Hands down best party of the story is that this is supposed to be Steve and, I don't know, Ping Jiang, dressed as a little Dutch Boy?

New York mag has a story today on the hedge fund ex-lover’s spat du jour: that of Steve Cohen and his former wife, Patricia, who last December sued Steve, accusing him of hiding “significant” marital assets from her when they were getting divorced (twenty years ago), insider trading and so on and so forth. The article starts off sweetly enough, with how the two met– “on a rainy summer evening in 1979,” at a bar on the Upper East Side. Patricia (she’s the one recounting this story to the author, BTW) was wearing “a white camisole and a pale, rain-soaked silk skirt that stuck to her lovely legs.” Stevie, then 22, a junior trader with “a trim waist” approached her, and while PC says he wasn’t her type, she found his eagerness endearing, and six months later they got married.

We then hear about the unhappy marriage and the even unhappier (twenty freaking) years since the two split, mostly from Patricia’s side (though we do get some of SC’s perspective, through his friends), plus all the stuff they said about each other in their divorce papers and subsequent other filings. It feels like we’re in couple’s counseling with these two and yeah, it’s as awkward as you can imagine that trust tree to be. He was obsessed with work and moody; she was unsympathetic, unappreciative. She thinks he’s tried to buy favor with their children; he thinks he’s being generous (when wasn’t giving them money she said he was treating them like cast-offs, while the kids with the new wife were spoiled). She feels he should’ve paid for her abode, but when he bought and renovated an apartment on Central Park West for her, claims to have felt like “a vassal of the wealthy lord,” because he kept it in his name (I’m not going to say it, because we’re not here to take sides but I am going to think it). Patricia says she’ll “never understand his anger [toward] me,” while Steve has told people, “She’s a terrorist on a mission to make my life a living hell.”

So, as previously stated, awk! And yet, from every insanely uncomfortable situation, wherein we’re hearing about Patricia withholding sex from her Steve, to the entitlement, to the yelling, the screaming and the pasta with anchovies, there’s a learning experience to be found. Namely, how to stay on the big guy’s good side. Current, future and past employees, perhaps hoping to learn from their mistakes, take note: Continue reading »