How my wife's toxic abuse saved my life

One of the things about crazy is that it can be extremely difficult to detect at the beginning of a new relationship. Unhinged people do not go around with a pair of Janet Reger knickers on their head with 'I Am Batshit Crazy' writ large across the crotch. Of course, crazy people do know they are crazy and do their level best to conceal the condition, very much to the cost of their new victim.

In my case there were early signs of an unbalanced mind with my second ex, I just chose to ignore them. My attention was too fixed on the unbridled sex on offer. The very first sign was when one day she came round to my house to live with me. She was putting some of her things in some draws in the living room and found a framed professional photograph of me with my first ex and three children. I had taken it down off a wall so as not to make her feel uncomfortable.

"What's this?" She demanded. I explained the photograph's presence in the draw. "Liar." she snarled. "That's just waiting for you to put it up on the wall." This soon escalated to the point that I lost my temper to my everlasting shame and regret and smashed the frame and tore the photo up. "Happy now baby?" Somehow we got over it.

In time, little by little, her contrary way of thinking and outright nastiness reared its ugly head. One night we went to bed early as I had to get up early the next morning to go to work. The peaceful slumbers did not last long.

At about three o'clock in the morning, I woke up on the hardwood bedroom floor crippled with pain. I had been launched out of bed. "What the fuck!!!

What did you want to do that for?" I managed to scream out in pain.

"I want to talk."

"What about?"

"Well if you don't know I'm not telling you."

"Shit, I'm not a bloody mind reader. I have to sleep."

At that, she shot out of bed and started to beat the crap out of me. I backed into the en-suite toilet and as I did so she landed a ferocious kick on my left knee. My leg buckled and I ended up with a limp which lasted for days after.

I managed to get past her and went to the second bedroom where I had two bunk beds for when my children visited. She pushed past me and stripped the beds, throwing all the bed linen on the floor. "Oh to hell with this," I muttered as I slipped past her to go downstairs.

She reached out and managed to grab my pyjama top ripping it in the process and then pushed me down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I got up off the floor and quickly grabbed my car keys, and managed to get out of the house. It was winter and there had been a heavy snowfall. I didn't care, I had to get to the safety of the car even if it meant treading across a pavement covered with three feet of snow. She followed me, but just in the nick of time, I managed to get in the car and lock the doors. As she started to bang her fists on the car door and window I drove off. I took myself to my best friend's house and found myself stood in his front garden in bare feet and ruined pyjamas throwing small stones at his bedroom window. Thankfully Andrew let me in and got me sorted out with bedding so I could sleep on his sofa.

Looking back, that was the point I really should have ended the relationship. However, I was too besotted with the best sex I had ever had in my entire life.

During this time there were other worrying signs. One evening I went to visit her and her sister at their flat and saw a very dangerous, disagreeable fallout over something incredibly trivial. Suddenly she grabbed a hot iron and held it two centimetres from her sister's face angrily threatening to burn her face. That was pretty scary I can tell you.

In time we got married, had a baby son and started to move to Spain. She went three months before me until the sale of my house was completed. A few days before having to leave the house she returned. By that time I had managed to pack about ninety boxes all on my own after a lot of hard days at work. And of course, I packed some of her things too. That was a bad move, apparently.

"Why were you rooting through my things?" she snarled.

"Because they needed to be packed and I wasn't sure you were going to get back in time to do it yourself."

"Liar. You were looking for something."

This unpleasantness lasted for the rest of her stay. Eventually, the day for leaving the house arrived. It was a very busy Saturday morning with quite a lot of packing still to do before the removal truck turned up. Also, I still had quite a lot of stuff some house clearance guy was going to collect, but he failed to come. So a last minute panic ensued trying to find another house clearance guy. Fortunately, I found one. However, due to it all being last minute, he offered me a fraction of what it was worth. I had no option but to accept. Then I had to sell my BMW 525 in just two hours. Again, I got very little for it, but the deal was done with a big sigh of relief. In all about two thousand pounds worth of goods went for 6oo pounds.

At the airport, I bought my ex wife a very expensive bottle of Channel perfume for an arm and a leg. Did I get any thanks for that little detail? Nope. All she did was refuse to believe that I had got so little for the house things and my BMW. She accused me of lying, of holding out on her to keep the money to myself. Two years later she was still moaning about that with "You still haven't told me the truth about what you got for the house things and your car." I later learned where she got that from. Her mother was constantly accusing her father of doing things I knew for a fact he was totally innocent of, because I was with him at the time.

In those early days of our new life, I was stupid enough to think that back in her own country with 100,000 euros in the bank she would flourish. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

One day we went into town so she could have her hair dyed blond. As it was going to take about two hours I left her there and went for a walk around town. At some point, I committed the heinous crime of treating myself to a coffee. When I went back I paid the ninety euros for her hair and we went outside. She asked me what I had been up to. I told her I had had a coffee. You would have thought I had murdered somebody.

"You did what? Do you think we are made of money boy? How dare you do that without asking me first."

This petty mean streak soon developed into quite a habitual thing. One day out shopping in a supermarket I committed the grave offence of buying myself a cheap pair of shoes to replace the hole-ridden shoes I was wearing. She went apeshit. She ran to her mother in the clothes detergent section and screamed "Have you seen what he has done mother? He's only gone and bought himself a new pair of shoes without my permission!

