Some Like It Hot

Personally I prefer my love life a little cooler

There has been a lot of news of late in the media about abused women. However, it is, to put it mildly, something lots of people are not comfortable talking about. It has become the elephant in the middle of the room. But it has to be talked about and rightly so. It is totally unacceptable in a civilised society. And we have to do everything we can to eradicate it. The effects of abuse are so so deep they leave their marks forever. Emotional, psychological, mental and physical damage takes a long long time to recover from. The physical damage you can see. The other three are invisible, but no less debilitating.

The victim can feel trapped for many many years whilst they are in that situation. They try to keep hidden what’s been going on behind closed doors to protect themselves and their loved ones. They are made to feel that it is all their fault and that they are deserving of the ill treatment that is being dished out, often on a daily basis. They end up with nowhere to go, nobody to listen to them, nobody to help them out of that vicious cycle of torture. Some eventually end up dead. It really is a terrible experience that nobody should have to put up with.

Ignorance is Bliss

Lots of people simply do not understand, especially men. Indeed they may even refuse to believe it is actually happening. Ignorance is bliss. If I don’t recognise that there is a problem then I don’t have to resolve it. However, some men do accept what is going on. And that is because they too have had to suffer an abusive partner. Yes, that’s right, there are abusive female partners too, though lots of females refuse to accept that it works both ways.

Now I know quite a lot about this this as I too was an abused partner. The woman who became my second wife, now second ex wife thank the lord, turned out to be as batshit crazy as a bucket full of frogs. It is only now, fifteen years after we separated that I can bring myself to talk openly about it.

Do Not Turn a Blind Eye

In many ways the signs were there at an early stage in our relationship. I just chose to turn a blind eye to it. I put it down to her latin temperament, and to her being stressed out due to living far away from her native country, her family and her friends. I reasoned that once we made the move to live in Spain all would be resolved. OMG, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Back in the UK she once launched me out of bed whilst I was fast asleep. She simply placed her feet on the small of my back and pushed with all her might. I flew out of the bed and ended up on the hard, cold, wooden floor totally dazed. When I asked her what the hell was going on she suddenly leapt out of bed and beat the holy crap out of me. I managed to struggle to my feet and ran into a small en-suit toilet for refuge. She lashed out with a kick and scored a direct hit on my left knee with such force it left me limping for a week.

I tried to calm her down and asked her what her problem was, but she refused to say. All I could get out of her was “ If you don’t know I’m not telling you.” To this very day I do not know what on earth her problem was.

A Living Nightmare

This was at three o’clock in the early hours of the morning, and I had to be up at six for work. I ran to the second bedroom, to try to get some sleep. She ran after me and stripped all the bedding off the spare bed. I tried to walk past her in just my pyjamas to go downstairs and sleep on the sofa. As I passed her she ripped off my pyjama top and launched me down the stairs. I ended up a battered bundle at the foot of the stairs. She ran after me furious I had escaped her clutches.

She threw a stainless steel kitchen utensil at me, a sieve, and scored another direct hit and broke the handle off it on my head. Then she grabbed a full bottle of wine and ran towards me ready to smash it over my head. I thought she was going to kill me. I just grabbed my car keys off the table and ran out to my car. It was snowing a blizzard and there was three feet of snow on the pavement that I had to cross to get to my car. I just about made it and slammed the car doors shut and dropped the locks.

The Abominable Snowman in Pyjama Bottoms

I drove to a friends house in just my pyjama bottoms, not even a pair of socks on my feet. When I got to my friends house I walked barefoot across the garden in the snow and started to throw stones at his bedroom window from the lawn. After the initial shock of seeing a pyjama bottomed abominable snowman from his bedroom window my friend came down and let me in. I spent the night sleeping on his sofa. I couldn’t go to work and lost a days pay. How little did I realise that this was just the start of what was to come.

