Skip to content

Tommy Hayes and Deborah Hayes

Tommy Hayes and Deborah Hayes married around 1977 and remained together for approximately twenty years. Their only child, Evan Thomas Hayes, was born on June 14, 1982. Deborah’s repeated dismissal of Tommy’s migraine symptoms and autistic traits eroded his trust in his own experience. She left him for a younger, wealthier man, and their divorce was finalized in 1997.

Marriage and Family Life

Tommy and Deborah built their household in the Pasadena area. Tommy worked in technology and later founded Hayes Technologies, while Deborah came from a family with more inherited wealth. Their economic stability did not make their values or expectations compatible. Deborah was extroverted, materialistic, and invested in status; Tommy was quiet, methodical, and more comfortable in small groups and predictable routines. She treated visible vulnerability as a failure of presentation and expected him to appear socially effortless in the settings she valued. Tommy placed greater weight on practical competence and follow-through. Their different class backgrounds informed those judgments without making either response inevitable.

Deborah criticized the same traits that Tommy shared with Evan. She treated Tommy’s need to write information down, his deliberate processing, and his discomfort at large social events as social failures. Tommy continued to use those traits to manage his career and to provide Evan with careful, practical care.

Medical Invalidation

Main article: Migraine Reference

Tommy experienced his first hemiplegic migraine in 1969, at age fifteen, eight years before the marriage. During the marriage, Deborah repeatedly answered his pain, one-sided weakness, speech changes, confusion, and other symptoms with dismissal. Her recurring statements included “It’s all in your head,” “You’re being dramatic,” “Just take an aspirin and get over it,” “Other people deal with headaches,” and “You’re not that sick.”

The pattern taught Tommy to minimize his symptoms and question whether he was weak or overly sensitive. It contributed to his delay in seeking further evaluation and left him managing recurring neurological episodes without a correct diagnosis throughout the marriage. At the hospital in 1997, he told Evan, “I started to believe her. That maybe I was just… weak.”

On March 26, 1997, while divorce proceedings were already underway, Tommy experienced a severe episode that worsened through a morning at Hayes Technologies. After he became unable to continue driving, a passerby helped him contact his secretary, Brenda. Tommy lost consciousness while Brenda drove him toward Huntington Memorial Hospital. A stroke evaluation led to a hemiplegic-migraine diagnosis after nearly twenty-eight years of symptoms.

The diagnosis gave Tommy a medical framework for experiences Deborah had repeatedly minimized and clarified the harm of the marriage’s invalidation. It contributed to finalizing the divorce later that year. Tommy began treatment and learned to advocate for his symptoms without Deborah’s judgment controlling his decisions.

Separation and Divorce

Deborah left Tommy for a younger man with more money. The betrayal and the end of the marriage caused Tommy profound grief, much of which he concealed from other people. Evan witnessed his father’s suffering and understood that Deborah’s departure involved both the affair and her judgment that Tommy was not socially or materially sufficient for the life she wanted.

After the divorce, Evan made Tommy’s home his primary residence. Deborah remarried and moved to the Los Angeles area. Any remaining co-parent contact ended after Deborah attacked Pattie Matsuda during the summer 1998 pregnancy disclosure and Evan permanently ended his own relationship with her. Deborah did not participate in later events involving Evan, Pattie, or Lila.

Effect on Evan

Main article: Tommy Hayes and Evan Hayes

Evan grew up watching the difference between Deborah’s dismissal and Tommy’s care. He saw Deborah criticize Tommy’s body, temperament, and need for structure, then saw Tommy continue to show up as a gentle and practical parent. After the 1997 diagnosis, Evan understood more fully how long his father had been in pain and how deeply Deborah’s remarks had damaged Tommy’s self-trust. Their hospital conversation let Tommy share a history he had concealed from Evan rather than making his son a confidant during the marriage. Both came to understand courage as something they could define for themselves amid other people’s judgments.

The marriage became part of Evan’s response when Pattie became pregnant. He refused Deborah’s attempts to portray Pattie as someone who had trapped him and chose the model Tommy had given him: accepting responsibility, believing the person he loved, and remaining present through difficulty.

Tommy remained an involved father and later grandfather, supporting Evan and Pattie during the pregnancy, Lila’s neonatal intensive care stay, and her infancy. Deborah’s permanent estrangement from Evan and Lila followed her attack on Pattie. Their different relationships with the next generation showed the lasting consequences of Tommy’s validation and Deborah’s repeated dismissal.

Relationships Couples Former Couples Hayes Family