Niala, Liar, Thief, Adulterer

Niala Schulz, a.k.a Niala Brown, is a pathological liar, chronic adulterer, and a thief. I'm writing this article as a warning to others who might be lured in by her. I know that she's very personable and easy to like. She is also just plain easy, but that's another story. But under her affable persona, which she so carefully adapts to fit whatever or whomever she is trying to scam at the time, is something devoid of all morality, decency, or concience.

I should know. I dated her three different times over the course of almost 15 years. You're probably saying to yourself that I'm writing this out of bitterness. You'd be right. I am bitter. But I have plenty of good reasons to be. If you have invested any part of your life or fortunes to this woman, you should read on.

As you read, you'll surely wonder why I kept going back to her. That's a hard question to answer, and I haven't even come to an answer for myself. Maybe it's because she was my first real love. Maybe it was loneliness or desperation. Whatever it was, it was the worst mistake of my life.

I'll start with a quick summary of the low points. There are really too many to document even if I devoted an entire book to the subject, but this should give you an idea.

The first time we dated, I was 19. She was 18. It turned out that she was seeing someone else at the same time. I eventually found out, probably because she wanted me to. She asked me one day to check her email for her because she wasn't able to get to a computer. She gave me her username and password and asked me to read her email to her over the phone. Of course,
there were several e-mails from her other boyfriend with blatantly obvious subject lines. I clicked on one. He apparently knew about me and the letter was to convince her to pick one of us. I found out right there, with her on the phone, that the girl I had just travelled 1500 miles by amtrack to go see.. the girl that had been assuring me that she loved me.. that she wanted to be monogomous.. was two timing me.

That pretty much ended that. She ended up marrying that person, so those who know her know who I'm talking about. It was a funny thing.. She told me at the time that she wasn't even attracted to him, but wanted stability. In other words, money. I was young and poor at the time.

Anyway, I was pretty broken up, but tried to go on with my life. I moved to Chicago, where I worked for a couple of years as a programmer. Eventually, we started talking again. I more or less forgave her, knowing that kids can do dumb things, that she had had a lot of trauma in her life (or so she said), and made other rationalizations for her actions.

We became friends again and partially due to her urging and partially because I thought it would be best for my career, I moved to Silicon Valley, where she lived. We only saw each other a couple of times the first several months. It felt awkward. But as her marriage deteriorated, we became closer. She told me all sorts of stories about his abuse. I never saw any actual evidence of any of it, and now I don't really believe any of it. Normally, I'm pretty much against adultery, so I never tried anything. There was also the fact that she had children to consider. Breaking up a
family is a pretty serious thing, and even if her marriage already seemed to be on the rocks, I didn't want to do it. That's why the entire time we both lived in the Bay Area, nothing ever happened. That was my choice.

By the time she moved to North Carolina, her marriage seemed to be headed toward an inevitable conclusion. Eventually, I came out to visit, and we started an affair. I justified it to myself on the basis that the marriage was doomed anyway, and the assumption that all the things she told me about her husband were true.. that he was abusive, wouldn't let her have freinds, etc. In retrospect, that seems pretty odd. If he wouldn't let her have friends, surely he'd keep me, her ex boyfriend, away from her. Instead I dined with them at their home, many times.

We kept up a mostly long distance relationship for a little while, but her behavior became more and more erratic. I, however, was very much in love, so made many excuses for her. My friends were, unanimously, opposed. They felt that she was just using me to get through a tough time and that she'd drop me as soon as she could. They pointed out her past cheating and lies.
They pointed to their own experiences with her (she had gone through about half the people I knew in one night stands and so on). Again, I chose to believe that she'd changed. They were right. I was wrong.

She'd been having some medical problems which I was very concerned about. Dizziness, hallucinations, and seizures. She was diagnosed with hippocampal scleroris and started seeing a neurologist. I was still living in the Bay Area, and she was in North Carolina. With her health deteriorating, I asked her if she wanted me to move out there. We'd been talking about it for a
while, but it seemed time to speed up our plans. At first she said no. But then, a couple of hours later she called again, and asked in her sweet, pitiable voice, if I'd move out now. I quit my job immidiately.. a job which paid twice what I'd ever made before. I decided to hop a plane
immediately, and come back in a couple of weeks for my things. Then, one day, on the last day of that visit, I drove her to a night class she was taking. This is where it gets especially unbelievable. As we were walking to class, she seemed distressed. When I asked her, she told me this: "I have brain cancer." Basically, she just told me that she was dying and probably didn't have long. Needless to say, I was extremely upset. Beyond upset. But I'm not sure what ultimately upset me more.. thinking that the love of my life was going to die.. or later finding out that she had MADE THE WHOLE THING UP.

It gets worse. As I walked around campus waiting for her class to end, I decided that I'd propose to her, move, and take care of her. I had just landed the best paying job I'd ever had before or since, but that hardly mattered. I'd quit and find work in Raleigh. It felt like it took forever
for that class to end. My world was spinning. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and would be there for her. But when she came out, I had another surprise. She wasn't alone. She had some really scummy looking sleazebag with her.. a tattoo artist. Keep in mind, this was the last night of my trip. Up until this point, there has been no indication whatever that anything was amiss in our relationship. That day, she'd told me, just as sweetly and sincerely as ever, how much she loved me.