Another time we went to a poolside bar on the coast to eat. She ordered a very small tapa of marisco de gambas (a very small prawn salad) about half the size of a saucer. I pronged a small prawn with the small fork and she seized my arm mid-air as the bloody prawn was heading towards my mouth.

"What are you doing? Who said you could eat?" she said. I put the fork down and told her to fuck off, got up and left to go somewhere else to eat on my own.

One day after taking a shower in her mother's house I hung up the towel on the towel rail. However, the towel had fallen on the floor after I left the bathroom.

"What's this?" she screamed at me.

I tried to explain that I had in fact hung the towel up but she just wouldn't listen. The next time Had a shower she gave me a fifty year old grey, threadbare, rag full of holes. "Until you learn how to look after things this is what you get to get dry." A few days after this we went to Ikea and I bought myself a new towel just for me. Again she went apeshit. "We've got lots of towels at home, what do you think you are doing?"

"I'm buying myself a towel with my own fucking money that I don't need to ask you if I can use, that is what I'm doing." She didn't speak to me for three days after that.

Looking back, even still as I write, I do wonder what in the lord's name I was doing putting up with so much of this crap. Of course, she wasn't like that just with me. Woe betides any member of the family who innocently pissed her off.

One day at her father's farm, before I bought a car, we were waiting for her younger sister to come home with their father's car so we could go into town. The sister was late. Oh boy!

"Where the hell have you been? We've been waiting. It's now too late for us to go out."

The sister was imprudent enough to reply "Not my problem." And with that comment, all hell let loose.

My ex ran into the kitchen to grab a very big, sharp kitchen knife and attacked her sister. My father in law was in bed dying of cancer, but he had to quickly get up and go to the kitchen to save his younger daughter's life. The terrified girl made a run for it and didn't dare return for three whole days! Mind you, she wasn't much better. I think the whole bloody family was batshit crazy.

The sister had a boyfriend who had come over to live, a truly lovely young lad. He bought a car for her sister and was exploring getting a job. However, one day Jack got a call from the UK saying his father had sadly passed away. He told her sister he had to go back for the funeral. Her reply?

"Well, I hope this doesn't mean that every time a member of your family gets a cold you are going to go running back Jack." Jack did what I should have done a lot sooner, he left and never came back. Best of all on the way home he met a lovely young girl and got laid waiting for a plane. I know, one track mind, but I think it was fitting.

As for myself, there was a whole lot more yet to come. Her father passed away, which made me sad as he was a decent guy and treated me like a son. In part that was because I helped him on the farm when he was dying. Out in the midday heat digging and planting crops, collecting a harvest of green peppers, digging a grave for his deceased dog, etc, etc. His two sons, big strapping lads, did not want to know.

After he passed away we moved in with her mother to help her. However, even before we left our apartment, the problems continued. One evening after work I was in the apartment kitchen helping her to wash up and placed a clean cup on the counterpane. "That does not go there." she snapped unpleasantly.

"Does it matter that much to warrant being so unpleasant?" I said.

"Does this matter?" she screamed at me as she pulled a boiling pan of water off the stove and threw it all over me." I got burned all down my left arm.

I ran out of the house and went rushing to the hospital where I spent the night in casualty. Finally, after treatment, no lasting harm thank god, I went home. However, as it was five in the morning I decided to park the car and sleep there.

Daylight arrived and I tentatively went upstairs to be met with "Where did you go last night?"

"I went to the hospital thank you for burning my arm. Then I slept in the car downstairs outside."

"You fucking liar, you spent the night with another woman, who is she?"

I showed her the hospital papers and arm dressing all to no avail. Again, I found myself still waiting for an improvement, it wasn't coming. It was a living hell and it was only going to get worse.

What really put me on edge was the constant false accusations of infidelity. If we were out driving into town and I stopped the car at traffic lights or a zebra crossing, she would see some woman, a total stranger, walking along the pavement and accuse me of having an affair with her.

"Who's that woman?"

"What woman?"

"Oh come on, you know who I mean, the woman who has just disappeared around that corner. What have you got going with her? I saw her looking at you, which means there's something going on with you two."

How on God's earth can one deal with that level of madness and twisted thinking? At one point she even accused me of having an affair with her six year old niece! This woman was dangerous. After that, her sister forbade me to go anywhere near her daughter.

There so many times this woman behaved in a manner that can only be called monstrous. Like the time she poured a two litre bottle of water over me as I was driving in heavy traffic. I got absolutely drenched and had to pull over. And the time she started to drive at 90 kilometers an hour in the city threatening to drive the car into a wall and kill us all, herself, me and our one year old son.

There were many other physical attacks at home in front of our son when all I could do was try to grab her by the wrists to restrain her. Then she started to kick and bite me like a bloody wild animal. And what on earth possessed me to agree to move in with her mother after all of that violent nonsense? I still do not have an answer for that I'm afraid.

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.

The 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 soooo wanted to say that last sentence so many times, but I didn't for fear of the conse- quences, 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 nor 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 nor 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 expenses 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 the 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 the 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 the Thursday and again got told to do one. So I updated her mother.

On the 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 into 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 realised 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, all of that appalling behaviour 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 realised 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 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?"

"No Your Honour, 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 leapt 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.

In the article link below you can read a chronicle of those fifteen years, fifteen years which included the apogee of ridiculousness when she reported me for stealing clothes over a 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 papers. I just walked out giggling to myself.

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.

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.