I will start off by adding a trigger warning to this story as it contains details of abuse, harassment, gaslighting, stalking, intimidation, and domestic violence.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please contact 1800RESPECT or 1800 737 732 (Australia) or 000 in an emergency.
Do not hope that it will go away, or that people who do this will stop, because they will not, do not give someone the freedom to harass and intimidate you, please tell the police or someone you trust, so that this person can be held accountable, put your safety first.
I have chosen to leave out the most traumatic parts of this story, possibly I will write a piece on this in the future, but now is not the time, it may never be. I have also left out identifying details about my abuser’s appearance along with specific dates, to protect their identity (to my abuser, if you are reading this, and I know you seek me out online, do not think I will not press charges if you begin to harass, threaten, or stalk me again, I know everything! Do not even go there. I will come at you with the full force of the law and with the support of friends and family who love me and care for my welfare).
This is a story I never intended on writing … ever.
The catalyst was a friend of mine forwarding me a podcast, about a man who emotionally and mentally abused his partner and lied about his whole life to her, the similarities of his lies, behaviours and the events that transpired, were so much like my own, just a much more watered-down version.
I am not minimising the traumas of others, or using trauma as a currency here, in fact I loved listening to that story so much, because she escaped before she got seriously hurt, and could now laugh about how absurd the situation was, it was refreshing to get a positive ending, not some gory tragedy of another murdered women at the hands of her partner. I do not like the voyeuristic enjoyment of other women’s horror stories and suffering, I just want change to roll in, I want awareness … I want it to stop.
I will admit though, that what ran through my mind was “hold my beer! let me tell you a tale about a dangerous sociopath,” I cringe at my own reaction, again because abuse is abuse, but I am being honest. I do not label peoples pathologies very often, I am turned off by the overuse of words related to trauma and dangerous people, as it takes the power away, bad behaviour and then actual things like sociopathy are incredibly different.
I struggled a lot with whether I wanted to give this piece any life by breaking a silence on someone that I have ignored for the last few years, not only to cut off their supply, and therefore hope they loose interest in stalking, harassing, and intimidating me, but also because it was the best thing for my sanity and peace of mind to put this experience in a little box, with a warning label on the front, and only open it when I am drawing on past experiences, for the benefit of others going through something similar, or when I need to make sense of my past.
Was there also shame and embarrassment? Yes, of course there was … and still is. Unfortunately, it remains that victim blaming is still disgustingly rife, even now, with all this awareness, which made me hide It even further, that added layer, was just too much.
I also feel guilt at times because I hoped that he would find a new target, so that I could finally leave my house and start living my life without watching every car that slowed down close to me, or feeling sick when my phone rang, but by that point, I was in deep survival mode. Only reflecting now, do I see how serious that event in my life was.
I also had a situation recently, where at a lunch (with a group pf people I had never met) I refused to back down to a man who was standing over me, and yelling at me, over his disdain for women’s rights, what set him off you ask? … a comment I made about my partner leaving the toilet seat up.
This was then backed up by the other two women at the table, one telling me “that’s fu&ked” because I was not fawning to the dominating men present, and because I stood firm on bad behaviours from my partner I won’t tolerate, interestingly when the same things were said about me, and I just laughed it off, no-one said a word in my defence. Keep in mind these were all comments said without malice from neither my partner nor myself.
This is where things got serious, the other woman at the table piped up and said “I am a woman, but I hate feminists” her partner, during this confrontation, was making jokes about violence against women and paedophilia, that I will not repeat. Even at one point saying that his partner and another woman at this lunch, who had a disagreement “should just go get some cucumbers and make up.”
I ended up picking up by bag, calling an Uber and leaving, the trauma response to a man intimidating me like that, is to get out as fast as possible, and these we absolutely not my people, in fact I am so protective of my space and who I share it with, that I almost forgot people like this still exist, in this age of calling out sexism and abuse.
Do you know what I felt when I got home? … anger, at myself for not standing my ground till the end, but also that feeling of “why did I say anything? if I said nothing and just shut up and endured it, that never would have happened” anyone have a familiar feeling just hit their stomach?
Thankfully, my close friends are very emotionally intelligent people who also have the same intolerance for injustice that I do, but I did receive some dismissive attitudes of “just let it go.”
I will not “let it go” would you like to know why?
Because those attitudes towards women cause harm, and what continues to stand out to me, and is so disturbing, is the comment expressing a hate of feminists coming from someone, a woman no less, who is about to become a psychologist and criminal lawyer. What does this attitude mean in the justice system? What does this attitude mean for women who have survived violence, and are seeking professional care? … No, I will not “let it go.”
