The overriding result of war is mass destruction and loss of life. No matter who’s fighting or who is defending. Divorcing an abusive partner is tantamount to war. You don’t put yourself there, he does. That’s his game – if-I-can’t-have-you-and-have-things-my-way-I’ll-destroy-you-and-everything – mentality. But you find yourself having to fight to defend yourself, stay alive even and in so doing you can so very easily but unknowingly cause harm to yourself. You get so distracted by ‘the battle’ that you forget to take care of the fundamentals of rebuilding your life. You get so busy writing statements, filling in forms, attending court sessions, trying to find answers to legal questions (because you cannot afford solicitor bills) on the internet, that you forget to make that all-important new business phone call, or to write the next chapter of the booklet you’re doing for a client so now it will be next month before you can invoice them for it. Your earnings are nowhere near what they should be because your time is spent elsewhere. You go to bed at night exhausted but with little to show for it and you wonder – am I doing the right thing? Is there any way I can limit myself to how much I fight so that I don’t allow it to take up so much time? Or is now the right time for me to fight with everything I have – fight for my life almost – hoping and praying that when the battle is over I can apply myself to rebuilding my life then and do it more quickly and easily because it’s peace-time?

If I’d chosen the war, I could end it anytime I liked. But I did not. It has been thrust upon me by him. I feel I have no choice but to fight because he is hurling missile after missile in my direction – and some of them are aimed directly at the bits of my life I have rebuilt and if I do not deflect them or destroy them before they hit, they will destroy me – again! Then there is him. How much should I try and destroy him? Because if I do that he wont be able to fight me anymore. I have ammunition, plenty of it, which until now I was happy to sit on and keep for posterity but now I wonder if I should use it(?). My therapist says I am still being “too helpful” (not specifically about my ex-husband but in life in general) and when he said it, it really resonated, like a tiny Buddhist temple bell – tingggggggggggggggggggg……..But I am a peacemaker, a people-pleaser. That’s my natural instinct. Having to change that and adapt a warrior stance is hard for me but that’s what I am being ‘asked’ to do. That’s what this requires – and so, I’ll do it.

It has been 14 months since I left my abusive marriage.

I received a letter on Thursday (ironically, there was a postal strike and I receive a letter!!!!) from Lloyds Bank telling me I owe them £115,000 and they want me to pay up now or they will take action. Just like that!

Fact is, when I was in my abusive relationship, my abusive husband cajoled me into going into business with him and then proceeded to take control of everything, I signed a personal guarantee for a bank overdraft, which at the time was £35,000. Since I left my husband he has been hell bent on destroying everything and leaving me with a huge bill and it would appear that he is succeeding.

I have spent the past year recovering from the abuse, re-building the rubble my life had become and healing the emotional wounds. I have done well. I have, however, throughout that time, been expecting something like this. The bombshell. I have been worried when it was going to hit – and now it has and my solicitor can do little to help me – except charge me the earth to tell me something like “well, you could try X but I am not sure how successful you will be”, which, to be honest, is probably something I can work out for myself.

So, there are two things going on with me. Firstly, I dare not tell anyone (other than you amazing people) because the two people I have told have reacted in such a way as to make it worse for me. It goes something like this: me – “I got a letter from the bank saying I owe them £115,000.” Them – “Jeeeeeeesus!! That is a fuck of a lot of money!!! How the hell are you going to pay that!? You are gonna be spending the rest of your life paying that back!!!!”.

I don’t need to hear that right now. It’s like I could imagine it would be if I’d stepped on a landmine and had my legs blown off but couldn’t quite see and was confused cause I could still feel them and the medic goes “OH Jeeeeesus Christ!!! OH MY GOD!!!!” and I think to myself – this is bad, this is really bad when actually what I want someone to tell me right now is that it will be okay, that everything will be okay, that I will sort it somehow and that it is only money – a lot of money – but only money and all stuff like that. So, I haven’t told anyone so as not to inadvertantly stimulate them into projecting their own fears about money and my unfortunate situation on to me. I’d rather not hear it right now.