So she comes out with this guy, but I'm anxious to get going and get on with my plan to propose and so on. But she shocks me by saying that she wants to go out for drinks with this guy and a couple other people. I take her aside.. ask what she's talking about. She says she'll meet me at the hotel in a couple of hours. I voice my disapproval. She kisses me and tells me that I have to be able to trust her.. that she'd never do anything to hurt me. Feeling confused, I go back to the hotel. She never showed up. I went to her house the next day. It was getting close to time to catch my plane. She never showed up.

When I got back home, we talked. She said she wasn't ready for a relationship, that she wanted to get her own life together first. I went back out there to try to talk to her. I showed up at her house. I'm sure you know who was there. He apparently seduced her.. and I'm not kidding about this.. with crack cocaine. Usually when I say someone is smoking crack, I'm joking. I've never known an actual crackhead. This was also around the time that she decided she was some sort of goddess and told me she intended to give the kids to her ex husband so she could go to South America and spread some sort of shamanic wisdom. Yes, she's that crazy. She also told me that her crackhead boyfriend cured her cancer by touching the back of her neck or something.

I was stuck between being angry and at the same time feeling horrible because I thought she might die. My friends told me she was full of crap. I finally started to realize they were right. See, this wasn't the first time she'd done something like this. Shortly after we'd broken up the first
time, she told me she had a degenerative disorder that would cause her to go blind. She told me she was planning to commit suicide. Obviously, she never went blind.

But still, I wanted to forgive her. I wanted to believe her. I'd bought dozens of books on cancer. I was researching experimental thearopies. I wanted to chalk up her bizarre behavior to the cancer. It wasn't cancer. It was just her. She just completely did not care how her actions would affect anyone but herself. She lied about having cancer and cheated on me, right in front of my eyes, while all at the same time telling me how much I should trust her. It was the most bald faced and unashamed series of horrible lies I've ever seen or even heard of.

As I came to my senses, I talked to her online a few more times. I just wanted her to tell the truth. She continued to lie. And lie. And lie. I don't even really know why. I don't know what she gained from it. Maybe it made her feel powerful, to be able to manipulate someone emotionally so thoroughly. I can't even guess.

Eventually, I stopped bothering. I tried to go back to school. I wanted to change careers. I was tired of the rat race and just wanted to become a professor and settle down to a quiet, peaceful life, teaching physics. I was pretty broke.. Our long distance relationship had been expensive. I
thought I could just work part time as a programmer to pay my way. Unfortunately, that's right about the time the dotcom bust hit. I had to drop out after a year and change in serious debt. I went back to work, hoping to save up and try again.

Right about the time I'd gotten mostly out from under the debt I'd incurred and was thinking I might be able to go back, Niala struck again. This time it had been almost five years since we'd even talked.

She emailed me out of the blue. Apparently, she'd found my email address by googling my name. I stared at the screen, shocked, for probably ten minutes. She'd asked if I was "the same Ron" that she'd dated and if I remembered her. It seemed pretty ridiculous. We'd almost gotten married and she was asking if I remembered her. I only wished that I didn't remember. Anyway, eventually my curiousity got the better of me, and I replied. I wanted to see if she'd still lie or if she'd try to make up a story or what. To my surprise, she admitted everything right off the bat,
told me how sorry she was, and how much she missed me. It only took her five years.

She asked for a phone call. I told her that I was dating someone else and didn't want to talk to her. Eventually, I relented. I'd carried around a lot of anger, and somehow I thought that forgiving her would help me to let that go. She was very contrite. She told me that she'd been stupid.. that she'd been afraid.. she told me a lot of things that didn't really explain
anything. She told me that she was done lying, she felt terrible, etc, etc. In the same conversation, she told me a number of things that I eventually found out to be: more lies. For instance, she told me she was working as a Java programmer. But we'll come to that.

Now, my existing relationship had been on the rocks for some time. I'd been living with a girl for some time, and it wasn't working out. I won't go into that at all, except to say that she and I are still friends, I think she's a good person, but we were completely incompatable. It wasn't long
after Niala and I started talking again that my current girlfriend and I broke it off. That staged the scene for what happened next.

Eventually, I agreed to let her come visit me. We'd been getting along well on the phone, and I guessed I missed something that I thought we'd had, but never really did. In my own love life, I didn't really experience the passion that I seemed to have when she and I dated before, and Niala.. well, she took advantage of that. Of course we immediately had sex. And we soon slipped back into a relationship. But all was not as well as it seemed.