What does that have to do with this story? It made me reflect hard on why I walked away, rather than argue my point, and school a few un-educated man babies, about why the last six hours of jokes at the expense of women and children was some of the most abhorrent garbage I have ever heard. It made me think of the internalised misogyny held by women, it made me realise, that I have been conditioned to walk away, as a form of protecting myself from violence, it has also made me realise that I am no longer going to be that woman … ever again!
I hope this story can be of some benefit to others, who are going through, been through or find themselves entering dangerous waters.
It made me think of a man I am going to call “CL” for the duration of this story. CL standing for, compulsive liar.
It starts off non-threatening enough, as stories like this always do.
I was single and doing the whole dating app thing, I started talking to a man that was a fair bit older than me, and who worked within the creative realm, he looked like a really cool guy, attractive by conventional standards, well dressed and with a good sense of humour and, suspiciously good conversational skills. He had a bit of an alternative boy next door, geeky vibe going on.
I did not feel the spark, but I enjoyed the conversation, I like an intellectual challenge and talking about things a little left of field, so we kept chatting for some time. Now, here is what should have been a huge red flag! I had said that I would drive down from where I lived at the time to see him, but come that day, I had my mother visiting me and the stars were just not aligning to go out, so I messaged to postpone.
I honestly thought it would be fine, and we could just catch up another time, but he was so incredibly passive aggressive, claimed that he had gotten up in the early hours of the morning to finish his work projects (he was self-employed) so he can see me, and that I had been disrespectful and ruined his whole day.
I thought … wow, what an over-reaction, maybe he was just having a bad day, he always seemed to understanding and easy going prior to this. He then started getting really annoyed when I didn’t reply to messages right away, I had to keep saying “my mother is here, and I am busy with my family” to which he would reply “just tell her you are talking to me!”, all of this should have been a big warning sign, but he said everything in such a disarming joking way, that I put my immediate feelings of discomfort to the side.
We spoke on a friend only basis for some time before we actually met, and when we did finally meet, he was fun and an incredible conversationalist, with a very witty sense of humour, but something still felt a bit … off.
I will say, should I meet someone like this now, I would have them pinned in seconds, and when I do not like the vibe of a person, I call it immediately, something that drives my current partner mad, because I will meet someone and form a judgement pretty fast, which means that I will refuse to engage any further with some people (example, the luncheon for misogynists, I called it with the hosts, but gave it a second chance, never again!). I live by this so strictly, that my partner no longer even questions it, I am not backing down.
My conditioning made me very prone to fawning and ignoring my boundaries, something that people (especially women) that have faced trauma and abuse early in their life, will relate to. I can pinpoint the exact event in my teenage years, which made me an easy target for the next decade.
The second time we met, he picked me up in his BMW with a lollypop hanging out his mouth, I mean, I can not make this up, is this not how all slasher films begin?
Again, we had a great time, he was really easy going and the conversation flowed, but I still felt like something really irritated me, on a visceral level, on an animal instinct, put him in the bin, even as a mate … level.
Before long things went from friends, to a friends with benefits situation, and I look back now, and know I never even wanted that. But you know how the “nice guy” just works his way in, and then plays hard done by for being “friend zoned”?
I did not immediately dislike the way things were going, he was not my type at all, in looks or personality, but because he seemed to put me at the front of everything, would run me baths with candles and a cup of tea waiting, make incredible dinners, I will give him that, he was a fantastic cook, watch movies all night with me and was just all out infatuated with me.
CL would take an unusually high interest in my artwork, something that I really liked at the time, and he, himself being in a creative realm, had a lot of valuable input, or so I thought! More on that later.
I told myself to just relax a little and maybe just give him a chance, it did not help that he was in my ear constantly, saying that I am afraid of commitment and I have never dated a “nice guy”, there was always the guilt tripping and shifting things onto me, as some broken woman who was being mean, by not giving in to a full on committed relationship with him.
Everything was flowing along for a little while, and even though I did not introduce him to many of my friends, because I knew that I did not want this to go anywhere and something was still off, everyone on first impressions really liked him, which made me think, that indeed, it could all be me, and I am not giving this guy a fair chance.
I started getting busy, which is not unusual as a single parent, and I was also very committed to my artistic ventures. I told CL that if he wanted to continue to see me that he would need to respect that I like to be alone when I am creating, and that I actually need a lot of alone time in general. He agreed to this, chiming in that, it would be perfect as so does he, and we can go about our artistic projects without disturbing each other. Great, I thought, settled then.