The second thing is that it is very clear to me the choices I have right now. On the one hand is the black hole of despair, depression, self-pity and victimhood. On the other is the brilliant white stairway out of hell into a new life of abundance and success made all the more sweet by my sheer determination to make good this shitty, hellish situation, to become one of those ‘Triumph-over-adversity’ success stories. That is the path I am choosing and believe me, it is a difficult one to follow. Much more difficult than curling up into the foetal position, sticking my thumb in my mouth and wallowing in misery for next ten years! Every minute is an effort to keep myself up, keep my energy up, keep my self-esteem high but I have to do it. The other option is equal to death and that really would be the ultimate victory for him. He wants me to die, except that he is too much of a wimp to kill me but to hear that I have killed myself because I could not cope anymore or manifested some fatal illness – oh yeah, he’d love that. My best revenge is to get out of this – alive and in better shape than when I went into it and that is just what I am going to do. I know not how, but that is just detail. What really counts is that I will.

There is a third thing, and it’s this: I realised today, as I was walking my dog and had an ‘epiphany’ moment that this is as bad as it is going to get. It cannot get any worse. He cannot do anymore to me than this. This is it! And that, actually, makes me feel a whole lot better because instead of worry about when that bombshell is going to hit – I can now get on with rebuilding after the hit in the safe knowledge that there are no-more bombshells to come – or if there are they are tiny in comparison.

Stay with me. There is brightness on the horizon. I am going to turn this story around!

I haven’t blogged here for a while. Been going through another phase in my healing, I guess. Job to know really as everything is sooooo up in the air and chaotic right now. It’s hard to make any sense of any of it. I know I shouldn’t but I do keep asking myself those questions: why me? what have I done to deserve this? Is this my punishment for another life? Is it because I am gullible and stupid? and that question of all questions – why is everyone else’s life so cushy and they seem to have it so together whilst I can’t seem to even work out the basics and end up getting abused?

I’m also trying to fix it all. I keep going over and over what has happened and what is happening now and trying to come up with a solution but I can’t because there isn’t one. I know I have to just leave it to run its course but I’m scared of missing something, of looking back in another twelve months and thinking oh I wish I had done so and so then.

The facts are: we had our first divorce hearing on Monday and things didn’t go his way so he’s turned really nasty. His business is being wound up and the Official Receiver wants to investigate everything. They cannot find him as he’s gone into hiding and wont co-operate so they have come after me – yet another of his messes I am left to clean up. He is being made personally bankrupt so a couple of the creditors are coming after me for their money (I signed personal guarantees a couple of years ago whilst my husband made all sorts of threats if I didn’t). They don’t give a stuff about our personal circumstances they just want their money. I could end up £65,000 in debt. I already owe £20,000, which is money I have had to borrow to pay my solicitor’s bills – to get this far with no solution in sight! Meanwhile, all this hanging over me, I have him being his usual mean, destructive, vindictive self. All I want to do is get away from him but it seems now I am just as close as I was twelve months ago. Twelve months! I thought I would be rid of him and have my life back by now. Seems like I will never get it back. It will take another six months at least to sort out the official receiver thing, who knows how long the divorce will now be as he seems adamant that he will not agree on anything and not sign anything. Who also knows what will happen with these loans? Anyone know how to get out of a personal guarantee? I know signing a contract under duress makes the contract unenforceable but how can I prove that?

To top it all, I don’t seem to be meeting anyone new either. I so want something light-hearted in my life, a nice little dalliance with someone fun. Nothing heavy, just some – lightness in this dim, dark, chaos. I do not have delusions of grandeur but I do feel, with all the suffering, like I am serving an apprenticeship to be the next Jesus!

I’ve had a bad week. I fell off the wagon in terms of drinking, comfort-eating and not exercising – but that came after the ‘bad-ness’ started (it was my reaction to it) and (yeah, I know!) made me feel worse, and thus, added to the bad. My ex (as ever) is leading me (and everyone else) a merry dance, making promises which I know he has no intention of keeping but we have to go along with it because that’s what the court will want to see – that we have given him the benefit of the doubt (apparently, that’s what my solicitor tells me). He’s been turning up at her office, harassing the reception staff, demanding to see her and sending her disparaging and untrue emails about me, saying things like: “…….TW will not have told you this but she has issues and it was these issues of hers that she denies having that caused all the problems in our marriage. I am saddened the marriage has ended but I have come to terms with the fact that (as the District Judge said when I attended court on the 1st) I must accept it now………..” NO SHIT SHERLOCK! So, because the District Judge says it’s over, it’s over, but when I said it’s over – well – that doesn’t count!

