Recently, I saw a long post by Ma Rong. She said that she has been divorced for almost nine years, yet she ended up with nothing—neither money nor property to speak of. She only has a four-digit bank balance, and she even doesn’t dare to attend her children’s parent-teacher meetings. And I was just thinking: how could she be so different from that woman who used to be so flashy and looked down on Wang Baoqiang?

To be honest, back then, Ma Rong was just an ordinary girl. She only became well-known because of the halo of Wang Baoqiang. While spending her husband’s money, she kept glancing around every direction. In the end, she got together with Wang Baoqiang’s assistant, Song Zhe. She mistakenly thought it was love, but in reality, it was just being used as a tool. That guy Song Zhe was originally only trying to get some benefits from the boss’s wife—there was really nothing good about it.

The most painful part is that after Wang Baoqiang, Ma Rong became a passerby nobody cared about. After Song Zhe was released from prison, he didn’t even want to look back, and she definitely had no way to return to how things used to be. In contrast, Wang Baoqiang is no longer the dumb guy he used to be. Now he has diversified across film and variety shows. The box office of the films he directed has surpassed 2.2 billion. His reputation has kept turning around and rising steadily. And standing beside him is a high-educated girlfriend who graduated from Stanford. Once you put these side by side, Ma Rong’s current situation feels especially heartbreaking.

What some netizens said is also right. Back then, Ma Rong’s mother was too domineering. It wasn’t about educating her daughter to admit her mistakes and own up to them—it was instead about pushing her and fighting back to the end, turning a good hand into a complete mess. The Wang family originally still had some room to reconcile because of the children, but they were forced down the road of no return. Ma Rong was wrong, but this ending really is also quite regrettable. How many families have been destroyed by the mother-in-law?

Looking at Wang Baoqiang’s current development, and then looking at Ma Rong’s current life—life is just that realistic. The price of overestimating herself and choosing the wrong person back then is something she has to pay back slowly over all these years.