Well! I thought wrong.
I was working on a new project, and CL wanted to come over and spend the day at my place, I declined as politely as I could (vomit, women … we do not need to do this) and he just. Kept. Pushing. Was this what he had in mind when he said we could give each other creative space? I had to keep explaining to him that I just wanted to be alone, I need to be alone when I am creating, he had a rebuttal for every point I made “I will stay out of your way and just hang out” … “I will make you coffee” … “I can help you.”
By the afternoon, CL wore me down so much, that I just said “Fine, I am done for the day anyway, you can come over.” He then proceeded to walk through the door, and demand to see what I had been busy with all day, and then when seeing my unfinished work, said “Is that all you did? Is that why you couldn’t see me!” why I overexplained myself, about the intricacy of my art, I want to say, I’ll never know, but I do know.
I felt straight up irritated, my association word for this person, more than anything … is irritated, and you know what is weird? My biggest turn off about him was the way he smelled, I have never associated that with anyone else before, that their smell could make me feel physically sick, this got to a point in the coming weeks where it would make me close to vomiting. Now, if that is not your whole being telling you to get away, I do not know what is.
This is around about the time he also started dominating and critiquing my artwork, and not in passing comments, but ordering me to change design aspects, and that “he is a designer” and so he would know, this would go on for hours, to the point he would start losing his temper.
He would also start calling me all day long, and if he knew I had family commitments, he would call so much I would have to turn my phone off and deal with the fall out later. This is around about the time I was telling him, “No, I am not interested in a relationship, I thought maybe I was, but I am not.”
Cue, his mother… strap yourselves in kids.
Have you ever seen that TV show hoarders?
I am trying to be very careful with my wording, because to a degree, I see her as a victim also. So, I am going to just describe the scene as best I can.
I had heard things about CL’s mother prior to meeting her, and you guessed it, CL was her saviour, the good son, who paid her mortgage and cared for her during a long illness. But what rubbed me the wrong way immediately, was his constant bitterness at spending what he claimed was ten thousand Australian dollars on parking fees and petrol on visiting her partner in hospital, (which was only about five kilometres away) who had sadly passed away a few years earlier. CL claims he lost his entire life savings because of them.
Hmmm ok, you are a grown man.
When I first visited her in her home … I barely have words … What hit you first was the smell of rotting garbage, it was intense, like nothing I had experienced. The walls were black with dirt, the carpet was caked in filth, the kitchen! … The kitchen!
The floor was covered in food she had dropped and never picked up, and the sliding glass door, was so dirty you could not see out of it, as if it had yellow cellophane taped across it, what was that yellow film you ask? … rotting dog food.
Living outside that door were two poor little dogs, with fur so matted that they could barely move. I really felt for her, she was confined to a wheelchair from a fall that broke her ankle, and she had lost the love of her life, I could make all the judgements in the world on this woman, but she was like this for a reason, and had experienced great pain and abuse in her life, besides, in her younger days, she put a king brown snake in her enemies letterbox, I will give her points for that!
CL’s mother was always nice to me, but I felt her manipulate me for her own ends, which were actually quite innocent, she would want me there for shopping trips and to pressure me into allowing her to add soft drink and junk food to the trolley, when she was on a strict diet because of her health. I think she also wanted me around to talk to because CL had very little patience for her, and while I understand that she was not easy to deal with and refused to help herself, she was clearly struggling.
I tried to involve the appropriate authorities, so that she could get the assistance needed, but she refused to answer the door and there was just so much resistance. A passer-by cut the fur from her dog’s eyes, through a hole in the fence, and just that was enough to create a big problem.
I will never forget the day that CL saw that she had received a package from her friend in the US, which would be lollies, he was demanding that she share them, and she sat on top of them in her wheelchair, while he was trying to fight his own mother … for lollies … in the kitchen… covered in rotting food … Lord.
Trying to break it off with CL got even harder with the element of his now dying mother in the mix, he would guilt me into seeing her once a week when he would take her shopping and for coffee, If I were busy or had plans, I would be the worst person in the world, and he would argue that he needed me there as a buffer because she liked me. Playing the heart strings is always a hard one, and I find it so hard to say no.
I played along with this for a while, all while trying to slow things right down with him, which would send him into a spin! His stories started to seem a little far fetched too, and my mother made a comment about how he seems to be the expert at everything, you talk about any topic, CL can do it, or has done it.