For many years I could not fully explain why after all this I not only stayed with her, but we got married and had a son. Looking back there was one positive. Sex. The sex was amazing. To somebody like me who had spent the best part of twenty years married to an unadventurous Victorian prude, my first ex-wife, it was like winning the lottery. My previous ex in fact, for whatever reason, was only that way with me. What’s more she turned out to be an unfaithful pathological liar and more slippery than a bucket full of eels. But that’s another story for another time, maybe. But for now with a sexy new wife I was as happy as a sand boy.

Don’t Burn your Bridges

In the end I sold my house in the UK and we made the move to Spain. Burning my bridges behind me was the ruin of me. I left myself nowhere else to go and my lovely second ex knew it and played it to her full advantage. She persuaded me to buy a brand new car and to put it into her name to prove that I loved her. Like a fool I obliged.

Next she persuaded me to buy a new apartment with the rest of the money from my house sale in the UK. And yes, you guessed it, she lost me the apartment too. She left me with nothing. And then she threw me out of her mother’s house with little more than the clothes I stood in. I could not make this up if I tried.

Beyond Belief

I was out on the streets in a foreign country with a very limited command of the language with nowhere to go after being little more than eighteen months in Spain. In that time the attacks were quite frankly horrendous. She was so insanely jealous I dreaded going out and, by nothing more than perchance, seeing a totally unknown, innocent pretty girl across the street. A pretty girl I hadn’t even noticed at first, until I was accused of having an affair with her on the basis that the girl had allegedly looked at me. The nastiness aimed at me was beyond belief.

At one point she poured the contents of a full two litre bottle of water all over me whilst I was driving my car in heavy traffic. Another time she was driving my car and got so angry at nothing at all she drove at 90 kph through the city threatening to smash the car into a wall and kill me, her and our little one and a half year old boy. Scary huh.

The tip of the iceberg

Truth be told this was only the tip of the iceberg. I had to give her all my money as she convinced me that she was a much better manager than me which wasn’t true. One day we went into town to a hairdresser so that she could have her hair re-dyed blond. It took two hours and cost ninety euros of my money. I went for a walk around town and stopped to have a one euro coffee whilst I waited. Later, when I happened to mention about going for a coffee she went ballistic screaming “ How dare you do that without asking me first. Do you think we are made of money ? “

Other times when we were out and about we would stop somewhere to eat, except she told me I didn’t deserve to eat. So I didn’t get to eat. Yet another time my shoes were in holes and she didn’t want to let me buy a new pair. I bought a pair anyway and she went crazy on me.

At home she was just as bad. She gave me a sixty year old, worn out, towel that was no more than a big, horribly grey, threadbare rag full of holes to get dry after a shower. She told me I didn’t deserve any better. I bought a new one just for me from Ikea and again she went batshit crazy on me.

Isolation

The abuse just went on and on and on. She isolated me from my family and friends, so I had no support of loved ones. This is very typical of abusers I’m afraid to say. She told appalling lies about me to her family who believed her before they would even listen to me. I was totally lost and alone.

At one point she and her brother threatened that they were going to give me a beating if I proceeded to try to get my car back through the courts. I denounced them for the threats and it went to a trial. Without witnesses the brother walked away scot free. He waited in the court carpark for me and followed me home in his car. As if to prove a point that he wasn’t afraid of the law he tried to run me off the road by swerving onto the wrong side of the road and driving straight at me. The idiot almost caused a terrible accident involving innocent other drivers and pedestrians. The boy is a nothing more than a nasty little retard for sure.

I swear to god I do not know how I put up with this crap. I suppose I felt trapped and powerless, impotent and weak. I was up shit creak and I knew it, but I didn’t know which way to turn. I had no allies and I felt unable to see a way out of this horrendous circle of abuse.

Too Hot to Handle

Yet another time she threw a boiling hot pan of water all over me in the kitchen and I had to go running to the hospital. I spent half the night in casualty waiting for burns treatment. When I got home she accused me of having spent the night out with another woman. Insane.

