As we learned one week ago, Mary Kay Letourneau and her husband/abuse victim Vili Fualaau have separated and will probably divorce. They met when she was 34-years-old and he was 12. They were together through two kids and 20 years – they have only been married for 12 years, but the “20 years” figure is from the start of Mary Kay’s abuse of Vili in 1996. So, I don’t know, I’m feeling rather “spare me the pity party, Mary Kay.” I said last week that there’s always been a “not right” vibe from her, so much so that I actually feel a twinge of… not quite sympathy, but just general emotion about her being not-right in the head. But that doesn’t mean that I’m looking to cast her as “the victim” in this situation. People Magazine is hoping someone’s buying that narrative though.

During their 12-year marriage, Vili Fualauu and Mary Kay Letourneau lived quietly together in a modest home near Seattle. To those who knew them, the couple seemed disconcertingly normal considering that they began a sexual relationship when Fualauu was a 12-year-old sixth grader and Letourneau was his 34-year-old teacher.

He worked at a home improvement store and as a part-time DJ on the side. She was a paralegal. They raised their two daughters, Audrey and Georgia, now 20 and 18 years old, and they largely avoided the national spotlight after years of making headlines. But like every marriage, there were issues. Last month, Fualaau filed for legal separation from Letourneau, apparently putting an end to a relationship that lasted for more than 20 years.

News of the split has surprised many friends who have known the couple for years. But one friend of Fualaau’s, who also works as a DJ, says Letourneau, 55, sometimes seemed unhappy with her 33-year-old husband — and vice versa.

“He complained about her sometimes, but all guys complain about their wives,” says the friend. “He said she nagged a lot. She always wanted him to man up and take responsibility. She was making the money, and he was trying to get his career as a DJ to take off, so he would spend a lot of time working on that. He said that she would be pissed off that he wasn’t doing as much around the house as she was.”

The friend says that Letourneau sometimes did the lion’s share of housework: “She handled everything — like the money, the chores, all of it.”

This was a source of friction between them, according to the friend.

“She would get on him when he wasn’t doing his part,” the friend says. “She’d want him to be more involved in the raising of the kids, like go to their shows and things.”

Neither Fualaau nor Letourneau have spoken publicly about their separation, and the final breaking point, if there was one, remains unclear. His friend says there were bright spots in their coupling as well as conflicts.

“He complained like guys complain about their wives, but he loved her,” the friend says. “They usually got along. He didn’t complain when she’d show up to the clubs. He seemed happy to see her.”

[From People]

Again, she started abusing him when he was 12 years old. She forced a teenager to become a father. And now she’s being cast as the sympathetic estranged wife who had to “nag” her husband to do some housework. You know why they split? Because he was 12 years old when their relationship began! Because he has arrested development from being abused. Spare me the “woe is Mary Kay Letourneau” stories.

Photos courtesy of Getty.