Around this time my sister had a very, very sentimental book that needed rebinding, he saw it, and insisted he was an expert at rebinding old books, so she gave it to him. I wish I stepped in, because that was the first lie, I caught him out on, weeks and weeks go by, no book. He kept making excuses about cat gut thread needing to soak, and therefor he cannot give her book back.
It took months for me to get it returned, he was using at as collateral, if I am not in a relationship with him, he will not return it, was it professionally bound? Ha! Of course not, he covered it in contact plastic for schoolbooks.
He also claimed that all the puppets in his house were sent to him by the producer, or some other important person from Sesame Street, because they liked his work. He was constantly big noting himself about this creative job, that I had seen zero evidence of, had never seen him do any work for, and where he was available 24/7 … weird for a big wig creative. Things just did not add up.
There would always be excuses to why he had issues at work, his car was broken into, and the only thing stolen was his portfolio, people would not pay him, jobs would be cancelled, their business went bust … always something, and never his fault. He was also clearly having financial difficulties, which seemed very strange for a man working on giant videogame deals and the like, worth tens of thousands.
At this time my whole world fell apart, and he used it to his advantage to gain control over my entire life, I am choosing to leave this section out, because it contains some very graphic content.
As happens often, I let my abuser back into my life. He made excuses about his own traumas and tried to explain away his actions. I didn’t let him back in because I loved or really even liked him, but because he conditioned me to think I had no-one else, and having just gone through extreme trauma, and recovering some events that left me loosing half my total blood volume and close to loosing my life, I was extremely vulnerable.
CL would start to buy me gifts, that I had never asked him for, one in particular was a necklace. I put it in my cupboard and did not wear it often, I had my necklace that I wore every day. He would start questioning me as to why I would not wear his gift, or if we were going out, he would say, “put my necklace on.” This made me feel like a dog wearing a collar.
He would also start to guilt me about having been given these gifts, and how I had put him in financial hardship because he had used his money on me. For things I never even wanted, CL did the same about spending money of fuel, when he would insist on coming over every day, even showing up when he was asked not to come, and that I should give him money for the petrol he had to buy.
His behaviour was becoming increasingly hard to read, he would pull apart my entire being, from my body to my artwork, even about my cat, he would work me up into a spin of confusion and trying to defend myself, and would then laugh, tell me it was a joke, or that I am over-reacting and then hug me and try to soothe me as if I were having some kind of mental breakdown.
I also noticed he was calling me “champ” often, (keep this in mind for later).
CL was also trying to isolate me from all my friends, on one occasion, he had set up a friend of mine, with a friend of his, my friend was over when the man CL set her up with, sent her a selfie without his shirt on, she quickly flashed the phone at me when we were sitting together, and CL saw this. He sat outside until she left, and then came inside, got right in my face, and started yelling at me, that now that I have seen his friend with no shirt on, that he must end his friendship with him, and it is all my fault. That was one of many nights I spent hours trying to explain a non-event situation to him, a person I did not even want in my house but was always refusing to leave.
CL was increasingly accusing me of sleeping with other people or flirting with other men. I was a tarot reader at the time, and he insisted on taking me to see a client that had booked a short reading, when I was wrapping up, he just let himself into her home and complained that he wanted to go, while I was packing up she told me that she did not like him, and did not like the feeling he gave her. I had to brush it aside for the sake of professionalism and get into that car as fast as possible.
CL started screaming at me, saying “you were about to kiss her when I walked in, you two were so close” I burst out laughing, it was such a far-fetched accusation that I did not know how else to react. This is when he started driving so dangerously that I feared for my life.
That was not the first time either, the first time he lost his temper while driving, was on a wet rainy day, there was a news article getting a lot of attention at the time, regarding an underage girl getting pregnant by a much older man, and how she wanted an abortion, and the father was taking her to court to force her to continue the pregnancy and then give him full custody.
This was a no brainer, human rights violation in my mind, how could anyone think that situation should even be happening! And why was this man not being charged for rape.
Of course, CL sided with the father, I was not going to give in to keep the peace this time, not on this one. CL was drifting the car across the wet road, almost going through entire round-a-bouts, it was an extremely dangerous situation. He was adamant this poor girl should be forced to birth this baby, because the father’s rights trump the mother’s body autonomy, I could not believe my ears. He was escalating at an alarming rate and would look for any way to create a drama. The amount of times he started fights with other drivers on the road over nothing, I cannot even count.