I, for my part, have been doing so well: adhering to the court schedule, doing my bit, being dignified, getting on with my life now and moving on, not reacting to his ‘crazy-making’ and basically getting over it – except this week. It just got to me. He promised me that if I left him he’d pursue me the rest of my life and he’d make sure there was no money left – and guess what? That is exactly where we are now. He has come good on his promises and it just seems so unfair to me that he should be ‘getting away with it’. I am having to get into debt to pay the solicitors bills because the way it works in this country is that you cannot just get divorced you have to have a final judgement order and to do that you have to either co-operate with each other or go the legal route. He (you can imagine) is not co-operating, neither does he have legal counsel which makes it even harder. By the time we get to the final hearing it will have cost me the best part of £20,000, which I am having to borrow because my savings ran out after £5,000. Also, there will be no financial settlement. He’s made sure of that as he is about to be made bankrupt. The thing is, if I don’t pay the legal bills, I could be vulnerable to him making a claim off me: I’m working, he’s not. I have money, he doesn’t! It’s so unfair. Oh, I know, that’s me keeping myself stuck in my victim mode – yeah! I get it okay! But sometimes it is hard to keep it going – especially when faced with such an enemy.

But you know what the worst of it is? Let me tell you, it’s not the money. It’s this: coming to the realisation that the past five years of my life – five years of hellish imprisonment – have been for nothing! That’s a real bitch of a realisation I am struggling to come to terms with right now. I did think, a year ago when I left my abusive husband, that one day I would make some sense of it and perhaps write a book about it specifically to help others in my situation. I started. I collected up all my material: journal entries, blog entries, diaries, over 350 abusive emails from him (and my replies – not to all but to a dozen or so none of which was abusive) and I wrote a chronology that charts how it all started (the abuse), how it escalated, how I felt about it, how others responded, how I escaped and so on. I even began to write sections but although it was cathartic it really wasn’t delivering what I wanted it to. It’s like it failed to talk to or make sense to anyone but me. It was like it was my bitch that no-one else would find interesting. I even sent an outline to a publishing agent and they wrote back and said they weren’t interested. But I kept on, writing and writing. See, that’s what I do – I’m a writer. Some people do Judo or Yoga or play sports, I write. That’s my therapy. But I was trying to make it mean something – the past five years of my life I mean – and in order to do that it would have to be something that others would want to read and that they would benefit from and I’m not there yet. What’s more, loads of people have told me not to write it because they are afraid he will sue me. Well, I know about libel (I’ve studied media law as part of my job) so I know enough to write a factual piece that cannot be disputed but still their negativity has done enough to put me off and now I am down and despondent because the whole thing, the whole five years, all that material is meaningless. It means nothing. It amounts to nothing.

Victim, victim, victim – yeah, yeah, yeah! I know. But this is my blog. This is where I vent. I’m just having a bad week, that’s all.

Here’s another one – it’s the comment about sandwich fillings that cracks me up:

Why are you hell bent on destroying our marriage?  Why? I am focusing on doing it better and being better and you are thinking of the next bad episode.  Why? You are a moody, bad tempered, brooding, ill mannered person and yet I am still offering you my love and support.  Every time I have spoken to you today, you have ben ill tempered and moody.  I was scared to come home at lunchtime because I could feel the tension on the phone but I came anyway and guess what – you got moody with me, despite my consideration in buying different sandwich fillings. Now, about my driving.  I have asked, pleaded and begged you over the last two years to stop talking about it but you cannot because you are hell bent on causing argument and destruction.  STOP talking about it, STOP confronting me about it and STOP telling me how to park.  I DON’T NEED IT. Thanks for ruining things again. I will celebrate my birthday on my own – I don’t want that ruining too. Can I just explain at this point that the man had a conviction for drink driving, two convictions for dangerous driving and numerous penalties on his licence. I hated getting the car with him but he insisted on driving everywhere. I used to close my eyes and pray!!

I am going through the emails I kept which my husband sent me, daily, during our brief but traumatic marriage. There is one day in particular 21st July 2007 in which I received thirty two emails in one afternoon, all hateful, bitter and vitriolic. Don’t ask me why I am doing it, it just feels like the right time and I need to cleanse myself of the pain and attachment. It’s working, some of them (which at the time caused me the most heartache) have actually made me chuckle. Here’s one:

I noticed this morning that I don’t have a supply of clean work shirts in the wardrobe.

No change there, then.

Thanks, wife.

