Mayci Neeley’s memoir is one jaw-dropping revelation after the next
“Are you OK?” my husband asks as I sit hunched over a book, tears streaming down my face.
I am not. I’m reading “Told You So,” the debut memoir by Mayci Neeley, one of the stars of the utterly fascinating series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” Neeley, 30, chronicles her life before reality TV fame in jaw-dropping detail. There is, of course, her surprise pregnancy at 19. There’s the death of her unborn baby’s father in a car crash while he was texting her. There’s an evil bishop. There’s her high-stakes career as a Division I tennis player. There’s the time her mother called her a slut.
Beyond the rush of plot, what stands out the most is Neeley’s account of the abusive relationship she endured, starting in high school. It’s at turns hair-raising and heartbreaking, and it’s useful enough as a primer on relationship violence that I plan to buy it for all of my teenage nieces. And while not exactly a literary achievement, “Told You So” does offer an interesting portrait of young womanhood, one that allows love, faith and motherhood to coexist with trauma, skepticism and ambition.
Neeley met her abuser, whom she refers to pseudonymously as Dick, at a Mormon dance when she was 17. They shared a kiss at midnight and quickly became a couple. But Dick was possessive. He worried about her cheating on him while he was away at Brigham Young University and picked fights. But he was also good-looking and sent flowers to the house. “When they arrive,” she writes, “my mom and I both think he’s Prince Charming.” Neeley enrolled at BYU as a star tennis recruit, and the relationship continued, despite Dick’s increasingly apparent darkness.
Things escalated. Dick tried to cut his wrists in front of her during a jealous outburst and cut her leg instead. During one fight, he chased her with scissors. Reluctant sexual activity eventually turned into nightmarish assaults, one of which Neeley says she still cannot bring herself to talk about with her therapist or husband. Alcohol and drugs fueled many of their encounters; eventually, Dick raped her.
Neeley wanted out. But in a perverted twist, Neeley was unable to report the abuse to the university because Dick had evidence that she had broken the school’s strict policy against drinking. “He weaponizes the honor code against me again and again,” she writes. “Each time I break up with him, he says he’ll report me.” With expulsion hanging over her head, she always took him back. (Notably, in 2016, BYU changed its policy so students who report assault are no longer subject to honor code violation investigations.)
The relationship eventually ended with a whimper, not a bang — Dick decided to leave BYU due to medical issues. “One second, I’m basically his prisoner, and the next he’s standing beside his packed car in the parking lot of the freshman dorms, telling me he’s leaving,” she writes. “Suddenly, out of nowhere, I have my life back.” And the book is only one-quarter of the way through.
The trauma of that relationship haunted Neeley during her next one — with the free-spirited Arik. Though they fell in love, she became certain she wasn’t worthy of happiness. She developed a habit of going on long walks alone in the most dangerous parts of town. “I almost want something bad to happen to me,” she writes, “because I feel like I deserve it and that nobody will care.”
And then something did happen, which only compounded the trauma: Arik died, leaving her pregnant and alone.
Neeley became deeply depressed and worried she would hurt herself or the baby. On a family cruise to the Dominican Republic, she imagined jumping off the ship. Back home, she started going to the library regularly, in part because it was the only place her mom would let her go alone. “I think she assumes I can’t kill myself on the 10-minute drive between our house and the Mission Viejo Public Library,” she writes. “Joke’s on her — I definitely could.”
Lest you think this book is a bummer, Neeley’s personality — a mix of fizz, deadpan humor and astonishing competitiveness — leavens an otherwise harrowing account. (Neeley has an amusing habit of fully naming all of the young women she beat in tennis over the years and documenting the scores.) While not exactly stylish, Neeley’s unfussy writing keeps the action moving and suits the dramatic material. And there’s a satisfying arc, as Neeley found love, built a stable marriage and had two more children.
All the stuff that earned Neeley and her friends a TV pilot — the emergence of MomTok, the “soft-swinging” scandal — appears only briefly in these pages, a wise choice given that it’s all pretty boring compared to what else Neeley has to offer. And what she offers is a picture of a wife and mother who is also an entrepreneur and a breadwinner; faithful and freethinking; a victim and a champion.
These same dichotomies are central to “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a show with a dumb name that promises scandal but accidentally delivers material complex enough to launch 1,000 Ph.D. dissertations on gender and religion. Both the show and “Told You So” prove there’s value in giving these women a platform, even if they could be more introspective about the messy ways its stars follow, bend and break the rules of their world.