I did try to speak with her elder sister who told me she had always been like that and that she terrified the whole family. However, the sister told me that since my wife had met me she had quietened down a lot. They thought being married to me had calmed her down. The sister was, I think, quite shocked to realise she had simply found a more convenient victim, me.

Threats to kill

A few times I witnessed the most awful violence towards her younger sister. In the UK she got angry about something really trivial like who got to use the shower first. Suddenly she grabbed a scalding hot iron her sister had been using to press a blouse and held it a centimetre from her sister’s face threatening to burn her face off. Jeez, this woman was as scary as hell.

In Spain at her parents house her younger sister made an ill timed comment about nothing at all and ended up being chased around the kitchen table with a big sharp kitchen knife. The screams were nothing less than blood curdling threats to kill her sister. My father in law had to get up off his deathbed, he was dying of cancer, to rescue his younger daughter. He got between them and told the youngest to get out of the house quick and not to come back for a few days. The girl, who truth be told was also something of a handful, barely escaped with her life.

Putting an end to Serial Abuse

In the end she screamed at me to get out of her parents’ house where we were living at the time, and as soon as I left she ordered me back in. But by this time I had had enough and decided for my own sanity to stay out. And to be honest, apart from the loss of all I had worked for my entire life, it was the best thing she ever did for me. My job contract had come to an end and I had nothing more than my final month’s salary. She ran away with our young son and my brand new car and eventually sold it and kept all the money. But it put an end to the serial beatings, though there were still some occasional ones over the ensuing years of separation.

At this point I found out that she had been having an affair with a work colleague working for her aunty. The man was a thief and she covered up his thieving to protect him. They got found out and the man was fired. I, of course, got the blame for that too. In fact, it was my wife’s aunty who told me about the affair, but the aunty was so afraid of her niece she told her that it was me who told her about the affair. “ Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

A way out

I had been inadvertently, or maybe intentionally, made aware that whilst I was holding down a full time job at a local academy and coming home to a filthy dirty house, she was up to high jinks with some gypsy thief labourer no more than 150 yards away. I used to get home at siesta time and go straight to the field to help pick crops in the forty five degrees Andalusian heat to help her dying father. Meanwhile m’lady was playing shuffle and grunt with the thief in a disused bungalow on her aunty’s property next door. I was glad to be out of it in the end.

I ended up in the worst hotel in town, and even that, cheap as it was, I could not afford. Then I got lucky and met a Spanish woman who to this day is an amazing friend, more like a sister. We became business partners and launched a new language academy which was a great success. However, thanks to my second ex it was not to last.

Mission to Destroy

Even after we separated and she had got everything off me she could, my second ex was determined to destroy me. I spent ten years going through the Spanish courts with one false accusation after another. There must been about thirty trials in all. I was found innocent in every single one of them.

She was trying her hardest to get me sent to jail. Fortunately the courts soon realised what she was like as she even insulted and physically attacked the judges ! The court receptionists gave her a nick name, Señora Loca, Miss Crazy.

However, the politicians made the courts accept her false claims and mount a trial. Three times a week, every month, every year for ten years I was in court. Just that time being taken up dealing with solicitors and courts was enough to ruin me. However, in the end I lost the academy due to her attempts to have all of the academy money seized, teachers wages, school material suppliers, taxes, social security payments, school rent, she tried to take the lot by having it seized by the courts on the basis that she needed it to support our son, even though I was paying the court stipulated amount. She just thought the academy was a pot of gold and she wanted a slice of that pie.

Hell hath no fury

My principle client bailed out apologising profusely, but he couldn’t accept financial responsibility for my marital problems. The business collapsed. I openly wept buckets in my partners kitchen out of sheer frustration and sadness. Six employees lost their jobs because of that nonsense.

Over the ensuing years the monster continuously sought her revenge. And I discovered that in truth hell hath no fury like a woman who has done the scorning. She kept all my personal belongings, even my clothes, valuable ornaments I had had all my life, a customised business pc that cost me an arm and a leg and so much more. What she had no use for she destroyed by putting it out in thirty or so plastic shopping bags by the local tip in a storm. Torrential rain did her dirty work for her. Valuable, irreplaceable booklets and manuscripts were ruined beyond saving.