It seems her financial situation was not as strong as she'd initially indicated. So she immediately began to destroy all the work I'd done for several years to try to rebuild my life. At first, it was a little loan here and there. Soon, I was paying all of her bills. Of course, the entire time, she promised that she'd pay me back. Each and every time, she told me how much she didn't want me to think she was "using" me.. that I should write down everything I loaned her so that she could pay it back, etc. In the beginning, she was working a little bit, doing in home nursing and so forth, but eventually she gave that up completely, leaving an advanced stage alzheimers patient out to dry, I might add. She said she wanted to learn to program so that she could make more money. Now, keep in mind, in the beginning she told me that she had been working as a Java programmer. I assumed that she wanted to learn to be a "better" programmer. I started to
teach her Ruby. It turns out, she had absolutely no idea about programming. She'd obviously never done anything, at all. She didn't know about the simplest things, like loops and conditionals. When we started dating, presumably she was working part time as a Java programmer, but I never once heard her actually talk about her work, never when I called her did she say she was working, and in fact, it was all a big lie.

Nonetheless, I tried to teach her. She wasn't making any money whatsoever, and I was paying all the bills for two households. I went through my savings. I started doing side jobs. I worked maniacal hours. It damaged my health. It damaged our relationship. She constantly complained that I didn't make time for her, but there was nothing I could do. And of course, while dealing with 14 hour work days, nagging clients, and a pressing full time job, I also had to hold her hand almost nightly as she spiralled out of control with her own neurosis. She was constantly going to "kill herself".

Most nights, I had to talk to her for hours, meaning I couldn't sleep if I wanted to keep paying the bills. My own sanity was about to break. I also tried to devote time to teaching her. She insisted that she wanted to learn. I would give her little assignments, which she'd never do or even try. I spent time I didn't have making lesson plans. Any time I'd try to
focus our time on her learning, she'd become resentful. I bought her books, which she never read. Several times, I asked her if she really wanted to do this.. I made it clear that I'd support her in whatever she wanted to do, but that if she wasn't feeling the programming bug, not to force it, and move on to something else. But she was insistent.. except when it came to
doing any actual work. I'd sit at the computer for hours and hours and hours working, and she'd spam my message window with links from reddit, fark, and whatever web sites she was browsing... all .. day.. long. If I said anything, she became extremely defensive. Finally, I told her
that I was getting tired of covering everything, and that she'd have to start making a bigger effort, or she'd have to find a part time job at the very least to help cover bills. Some of my contract work fell through, and I literally wasn't making enough to float us both any more. I'd also pretty much ruined my credit. Eventually, things started to become strained between us. I asked her if she was cheating on me.. again. Of course, she said no. A few weeks later, I asked her to come out for a visit so that we could hash through things. I still wanted it to work, but felt there had to be changes. But the visit proved more or less a disaster. We had a good time together for the first few days, but after a week, we had a talk about the programming. She claimed she still wanted to do it. So I decided we'd do a lesson. This immediately put her in a bad mood. Of course, I ha dthings I'd much rather be doing as well.. if it were up to me, we wouldn't
have to work at all, and would spend all week out boating like we'd done earlier that week. After less than an hour, she was done. She didn't like the way that I taught. She didn't like that she had to do it. Even though she claimed over and over she wanted to learn, she was resentful when I took time out of my schedule to teach. Even though we'd basically done nothing for an entire week except goof off and have fun, having to put in any effort whatever infuriated her. We got into a heated argument, and I think that point was pretty much the end of our relationship.

After she left, we talked a couple more times. I told her if things didn't change, I'd have to make a change. She was unwilling. We broke up. I called her back.. just a few days later.. to see if there was anything we could do to resolve it. I didn't want to let it go. But it seemed now that
she was fully content to blow off our entire relationship. I asked her if she was seeing anyone. She said no. I talked to her again a few days later and asked again if she thought there might be a way to work things through. That's when she told me that she'd "told a little lie". She had
been seeing someone. I guess she found someone else to pay her bills. Keep in mind, this was only a few days after we'd broken up. We had been talking about getting married.

I told her I wanted to be paid back. She basically told me to fuck off. I never made her sign any contract. I did that because I wanted to show her trust for the sake of our relationship. Once again, my finances, my credit, and my entire life are in shambles after I'd spent years repairing
everything.

There is much that I've omitted. It's hard to remember, let alone relay in writing, everything that happened over 15 years. I've intentionally omitted some of the seedier details. But this should give you a flavor of just what this woman is about.

The bottom line is this: If you date her, she will cheat on you. Every time. If you help her, she will accept your help and resent you for it. If you loan her money, she will not repay it. If she opens her mouth, she's most likely lying. I know that she comes off as very sweet and demure. It's a ruse. Don't get sucked into it. Don't let her use you. She will destroy your life without compunction or remorse to enrich her own. I know that there are people she continues to exploit even as I type this. People who are too kind and trusting for their own good. I only hope they read this.

I'm embarrassed and ashamed of myself for having let myself fall prey to her lies and constant stream of bullshit. It's very difficult for me to talk about any of this, and I rarely do. Take of it what you will. If you think these are just the rantings of a jilted lover, so be it. To a certain
degree, you're right. Every single sentence of this is true. I'm sure you can get her side of the story easily enough, but keep in mind.. almost everything that she says is a lie. You've been warned.


-Ron