off to sleep.
This was one of many incidents that some people believe led Janelle to go astray and eventually come unglued.
For reasons unknown, Janelle, who had always looked her age, began to age lightning-fast around the time she met her husband. She looked like the 36-year-old woman she was when they met. However, just six years later, she looked 55. Wrinkles that weren't there before were instantly noticeable to those who hadn't seen her for just a couple of weeks. The weight gain was steady. Her hair thinned out, turned mostly gray, and her skin began to sag. Most chalked it up to so much anger and intense emotions, but eventually, it became evident that it was more than that.
The strangest phenomenon was her seemingly inhuman strength and the way her eyes would change colors drastically when angered. Despite her lousy appearance, it seemed that during the first few years of her marriage, she had an endless supply of energy, fitness, and flexibility underneath the rolls of flab she always claimed to love and be proud of. Janelle had been into gymnastics as a child and, to most people's astonishment, was still able to perform well as a middle-aged obese adult, even after taking several years off from the sport.
When Janelle began cheating on Steven to get pregnant, since Steven refused to have sex with her, let alone a child, many hoped that her reproductive parts had aged as much as the rest of her appeared to have aged. Sadly, this wasn't the case.
Janelle begged Steven, according to her journal and what she told a close friend, to see a doctor about his lack of appetite, as she called it. Also, when they did get together during the beginning of their relationship, it wasn't very often, and Steven had issues performing. Yet Janelle could see he was in absolutely no hurry to see a doctor, and this frustrated her to no end.
“If anything, he likes being the way he is,” she wrote in her journal. “But why? Why would any red-blooded man be happy this way? How could they be? Is he not human or something?”
In some of their many discussions, with Janelle trying to get him to agree to be “normal” in bed or see a doctor, Steven would steer the subject in a different direction, which he later admitted he took delight in knowing would frustrate Janelle.
“What does the apartment I had back east have to do with us having a baby?!” she would ask on the verge of tears.
“I guess you're going to have to get someone else then,” he said one night after Janelle complained for the millionth time about his lack of interest in sex and a child.
That statement provided Janelle with the perfect opportunity to twist his words to suit her desires. After all, why should she be forced to look for a new place to live and get a job just because her husband wouldn't keep his word?
“So you want me to get a surrogate, is what you're saying?”
Steven looked at his wife as if to say, “Are you serious?” but simply shrugged in response, another thing that annoyed the hell out of Janelle.
At first, Janelle was adamantly against his “suggestion,” but then she said she would think about it, unsure if she could simply have sex with a random stranger.
But people were not only wrong in assuming her reproductive system was way ahead of her but also in assuming the frumpy, dumpy nutjob couldn’t get anyone in the first place.
“Guess guys are just that easy,” a family member would later say. “If they're desperate enough and the woman is right there ready, willing, and able…”
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