Be Wary of False Friends

The mission to destroy was never ending. During the following years I also lost a piano bar I owned, rented apartments, cars. Every time I got back on my feet she set out to put me on my arse all over again. I suppose the worst of it all was when she enlisted a bent solicitor she met at a singles club to try to befriend me to persuade me to have custody of my young son. This crook got some documents ready for me to sign to say I would have my son and stupidly believed that I would blindly sign on the dotted line of the blank last page without having read the document. Of course I refused to sign point blank until he allowed me to read through the document, which he refused to do.

This animal lost his temper and was screaming at me what a son of a bitch I was for not signing. I just got up and walked out of his office. I denounced the swine for his attempted fraud and unethical behaviour and he was banned from practice for three months. His revenge was to send me a bill for his services with the threat that if I didn’t pay in seven days he would sue me. I never paid and demanded he be banned for life.

Mission to Destroy Accomplished

I later discovered that in fact the document was me saying that I didn’t love my son and accepted he didn’t love me and that neither of us wanted anything to do with each other ever again. That was why he didn’t want to let me read it. The truth of the matter was my son and I were so, so close we loved each other to the very bones. I was his hero and he was my angel. But his mother was so insecure and insanely jealous of our relationship that she set out to destroy it. Sadly she succeeded. Six years ago, with the assistance of the bent solicitor, she left Spain and illegally removed (effectively kidnapped) our son and I haven’t heard from him or his mother since. She has no doubt poisoned his heart and his mind against me to the point that I have not had even a phone call, from him. Finally, she really did leave me with nothing.

Speaking out

Did I ever think to speak out about this before ? I did try, but people refused to believe me and wrote me off as a bad thinking person. Nobody wants to accept that a woman can be so bad. Sometimes they would say that I must have done something to deserve it. An affair perhaps ? A one night stand, maybe ? Nope, clean as a whistle, I never even as much as made a pass at another woman. She is just a very, very sick individual, that’s all. A couple of times when she physically attacked me I tried to speak to the police and they just laughed at me.

I felt well and truly destroyed. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I was a shrivelled up wreck of a man. I beat myself up so much mentally I came very close to a breakdown. I wept uncontrollably for weeks and weeks. How on god’s earth had I let things go this far ? I felt the biggest fool on the planet.I had been well and truly suckered, and it was all my own fault. I found it almost unbearable to live with myself for being so stupid as to let somebody do all that to me.

Blissfully Happy At Last

Has it been harrowing reliving all of this here ? No, not at all, not now. I am happy to report that I am fully recovered from the ordeal and blissfully happy like never before. The years of abuse, from physical brutality, the theft and the loss of property, the the loss of earnings and accumulation of debt, amounting to something like 250,000 plus euros at the very least, left me totally broke and broken.

However, five years ago I met a wonderful woman who is now my wife. I learned a lot from the nightmares of the past, but I refuse to be a hostage to it. In the end I won, I survived a sustained onslaught over many years. But I refuse to be bowed by it. I am a serial entrepreneur and I am in the midst of launching several new businesses with great potential, with the full support of my new wife, and I love it.

I sincerely wish that this story gives hope to all victims of abuse, most especially vulnerable women, the strength to get out of an abusive relationship. Nobody has the right to abuse you and then try to make you feel that it is all your own fault, that you brought it all upon yourself. Oh no you damn well didn’t and you better believe it. Thankfully there are people you can call who will support you, places you can go to for refuge. Don’t think twice, just do it.

A Lucky Escape

I do realise that I am lucky in many ways due to the fact that I am physically big and strong. Lots of women do not have that physical strength, and that puts them at a very big disadvantage. I was able to defend myself a little by simply putting my arms up in front of me to deflect the blows reigning down on me. And even then I sustained physical injury. Had I been woman I might well have been dead by now. Now that is a sobering thought to be going on with I can tell you.

