The Time Of My Life

Once ensconced in her mother's home I soon realised her true plan. She seemed determined to make my life as unpleasant as possible with false accusations of infidelity and all sorts of other lies to her family to make them think I was a twat. She often threatened to throw me out if I dared to complain.

"I don't think you fully appreciate your position here. Everything you own is here in my mother's house and if I throw you out, you leave with nothing!" Once or twice I decided to call her bluff and started to leave. She ran after me pleading with me to go back. I did, but it just got worse.

One morning she woke me up and told me to quickly go and clean the bathroom as she hadn't washed it after her shower the night before. So like an obedient little slave, I did as she commanded. I filled a bucket with hot water, grabbed a mop, and set to cleaning the bathroom floor. Almost as soon as I started she came in and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing.

"I'm cleaning the bathroom like you said. Why?"

"I think your son's breakfast is more important than that, don't you?"

"Fine," I said and put the mop down to go to the kitchen to get the porridge on. She came back from the bedroom and went into the bathroom.

"So the bathroom isn't going to get cleaned then or what?"

"I've got one pair of fucking hands woman, I cannot do both at the same time, so make your bloody mind up."

At that point her mother, hearing the row, came in and said what's going on here.

"It's him, he doesn't want to do anything, not the bathroom nor his son's breakfast." she lied. Her mother called me a bad man.

One night I worked a late shift at an English academy. It closed at ten and it was my lock up. With a bit of luck, I'd be home before ten past ten. In fact, I got home at just ten past. I went into the house from the garage via the kitchen and saw it full to bursting with dirty dishes. So I went to her mother's bedroom where she and her mother were watching a Spanish soap opera. Before I could say a word I was told to shush and so went back to the kitchen. I spent over twenty minutes cleaning up their mess before I could start to cook myself a meal. At just a few minutes past ten thirty she sailed into the kitchen with "What time do you call this?"

"I arrived at just ten past, and I have been in here cleaning all your bloody mess so I can cook myself a meal.

"Liar. You have just got home. You should have been here by ten, not ten thirty-five. Who have you stopped off to see? Come on, who's the woman you're seeing?"

I just felt totally defeated and impotent. I wanted to cry out of the sheer frustration of it all. I now knew how abused women felt when they felt trapped into living with a total and utter, self-obsessed, obnoxious, selfish, narcissistic, violent, unfaithful, unbalanced, evil twat. I so wanted to say that last sentence to her face so many times, but I didn't for fear of the consequences, such as an escalation of abuse and/or being reported to the police for abuse on my part.

I wanted to go, but I was in a foreign country with no family or friends to support me. I had nowhere to go and she knew it. If I left I would be leaving with nothing, no money, house, or car, not to mention my young son. I gave myself a good talking-to, but still, I waited a while longer. However, I intuitively knew the end was near. There is only so much a person can take and I was well over my limit.

As well as my part-time teaching job at a private academy, I had another part-time job at an estate agency at the local airport. There I befriended a man who was a truck driver for the Benetton Formula One team. One evening he invited me to dine at his hotel, all on his expense account for him. By the end of the evening, he had invited me to the team boxes at the local GP circuit. So the next day after my wife had gone to work I took our son with me to meet my friend, the team manager, and Fernando Alonso. We had a great time, so much so that we were late getting back home for lunch.

As I was feeding my son the meal I had prepared the phone suddenly rang. It was my ex. "What are you playing at, you're late," I told her I was busy feeding our son and could we talk about it when she got home. She slammed the phone down.

A couple of hours later she got home and completely ignored me. She marched into the house and very quickly got some bags together for her and our son then marched right back out with our son and her mother. She got in my car and drove off to a family apartment she co-owned with her brothers and sisters. Not a word was said. So I thought, well ok, I need a break from her shit anyway.

On Sunday my mother-in-law arrived back home alone, brought by one of her other daughters. She asked me what was going on and I told her I didn't know. She said I should call her daughter to try to resolve whatever the problem was for the sake of our son. So I did.

On Monday I called her on the phone and she told me to fuck off. So I told her mother what happened and said I'd leave it a day or two. I rang her again on Thursday and again got told to do one. So I updated her mother.

On Friday morning she rang me whilst I was in town having a coffee in a bar patio with other customers around me. Here's that call.

"Why did you tell my mother I wouldn't speak to you?"

"Because it's true, I called you twice and you told me to fuck off then hung up."

"Liar, liar, liar, fucking liar!" she screamed. "Who are you with?"

"Nobody, I'm on my own."

"Fucking liar I can hear some female speaking. Who is she, what's her name? What are you doing with her?"

"What you can hear is a female customer at the next table on a patio where I am alone having a coffee."

"Liar, liar, liar. get out, get out of my mother's house now, I'm finished with you."