I’ve noticed something about myself and that is that I tend to come from scarcity when it comes to things of value such as money and love. I tend to ‘make do’ with whatever is available because I think that is all there is. I manifest this at work too. I take on too much all at once, volunteer for things that I really do not have time for and then allow other people’s priorities to overtake my own and make them more important than mine. I get ‘talked into’ things easily and say that I will do something even if I have never done it before and I know it will be difficult. I understand from what I have read that this is a typical characteristic of someone prone to being abused.

Take my business, for example, I have a set of terms and conditions which I give out to new clients most of whom don’t even bother to read them – let alone sign them! I don’t make a fuss, fearing that if I did perhaps they will take their business elsewhere and I will never get another client in my life and I will lose my house and…………………………….down I go on that ‘thought spiral’. 

The result of this is that many people in my life treat me badly. Because they are basically rude, selfish and ignorant and I don’t ‘check’ them for being so. I have always allowed them to get away with it. My clients, for example, never thank me for what I do for them – which often goes way beyond what I am being paid for. I always go the extra mile and I guess you could say that they do reward me by paying my bills and keeping on giving me business. But, you know, sometimes that’s just not enough. Sometimes, just sometimes, a kind word would mean so much. If I make a mistake or do something wrong you can bet your life they are extremely vocal but do something good, exceed their expectations and………….silence! 

I know I shouldn’t be complaining – that I should be feeling very lucky to have business in this ‘downturn’. I hardly ever complain to friends and acquaintances but when I do often the reaction typically is to shut up moaning, be thankful and enjoy spending the money!! But just recently I have begun to see that that is just one way to look at it. There are other ways. For example, would those people think it sensible to fill my life, and business hours, working for customers who are basically costing me money by keeping me busy doing work that is less profitable when I could be looking for work that is much more profitable? I believe there are customers out there who would respect my terms and conditions and indeed would see me as more professional for having them, be agreeable to adhering to them and thus making for a much smoothing ride towards a productive professional relationship whereby they get exactly what they want in the shortest time possible and as cost-effectively as possible and I get a proper, detailed and specific briefing to work to so that I don’t have to keep re-drafting everything because they cannot make up their minds what they want!! I think that is a sensible option – don’t you! 

It’s all about respect, being assertive and changing my responses to events from the past. That’s what one friend (one of the more supportive ones) said to me. She suggested I do an ‘assertiveness’ training course – but one that is business focussed (rather than personal development-led). She said this might help me to not be scared to assert my rights as a supplier and have my terms and conditions adhered to. She said that it would probably take a bit of getting used to for the clients I have so far, who have got used to the casual, ad-hoc way of working that I have allowed but that I must not worry if they cannot hack it and decide to go elsewhere because I would, in effect, be making room for more and better clients who would treat me more professionally – and better. 

I see it all the time. I see it in my personal life, how I pick up tiny crumbs of friendship, affection, attention and love because that is all there is and I might not get anymore. Well, there’s a sea-change a-commin! I’ve taken the first step: becoming aware of how much I give up and give in (actually, the first step was leaving my abusive partner!!). Now I am ready to take the next one. I want to manifest great things – great work, respectful and appreciative clients, great relationships, a full social life and………………….so much! Not sure how I will do it, but that doesn’t matter as I have taken the first step.

I reckon domestic abuse (of one form or another) has been going on in marriages and intimate or family relationships since the millennia. What makes me say this? Well, the number of women I meet, older women usually, who say: “Oh, yeah. My husband was like that but I just put up with it. We stayed together until the kids left home and then I left him ‘cos I’d had enough.” I reckon loads of women out there (who have left marriages) were in abusive relationships and didn’t even know it. They knew it felt bad, perhaps even had an inkling it was wrong but didn’t know what they could do about it or that they didn’t deserve it, so they just ‘put up with it’.

When I look back through my life and think about everyone I know who has separated or got divorced, I think it is likely there was some form of abuse going on for them to have left and in the majority of cases it was the woman who was being abused. Why do you suppose more men have second or multiple marriages than women? I’ll tell you: because if a woman has been married for a long time and endured abuse and she then plucks up the enormous courage required to leave him and go solo, she then discovers how good her life can be lived on her own terms, lived freely and without compromise and she thinks – why the hell would I want to risk losing all this and go and be someone’s ‘wife’ again?!! The abusive partner, on the other hand (who in this example is a man) thinks – right, got to find my next victim, my next ‘house-keeper’, slave, substitute mummy!