Lots of people put up with abuse, they even make excuses for their abuser. The reasons are manifold. A fear of the escalation of the abuse, the loss of self esteem and confidence, the fear of not being believed, the fear of being cut adrift, of being left all alone and washed up, the fear of hurting the children. I felt every single one of these I can tell you. It wasn’t all about the fantastic sex I mentioned earlier, that was just a pay off, a hook to keep me in that abusive relationship and tolerant of it. You learn an awful lot about yourself when you are in that situation. Thank god, now I am out of it intact.

As an aside, one of the many things I learned was that we hate the ones we hurt the most. Somebody thumps you on the nose, sees the blood and gets angry with you for making them feel bad about what they did to you, and for that you have to be punished even more. How many times have I seen an irate mother smack her child for something and nothing, and then scream out to the distressed child “ Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry for.” And this is followed by yet another smack around the head. And this merely induces yet more crying. It’s a self justifying vicious circle. “ Now look what you made me do to you !” And on it goes.

My advice to anybody, man or woman, is when you see the slightest sign of abuse, get out and stay out. It is not going to get any better. On the contrary, your well being and even your very life could depend on you getting out and as far away as possible from the toxic person who only wants to destroy you.

Thankfully there are people you can call who will support you, places you can go for refuge. Don’t think twice, just do it. You will rise and learn to live again to live a life full of a joy and happiness. You maybe can’t see it yet, but it will come if you let it.

Post Script

Of course, like all abusers my ex was very good at playing the victim. This is how manipulative people like her rally others to their cause. Many times she turned on the crocodile tears. At times it worked, at others it didn’t. Some judges, usually men, cut a manipulative woman far too much slack. Fortunately in the city were we lived eighty percent of the judges are female and in my opinion they are by far much better judges than the men, in general. Maybe it takes a woman to see through a woman, or maybe they are just better suited for the job. A bit of both I think.

Also, taking a less self-centred view of all this there was, and still is, the terrible effect on any children involved. Our son failed three attempts at his first year of secondary education and was ripped out of school at just coming up to fourteen. That is the most awful thing to do to a young child. Not at all good for his future. I know for a fact, because he told me, that he is terrified to go against her. She scared the holy crap out of me, I can’t imagine how she made him feel. She really is the most terrible bully, even with her own kith and kin.

Maybe one day he will come looking for me, or maybe not. He will need to grow a big pair of cojones to do that and go against her. And to be frank, I’m not convinced he can do it. So I have resigned myself to never ever seeing him again. That hurts if I think about it too much. So I’ll leave that one there if it’s all the same to you.

And finally, the state has a big role to play in all of this. All too often the woman is favoured over the man in the cause of equality and a misguided attempt to resolve a very big problem. In Spain for many years it felt like there was a witch hunt against all men just because of the few bad ones. And far too many resources were being wasted on vindictive, manipulative ex wives mis-using the state legal system and its resources to dish out punishment to an innocent man, leaving insufficient resources for the very real vulnerable female victims open to the most terrible abuses.

Abused women who are the real victims are suffering because of the actions of far too many other women with an axe to grind with their ex husbands. They are getting the courts to meter out punitive sentences for some trivial or imagined or trumped up offence under the guise of gender violence. This has to stop if we are going to reduce the crimes against vulnerable women. Getting other people to see this is something of an uphill battle. And for my own sanity it is a battle I have had to walk away from, but not without having a last say on the matter.

Was it wise to publish this story ? Who knows ? I guess there will still be people who will say I must have done something wrong, I must have deserved it. Others will say it was my own stupid fault for putting up with so much for so long.

The latter I probably agree with, though unless you know the emotions involved, then perhaps you’re not the best qualified to judge me. There were strong ties to a child I was truly afraid to lose (which I did in the end) a complex range of feelings towards the mother of my child. A fear of failure too, towards resolving this matter. I suppose my biggest enemy was me myself in allowing a lifelong dedication to positivity and optimism to triumph over harsh reality.

To MCL