Now this is where things get wild.
CL called me in the early hours of the morning, maybe around 2am. Yelling at me, I was half asleep still could not make sense of what was being said. CL claimed that, he had received a phone call from a number he did not know, from a man claiming that I had been perusing his male friend, and I was “getting a bit full on” and that he was so concerned he found me online, some how found CL and his phone number (listed because of his creative work) and contacted him to tell him about it, because he thought CL needed to know.
Immediately I thought, hmm, how strange as I make an effort, not to have any link to CL online as I don’t want to be with him, and I am not talking to, or interested in any man (in my mind, ever again). CL was then telling me, that now he can not list his number anymore, meaning he will lose income, which is my fault for being a slut.
Right, I was going to nip this in the bud right now, I was well and truly over it.
“Give me that number” I said, “it must be someone who has an issue with me, I have no idea who, as I don’t have any problems with anyone.” CL had also made it impossible for me to even see friends and family, let alone pursue a mystery man.
Surprise, surprise, the phone rang out or would be switched off. How interesting.
The vice around my life started to tighten considerably, I remember a time that I was on one of his mothers shopping trips, and he sat down at their favourite coffee chain, I had to speak to a family member and said I would be outside on the phone. Not even fifteen minutes later, I see CL whizzing his poor mother out of the shopping centre doors at lightning speed. He then proceeded to put her back in the car, refuse to take her shopping while they blamed me … for talking to my family on the phone outside for a few minutes!
This overbearing behaviour escalated to epic proportions, we were watching a popular Australian cooking reality TV show one night, and I said “Oh wow, that guy is in my social circle” … I swear CL’s head spun around like the exorcist, and he asked me “Did you sleep with him?” I was dumbfounded, I had never even met this guy! He just so happened to be in a creative circle I knew at the time. CL refused to believe me and spent the entire episode accusing me of sleeping with a man I had never met. Even if I did, what he want me to do? Build a time machine?
Which reminds me, when I cleaned out some old stacks of paper from some storage boxes, I found a drawing he did of us, with a speech bubble that said “show me your purchas history” and my speech bubble saying “no” (that misspelling of purchase was intentional by the way).
What was that weird visual about? While sitting on the couch, this person who has no financial bearing on my life, who I did not live with, who I was telling, I did not want to be in a relationship with, demanded I show him my eBay purchase history, because now he was trying to control my finances too. He was trying to take my phone, and go through all of my personal information, that is where I drew the line.
CL had to go!
I was getting to a point where I was desperately trying to get him to lose interest in me, I had already made it clear he was only ever going to be a friend, and that I was not ready for a relationship, I felt like this guy was creating a situation where I was just a pawn in a play, not a living, breathing person expressing their feelings.
On the one night that I convinced him to go on a date, and where I firmly said I would be going on a date also, he tried to convince me that he was going on a date with a woman that looked like a fitness model, in fact so much so, it was like they were pictures from the internet …
I fooled myself that she could be real, and that they could hit it off, so I could be rid of this person. Guess what, she was not his type, how convenient.
Why did I not just kick him out? Block his number, get a VRO? because setting those kinds of hard boundaries made things so much worse, and he claimed to have crooked cop friends, who showed him how to break into houses and cover up crimes, I did not want to find out of this were another lie, keep in mind that I was feeling very vulnerable and worn down.
This would be a good time to mention something that happened to him some years earlier. CL had been stabbed before, yes, you read that right … stabbed! Punctured lung, the who shebang.
He claims that these are the events that led up to this stabbing.
CL was in the nightclub area, minding his own business on a night out, he sees a woman being assaulted by her boyfriend, and intervenes, being the upstanding man he is, of course he fights this man, beating him senseless, only for the battered girlfriend to then run into a venue, somehow procuring a knife! And giving it to her partner, who uses this knife to stab CL.
So, this is what really happened.
CL and his brother, and his brother’s wife are at their mother’s house, some kind of altercation takes place and CL’s brother slaps their mother, CL then beats his own brother to an absolute pulp, at which point the brother’s wife, gets a knife, gives it to her husband, who then stabs CL. Remember when I said I thought he was giving boy next door, geek vibes? What I really meant, was Australian psycho.
So now that I have brought CL’s brother into the story, it is time to introduce CL’s estranged adult son, that I never knew he had, who just so happened to fly on over and move in with his dear dad.
This is when the story gets a bit less, hold my beer, and a bit more, take my tequila!
Stay tuned for part two.
