The Time Of My Life

Now in my twilight years, childless, I think about how I could have had my father-in-law prosecuted for an assault with a deadly weapon, and his daughter prosecuted with conspiracy to murder. However, I chose not to at the time in order to protect my children.

In the end, I passed a very hard time and promised myself I would only explain what had happened to my children when they were grown up and able to handle it in a mature way. Well, that never happened and when I tried to explain to them many years later they got angry with me for speaking ill of their lovely mother and cut the contact before I could say too much.

It is now some thirteen years since we last spoke. My youngest daughter got married, then separated and married again and had a child, and I was never told anything about that. Only recently I did try to get an address for them, to send them birthday and greetings cars and they refused to give me their address.

Meanwhile…..way back in 2010, my eldest daughter asked me “Have you still got those tapes, Dad?” I declined to give an answer to that question. However, years later I wished I had asked her to think about why her mother would be so concerned about tape recordings of phone calls if all that would have been heard were harmless conversations with her sister and her best friend.

If all she ever chatted about on the phone with her best friend and sister was the inclement weather and the price of sausages at the local supermarket, where’s the harm? My first ex’s concern is clearly that I had heard and recorded very incriminating conversations which included a plot to kill me. All very sinister stuff I know, but that was what I had to deal with, a bitter woman with murder in mind. And in protecting my children from all of that evil nastiness, I lost them, forever. Hopefully, one day, long after I am gone they will read this and understand me better. Not that it will do me any good, I will be in heaven.

After I left, for my own safety, my ex continued to cause me serious problems. We got divorced and sold our house, and in lieu of child support, I verbally agreed to a settlement with her substantially in her favor. Two major problems arose from that.

First of all, I had moved into a rented property which social security paid the rent for due to being unemployed because of all of the shenanigans that had gone before. However, although the house had been sold I would not be getting any money for a month. The money was in fact in a lawyer’s escrow account for a whole month before the payout. So technically, I was still entitled to social security support. Not so, it appears.

After I filed my divorce, citing unreasonable behavior (her adultery amongst other things) and, of course making sure that her married lover received notification. My ex went ballistic.

On the morning that she and her lover boy received the divorce papers she called me on the phone on the bounce.

“Right…” she snarled “You can cancel that divorce immediately you bastard…..”). I told her no way, Jose. She then let rip with a string of expletives that would make the lowest of the low, red-faced with shame.

Suddenly the line went dead with a very loud bang.

Half an hour later she turned up at my door screaming and shouting. At first, I tried to pretend that I was not at home, but she just would not shut up. In the end, worried about the neighbors I opened the door, and there she stood with a smashed-up phone in her hands.

“Look what you made me do you bastard. You made me throw this against the wall.” Begrudgingly I let her in, but I told her any nonsense and I would throw her right back out.

“Why do you want to hurt two innocent people.” she wailed. “You will retract that disgusting divorce paper accusing him.” Innocent? Who? Her and he behemoth boss? This was a madness.

Anyway, nothing new here then, I thought. I just put my hand on her shoulder and gently edged her towards the front door and out into the street as fast as I could.

Her next move was to report me to social security for fraud, claiming assistance after I had sold my house. I got hauled in by the authorities and grilled. They told me my ex-wife had reported me and that I must repay 1000 pounds or be fined and go to jail. I tried to explain that I was still without money, but they did not care. I ended up having to borrow money from my lovely mother to pay that money, plus cover my rent and food for the month ahead. Ha, hell hath no fury like a woman doing the scorning.

I was also being disturbed by her best friend’s husband and by her lover the brute stalking me, and even at one time leaving a dead cat leaning against my front door. My ex’s best friend, not for the first time, once attacked me in the high street for refusing to return a simple ‘hello’ greeting. She ran at me from behind and launched a salvo of painful punches.

And to think the self-same woman had the brass neck to one time call me an uneducated brute. Well, I guess it’s true what people say about you says more about them than you. If ever there was an uneducated brute it was in fact her. And when I asked my ex to call her best friend off, she started to throw big rocks at me and caused a lot of damage to my new car.

And of course, my ex was refusing to allow me contact with our three children. I guess that’s the form for the course. It’s called parental alienation.

Well, a year passed and eventually I managed to buy my own modest house, marry my second wife and get some good-paying work. Sorted. Errrrr, no.

Once I had moved into my new home my now ex took to visiting it whilst I was out at work to badmouth me with my new wife with all manner of malicious lies. Lies, which would ultimately lead to the failure of my second marriage.

The other nasty thing she did was report me to the Child Support Agency with demands for money I had already given her. The CSA said that the private agreement between me and my ex did not count and that I had to now pay her fifteen thousand pounds in arrears for child support or go to jail. It was all so bloody well maddening.

I did over the ensuing years take the time out to consider what I had brought to the situation to bring it about and I came to the conclusion it was acquiescence and a lack of attention to the small detail of what was going on in my relationship. Acquiescence is the acceptance of things without protest. That is a characteristic that leads to the insidious process of behavior that gradually, but eventually, leads to very harmful effects. If you acquiesce to every little transgression, it is like giving the green light to increasingly bad behavior. You didn’t blanch at that one night your partner didn’t come home until the next morning, so they up the ante, until finally the floodgates burst wide open.

And so to that lack of attention I mentioned. Trawling back through the past for any signs I had missed there was one golden nugget. One night, after a very long tiring day of working and looking after three very demanding children, my ex said something to me just before I slipped into a deep coma of much-needed sleep.

My ex was up for some sexual activity and I wasn’t. I am sure this resonates with a great many mothers in a similar situation. I simply said maybe the next day we could do something, “…but for now darling, I’m just too tired.” Her response was a very hurt “Well, I can always get it somewhere else.” I took that to mean she could start to look elsewhere. Now I am of the mind that she was, in a roundabout way, telling me that she already had something going on the side. It’s all in the detail I guess.

I did eventually stand up to this vindictive woman, but my acceptance up until that point had set a pattern whereby she felt that she could do pretty much anything the wanted without too much protest from me. I also should have walked away long, long before she pushed me so hard that in the end I was almost totally destroyed beyond repair.

In the end, I sold the house and we fled the country just to get away from the insufferable, vindictive woman.