The time is right for really creating awareness about abuse, what it is, what it does to people (victim and perpetrator) so that it cannot go undercover anymore, so that it is no longer a ‘taboo’ subject and so that people will feel okay about coming forward and saying: “NO! That is not okay!” When I was young, a woman being slapped on the bottom by an amorous boss had to just keep shstum. Sex discrimination didn’t exist – and it’s not that long ago (I’m not that old!). Now, the majority of workers understand the boundaries in that sense. We need to do the same for abuse – in all its forms. Make people aware so that we can, globally, begin to change our habits around it and it becomes as unacceptable as drink-driving and child abuse and the perpetrators have few places to hide.

 

Commitment

When I was in my abusive marriage (and before I realised it wasn’t ‘normal’, that it was abusive) I used to think I had a problem with commitment. I’ve always been independent, not in any pig-headed, selfish way but because I had to grow up fast when I was a kid. I was being my own parent from about age 8 when my mum was having to work really hard to pay the bills Dad couldn’t afford because of his mounting debts and he was too ‘depressed’ to bother with the kids. He used to stay in his study most of the time he was home, drinking. So, I have always been able to take care of myself and when it came to marriage, I kept on doing it. I’d never been married before so I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what a ‘normal’ marriage was – except what I had gleaned from those around me, my brother, friends and so forth. 

So when the abuse began (pretty early on in our marriage) and I started getting this feeling like I don’t want to be in this I put it down to my independence and inability to ‘commit’ to a relationship. My abusive partner of course sensed this from things I’d revealed (or rather, he’d winkled out of me) about my past and he was only too willing to exploit it. He kept telling me: “You’re scared of commitment.” I was so confused, vulnerable and scared that I believed him which of course made me stay and ‘work at being a committed wife’, which is exactly what he wanted. I did this whilst every ounce of my inner knowing, intuition, self-preservation – call it what you will – was screaming “GET THE HELL OUT”. But I kept thinking about all the people I knew who had put up with crap in their relationship and made huge compromises because they were ‘committed’ (like my mum, my brother, friends – almost everyone I knew). I felt guilty whenever I thought about leaving because it was like well they’re sticking with it so I should too. Except of course they weren’t having to endure the kind of stuff I was having to endure. Their niggles and irritants within their relationships were the ‘normal’ stuff of marriages, stuff that can drive you mad and make or break the relationship but not the sort of stuff designed deliberately to destroy the other person like abuse is. That’s the difference. And I was in it – wanting to get out – but desperately trying to honour my vows at the same time. 

When I look around me now and think about my life I realise that I DO NOT have a problem with commitment. I have, and am, committed to many things such as my job, paying rent on my house, taking care of my dog, my friends and family – loads of things that demand that I stick with them through thick and thin but also bring me great joy. I also know that when I am ready and I meet someone worthy of my love and affection I will be committed to that relationship too. Commitment does not mean allowing yourself to be destroyed by someone else. Commitment is about sharing a journey with someone you love and rising above the obstacles that are the niggles and irritations to a place where you are high enough to be reminded of the wonderfulness of who they are and who you married and that I do not have a problem with.

 

Fearing the Enemy

I do not fear the pandemic that is Swine Flu, I fear the systemic, societal problem that is abusive and controlling men! They appear to be everywhere, in every culture, every walk of life, every creed, class and sector of society. And they are closer than we think! 

Last night, drinking a beer and sitting in the garden of my friend’s house, chatting, she pipes up: “Oh, did you hear? There’s been a murder in [name of our nearest village]! Happened last week. Jealous husband, apparently, shot his wife at point blank range in the back of the neck!” It sent a shiver through me. There but for the grace of God and all that. 

I don’t like to talk about my fear of dying at the hands of my soon-to-be ex-husband because on the one hand I don’t want to tempt fate and on the other I think I must sound over-dramatic to whomever it is I’m talking to. But it is there, in the back of my mind, constantly. It is a horrid thing to live with. At the time I left him, many people said to me – go into hiding. But I knew it would have been futile because he would have found me – no matter where it went. In a funny way it kind of felt safer to stay close but set it up so that it is impossible for him to have access to me. At least I have some idea what he’s up to. It sounds sick but I have often tried to imagine how he would do it. I mean, I know his limitations in terms of his ability. It would be extremely difficult for him to shoot me, knife me or run me over. He could pay someone else but (thank God) I know he doesn’t have any money – and hit men are expensive! 

Thankfully, I don’t think I will end up like the poor woman my friend told me about but I know what it is like to live with someone who wants you dead.