It felt like I was reliving a part of my life. I stayed for 25 years before getting out. At the end, I too had an affair, (3 years of no sex) and because of that "He won". I was the bad guy, the villain in his story. And I don't care. Let him call me the bad guy... because I am out..
So many questions. How did you finally decide you had to get out? Does he still monitor you today? Did he negatively affect your children’s opinions of you, and your connection to them?
Despite his threat to kill me if I left, I decided I had to get out when I realised that if I stayed I’d die anyway. It became a gamble worth taking. No monitoring now, as far as I know: we’re many years down the track. Yes, he damaged my eldest son’s opinion of me and it hasn’t recovered. The others I am close to.
Ah that’s a grievous loss to lose your son. Maybe things will change but maybe not. I’m glad your other kids are fine and that you made it out. I think it’s helpful for women to know that it’s possible. I think many women get stuck in the fallacy of sunk costs, and postpone leaving because of it. I analogize it to alcoholics who have a period of sobriety, relapse, and then do not recover because they feel so terrible for having lost all that sober living, and dread starting again.
Lord Ros, that's some creepy stuff. It's scary that there are these evil people out there and I'm sorry you had to suffer this. I'm 70+ and I have known my share of dickheads, including a man who tried to assault me because he thought I was sleeping with his ex-wife. I wasn't - she was my art history teacher and I liked talking to her. The first I knew of his paranoid fantasies was him coming at me in a Leeds pub shouting that he'd "saw my fucking head off." He didn't have a saw, and I just started laughing, it being by far the funniest threat against my person I'd ever heard. His mates settled him down with many utterances of "he's not worth it Wiggy." That gave me another fit of giggles. I was being threatened with decapitation by saw by a man called "Wiggy." It was all too much for me. That was funny, but I've seen too many men who behave like that to think it's funny all the time. They can, and do, bring terrible harm both physical and psychological. All we can do is stand up for ourselves and for anyone else who is put in that situation.
I would only add: A great many cloud storage options search not just by file name, but also by content. So for example, if I search all 17,000 files in my Dropbox for “Harlow,” it returns two files with Harlow in the body of the document, not in the file name.
So caution should still be exercised, especially if the other party is a techie.
SUGGEST: insert at top of file actual recipes... genuine content is thus five (or ten) pages down and not seen when file first opens
Good suggestion. Will adopt this.
I steal my best ideas
this from an otherwise forgettable spy thriller
heh...
you ought to check into non-fic books about CIA, MI6, Mossad, et al
It felt like I was reliving a part of my life. I stayed for 25 years before getting out. At the end, I too had an affair, (3 years of no sex) and because of that "He won". I was the bad guy, the villain in his story. And I don't care. Let him call me the bad guy... because I am out..
So many questions. How did you finally decide you had to get out? Does he still monitor you today? Did he negatively affect your children’s opinions of you, and your connection to them?
Despite his threat to kill me if I left, I decided I had to get out when I realised that if I stayed I’d die anyway. It became a gamble worth taking. No monitoring now, as far as I know: we’re many years down the track. Yes, he damaged my eldest son’s opinion of me and it hasn’t recovered. The others I am close to.
Ah that’s a grievous loss to lose your son. Maybe things will change but maybe not. I’m glad your other kids are fine and that you made it out. I think it’s helpful for women to know that it’s possible. I think many women get stuck in the fallacy of sunk costs, and postpone leaving because of it. I analogize it to alcoholics who have a period of sobriety, relapse, and then do not recover because they feel so terrible for having lost all that sober living, and dread starting again.
"Men who control women are weak-ass men." 🙏 #preach
We are waking up! And, they do not like it.
Lord Ros, that's some creepy stuff. It's scary that there are these evil people out there and I'm sorry you had to suffer this. I'm 70+ and I have known my share of dickheads, including a man who tried to assault me because he thought I was sleeping with his ex-wife. I wasn't - she was my art history teacher and I liked talking to her. The first I knew of his paranoid fantasies was him coming at me in a Leeds pub shouting that he'd "saw my fucking head off." He didn't have a saw, and I just started laughing, it being by far the funniest threat against my person I'd ever heard. His mates settled him down with many utterances of "he's not worth it Wiggy." That gave me another fit of giggles. I was being threatened with decapitation by saw by a man called "Wiggy." It was all too much for me. That was funny, but I've seen too many men who behave like that to think it's funny all the time. They can, and do, bring terrible harm both physical and psychological. All we can do is stand up for ourselves and for anyone else who is put in that situation.
Thanks for your post, Ros. Stories like this are so important to hear.
I would only add: A great many cloud storage options search not just by file name, but also by content. So for example, if I search all 17,000 files in my Dropbox for “Harlow,” it returns two files with Harlow in the body of the document, not in the file name.
So caution should still be exercised, especially if the other party is a techie.