"Ok, byeeee."

And with something akin to a surge of pure joy I made my way back to her mother's house and packed my bags. I had a private student, a female, coming round for an hour's English. At the end of the class, I asked Joy if she could give me a lift to a hotel in town. And that was it, I was out forever and never ever going back. I didn't know what the future held, but I knew somehow I would be ok. After all, I am a survivor by nature. Later her mother told her I had left with some female and of course, she accused my student of being the other woman she had been accusing me about all along.

After booking into a hotel I then went for a walk around town and called her on the mobile as I went.

"Right madam, your time is up, I am out and I am staying out. The nightmare you have put me through is over, for good. So you can now bring me my car back please."

"You've done WHAT! Go back, go back now, I am ordering you to go back you bastard."

"NO. I am not a fucking dog you can kick out and then order back in at will. I'm done, lady. Goodbye."

All this time I realized that what held me back from leaving was fear, a fear of the unknown, a fear that leaving would somehow be the end of me. However, I suddenly grew a pair of balls. I got angry at the constant abuse, the threats, and all of that appalling behavior was just too much to live with on a daily basis. It was time to embrace the unknown future and allow my newfound courage to defeat the fear that had held me back for far too long.

In time I found a place to rent and a new job. I managed to get to the coast to see my son and see if I could recover my car. She told me she needed the car but I could have it back at the end of summer when she returned to the city. Stupidly I believed her.

I went to the bank for a bank loan to buy another car, second hand, a loan which I would pay off when I got my own car back and sold it, after giving half the proceeds to my ex. I had to do this as I could not afford the loan long-term.

As you may have guessed, she came back to the city but said she needed the car until Christmas. So I had to take out another small loan to help pay off the first one. Come Christmas she sold my car to a family friend and kept all the money. I was screwed. In time I traded down on the second-hand car and bought a beater.

On one trip back to the farm I saw her aunty who she worked for next door. The aunty told me my ex was behaving very strangely and that did I know what was going on. I told her no then she blurted out that she thought my ex was having an affair with the forklift truck driver who had been caught stealing and my ex covered up for him. I suddenly realized that it was most likely true as I had seen certain signs myself. Of course, she angrily denied it and told me if I told anybody she would kill me. Ever the selfish bully trying to threaten her way out of trouble.

One day, driving to the coast for a swim and some surfing, I got a mobile phone call. "Hello?"

"Hello, this is the city police where are you?"

"Yeah sure Bob, come on, don't even joke about this, not in the mood for it mate."

"No senor, this really is the police and you are under arrest."

"What for?"

"I will tell you tomorrow morning at 8.30 sharp, don't be late and make us come looking for you."

What the fx@k, the police. Sounds serious too.

The next day I was at the police station at 8.30 on the dot. I went in with my solicitor. We sat at the desk of some police civil servant. My Spanish was not too good so I let the boy's attorney deal with it for me. After five minutes we got up and went outside.

"Ok, what is it all about?"

"Something to do with what they call gender violence."

"I never bloody well touched the woman."

"No, gender violence can be masochistic insults. We have to go before a judge in an hour up at the courts on the other side of town. Whatever they accuse you of just say no. Deny, deny, deny."

Up at the court, the judge sat me down with a stenographer and my attorney behind me.

"Is it true that eighteen months ago you called your wife stupid?"

"No."

Is it true that you accused her of having lots of extramarital affairs?"

"No."

"Right then, well she says yes, so we are going to have a trial next week to get to the bottom of it."

The trial was to be held in a special court for the protection of women. And any man appearing there is deemed guilty before he even sets foot in there by virtue of being a man. Anyway, in the end, it was hysterical, a bloody circus.

On the day of the trial, I sat on the left my ex on the right. She stood to tearfully give her evidence. "Ahhhh, poor girl, horrible man. Ok, you can sit down now dear, and let me hear what he has to say."

The judge turned to me "You, on your feet man. Explain yourself. Did you or did you not call her stupid eighteen months ago and accuse her of having lots of affairs?"

"Your Honour, I called her stupid after she beat the crap out of me, she forgot to mention that part. I said she was having one affair, not lots, and it is true....."

At that point, my ex stood up and started yelling "Liar, liar, liar."

Now this was a bad move on her part as she was almost home and dry. The judge was on her side from the get-go just because she was a woman. He firmly asked her to sit down so he could hear me. "You have had your say, my dear, now it's his turn." She sat and I started again.

"Well, as I was saying Your Honour......"

Again she leaped to her feet and resumed shouting at me across the courtroom. Again, the judge quickly losing his nerve with her interruptions, ordered her to sit down or he would have to ask her to leave the courtroom.

I started a third time and again she jumped up shouting. That was it, the judge had had enough. He yelled at her...

