Years Later My Ex-husband Still Haunts Me

Today was just a troubling reminder

“Just come out with us tonight,” says my friend.

“No,” I say. “I’m not up for it.”

“You’ll feel better,” she says.

“I’m hitting a wall,” I say. “I won’t feel better. Everything is coming together at once. I can’t solve all of the financial problems he’s created for me. I’ve felt like this many times before over the past ten years. But this is worse than it’s been in several years.”

I’m grateful my ex-husband hasn’t owned any of my recent tears.

I refuse to give them to him.

He’s already spent too many of them.

But this week has been rough. And today has been the toughest I’ve had in a long time. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty.

It’s too depressing.

Suffice it to say my ex-husband made good on this promise.

“If you leave me,” he says. “I’ll make sure there’s no money and you work for the rest of your life. I’ll make sure you struggle.”

I’ve said many times that I dismissed his words. I was naive. I said things I never should’ve said during the end of our marriage. I thought he was frustrated and doing the same.

I thought they were angry words.

They weren’t…

They were a furious promise…they were a threat.

And I was the one being threatened by the man who vowed to love me.

My friend tries to cheer me up.

“You will feel better if you come out with us,” says my friend.

“No,” I say. “Really I don’t feel up to it.”

“I never thought I’d rather you talk about your guy who moved,” says my friend.”

A smile breaks through and I bust out laughing.

“The last time I cried this hard was months ago when he left,” I say. “I would rather be crying over him than what I’m crying over now.”

Now we both burst out in laughter.

Because my friend knows I mean it.

I do.

“No, seriously,” I say. “I mean it. I would rather be crying over him. Oh my gosh, how bad does that really tell you this day and all of my worries are? This is bad.”

“Going out will make it better,” she says.

“You’re kidding, right?” I say. “I just told you my down and dirty, absolutely broken-hearted, I wish I could forget a guy but I can’t ‘heart’ is a better cry than my ex-husband who still haunts me?”

“Yes,” says my friend. “I heard you.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” I say. “Because I have a tendency to turn the worst into the best, once I get over it. I have a propensity to to see the cup is half full after it’s been emptied. I ultimately joke when I’m too exhausted to cry. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” she says.

“I’m weighing a decimated heart over a decimated bank account,” I say. “I’d actually prefer neither. The more we talk about it, the more I feel I need another glass of wine.”

But down deep I am still laughing.

My friend has helped me reverse one of the worst days of my life.

A reminder my ex-husband still haunts me.

I’m unable to solve all of the financial problems he’s left me with. Even 10 years later, I struggle. He’s not only taken all of my savings and retirement. (Hint: the self-employed can get away with massive financial abuse, during divorce) he’s ruined my credit so I can’t meet any emergency expenses.

And made sure I can’t pursue legal expenses to hold him accountable.

He’s reported lower business earnings for our business so I won’t get adequate social security benefits one day. He’s neglected to pay down our mortgage so I don’t get what I should out of our home.

This is all old news.

I’ve written about this before.

Why does he still haunt me?

He’s not paying the student loan he forged in my name. The one he said he took out because I didn’t carry my weight as a stay-at-home mother. My credit is being lowered again.

He doesn’t care.

I’m left to try and pursue the legal system.

It’s grand larceny. A felony in the state of Virginia but this is family law. The detective empathizes and tells me the prosecutor deems it as such. But this ex-wife doesn’t have $10k to go back to court.

Exactly what my husband made sure of.

I have a tax bill.

But he took all of our money and he left me with a quarter of what I should be receiving monthly for our business. How? He wrote off non-existent expenses.

My brother once said, “Every time you solve a problem he creates another one for you.”

A random example of this.

My ex-husband would toy with me and pay me late.

I refuse to call it alimony. Although there is nothing wrong with alimony. Women who raise children deserve it. But I was also a 50% business partner. This was my share of the business.

I would miss my rent payment by a day.

I would then owe an additional $300.

One step forward, two steps back.

My ex-husband is a cat playing with a mouse. He sits on millions of dollars and delights in causing me endless stress. He underestimated me. Money is so important to him that he thought I would never leave him.

“Who would leave the Golden Goose?” he would ask.

As if he had created our business, investment properties, and life by himself.

But I did leave him.

He continues to haunt me.

Today worse than the past few years. I’m getting behind because I can’t get ahead. I thought I would have solved more problems by now. I thought I would be making a bigger income.

I want to help my son with his wedding.

My children have been burdened enough by their father.

I get it.

Not everyone can help their children with their weddings. My single mother couldn’t help me. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt us as parents to not be able to help them.

I’m not a victim.

I’m the furthest thing from it. I don’t identify with being a victim. Despite everything my ex-husband has done. But I’m tired. I’m losing my optimism. I used to be able to solve all of my problems.

People tell me to expose my ex-husband beyond my writing.

I could.

It’s a bad national story what he and his co-workers have done.

I know this as a journalist and someone with a PR background. This group of divorcing men have devised a troubling, abusive, and over the top financially abusive divorce strategy.

But I can’t do that.

Even if I wanted to.

I would need to be financially independent before I did that.

Don’t get me wrong.

If my ex-husband stops paying me I will definitely expose the story even if I’m not yet back on my feet. It’s probably one of the reasons he pays me the 25% of what I truly earned business wise each month.

He’s smart enough to know that when he stops I finally will expose him.

It will be the last time I can take two steps back and one step forward.

I won’t be able to keep going.

I was raised by a single mom. I worked from when I was 14 and paid my high school expenses. I paid my way through college and bought my own car when I graduated. I paid for my wedding and my house.

I wasn’t the typical kid.

Yet I am overwhelmed.

I can’t start over, even years later, because a grown man bent on revenge has done everything he could to take me down and punish me for leaving him.

Most days, I write to help people.

I want to make sure this never happens to any other women and children.

Or man — if he was a stay-at-home parent.

But some days, like today, my ex-husband still haunts me and I want to cry.

It makes me doubt myself. My otherwise confident and strong self. It makes me discouraged. It makes me lose all hope. If only for a day or so. It makes me wonder how I will overcome a bully.

A man so small that he needs to make himself look big.

By taking down a woman.

Worse, the mother of his children.

What kind of legacy is that?