"Right, that's it. Are you stupid or what? Get out NOW."

I sat there pissing myself laughing internally. He had just called her stupid which was exactly what he was planning to punish me for. She got up and threw her bag at the bench in the direction of her mate the judge, then she picked it up and stormed out slamming the door as she went.

The judge looked sternly at me and said angrily "This is all your fault. I find him guilty and place him under house arrest."

What that meant was that I would have to call in at the police station once a week and not leave my home otherwise for a month. Of course, I refused to accept that, sent an appeal, and heard no more of it.

When I went outside she was waiting for me and came up to me and rather bizarrely said "Ahhhh, I felt so sorry for you up there in the dock with that horrible judge. I just thought that's my poor little boy."

"Are you freekin mad, you put me there!"

This was the beginning of a fifteen-year legal persecution and personal vendetta against me, which left me in absolute ruins. I lost everything because of her, even my son in the end when he was all that I had left to lose.

Over the following fifteen years, she maintained an unceasing vendetta against me, at one time denouncing me for stealing clothes. That was all about a dirty T-shirt of my son's in the wash.

At the trial, the judge asked me about the stolen clothes and I told her it was about a T-shirt in the washing machine, and would she like me to swear what detergent I had used. The judge turned to my ex and demanded to know "Is this true?"

My ex wailed yes with her accompanying crocodile tears to the sound of the judge shouting "Will somebody please get this fool of a woman out of my courtroom before I explode with rage."

"But Your Honour, I have these papers I have written about what he is like."

The judge told her she wasn't interested whereupon my ex attacked the bench thrashing the judge with her rolled-up handwritten papers. I just walked out giggling to myself.

And so it went on, from 2005 to 2020! In court almost every single bloody week. She became famous at the courts. I heard that when she went in with yet another pathetic, trivial, or totally untrue accusation, the court admin staff used to run and hide or pretend to be busy. They called her 'The Crazy One'. Yet not once did anybody try to stop her from tying everybody up with her nonsense.

The way it works in Spain is...

.....she makes a complaint to the courts that I have stolen some clothes.

I get a letter from the post office to say I have to go to the head post office to collect an important paper.

The letter I collect at the post office is from the courts telling me I have to go there to collect another paper.

I go to the courts to collect that paper. The paper I collect from the courts is simply to tell me that I have to go to court next week for an interview with a judge.

After that interview with the judge, I go home and wait until I am once again informed that I have do that round, post office to court, all over again to collect a paper telling me the date of the trial.

Then I have to go to the law society to be assigned a pro bono attorney.

Then I have to make an appointment to see the attorney.

Then I have to go to my meeting with my attorney to appraise what it is all about and prepare a defense.

Then we go to trial.

Then I have to wait to hear what the verdict is, by post. Yet again a round trip of post office, court, my attorney.....

Now imagine that every damn week all year, for fifteen darn years!!! Dozens of trials designed to destroy me.

WELCOME TO THE SPANISH LEGAL SYSTEM !!!

It is a truly insane system of bureaucracy that grinds you down into dust and allows vexatious, ridiculous allegations from so-called vulnerable women. Meanwhile, there are now fewer and fewer resources to protect the real vulnerable women!

Apart from all those ridiculous trials, I was being denied access to my son and verbally threatened and physically attacked. At one point she was trying her very best to teach me a lesson by getting me sent to jail.

After I had won one trial about the theft and sale of my brand new car she called my best friend in the UK to ask him if he would go to Spain to report me for asking him to find a hit man to kill her! The phone call went like this...

Best Friend: "But Ralph didn't and wouldn't do that!"

Her: "I know, but I want my revenge for him winning his case against me for his new car, which I stole, sold, and kept all the money."

I could not invent all of this madness if I tried. And the only reason I did not report her for attempting to pervert the course of justice was because we had a son and I did not want to ruin his childhood by having his evil mother sent to jail.

Looking back I realised that whatever the future held, it could not possibly be worse than what I was having to live with every single minute of every single day. I am now certain that had I remained in that relationship I would have ended up dead. For sure, one day she would have killed me, or I would have totally lost it and killed her!

A sobering thought was that after I walked away from her the man she had been having an affair with died at the age of forty-three. A year later a new boyfriend also suddenly died at the tender age of forty-five. I have my suspicions, or maybe it was just bad luck, who knows?

As for me, I am now very happily remarried, for the third time, and I have to say my new wife is an absolute gem. After my divorce from the monster, I did not venture anywhere near another woman for over ten years. Women scared me shitless. Then suddenly this angel from above that I am married to snuck in under the radar. I took a chance and this year we celebrate ten years together.

Life is good if you can overcome your fears, stand up to evil, and believe in yourself. Yes, you can survive, you just have to believe it.