a wounded, divided life

Delores, 48, has been separated from an abusive husband for five months and has been doing her best to hold down a customer service job and keep her private life out of her working life, but the more she tries to divide herself the less she is able to achieve her intention.

“I just can’t help myself at times,” confides Delores. “I am crying one minute then being rude the next and not only were customers being shocked by my erratic behavior but also my co-workers.”

“I was inadvertently taking out all of my frustration on everyone around me at work,” confesses Delores, “but it was the arrival of my estranged husband at my workplace that was the last straw.”

“We had a ferocious argument, I was screaming and crying and he was hurling abuse at me and shoving me around,” explains Delores. “The police were called and I was asked to take time off to get myself together.”

“I took the rest of the week off and really tried hard to calm down and get my life back together,” says Delores, “but since returning to work I can’t help noticing that co-workers are avoiding me – and I don’t blame them.”

“I guess younger women involved with similarly violent men are not yet old enough to have experienced the incredible pressure required for the monumental blow up that they saw me have with my estranged husband.”


Read more by Delores on this situation:

mad cows

menopausal mad cow

Sad sacks at work

mad old cows at work

sperm donor wanted

When Leanne thinks of Cyndi Lauper's song True Colors she's reminded of her ex husband, Jack, who was as proud as a peacock when she told him she was pregnant - but later discovered that it was his ability to make a baby that he was proud of, not the prospect of raising a child with her.

"When Jack started avoiding me after taking me out to dinner to celebrate my pregnancy I knew I was in trouble, " says Leanne.

"There was no way I was capable of raising a child on my own and if Jack didn't want to participate in the child's future then I needed to get an abortion as quickly as possible."

"I finally managed to get Jack to agree to a discussion," says Leanne, "and I laid my cards clearly in front of him."

"He maintained that the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy or have an abortion was entirely my decision," says Leanne. "He didn't see the life growing inside me as being a responsibility of his - even though it was his sperm that created it."

"Faced with the brutal truth I had very little alternative."

"Jack didn't say so but I suppose he had contemplated a future divorce and a lifetime spent paying maintenance for a child he didn't want."

"I was 36 and this may have been my last chance to become a mother," says Leanne, "but when I looked at Jack that night and saw what a lily-livered coward he was I didn't want a man like that to be the father of my child."

"I made an appointment to have an abortion and the counseling session was really trying for me," sighs Leanne.

"I suppose by then the hormones had kicked in and I was feeling 'clucky' and 'protective' even though my brain was totally against having this child."

"It was the first - and hopefully the last - abortion I will ever have to endure," says Leanne. "It didn't hurt and I was treated very well but I couldn't help but cry like a baby when it was all over."

"The whole male-female situation really stinks," sighs Leanne. "Jack and I hadn't planned on having a child -- it just happened, despite contraception -- and it really sucks that the woman has to pay the consequences of what a man's sperm does."

"Jack had been so proud that at 47 he was firing healthy sperm rather than 'blanks' -- which is how he put it -- and that's all there was to it as far as he was concerned."

"If he had wanted proof of his fertility than he should have got it at a clinic -- not through my misery and the murder of a new human being."

"A bad choice of man?"

"Well, tell me how to pick a good one," sighs Leanne.

"Anyway, someone else might have let me down when it was too late for an abortion," says Leanne. "If Jack has one redeeming point it is that he showed his true colors early enough for me to right a great wrong."

"After the abortion, there was no point continuing with the marriage," says Leanne. "Jack was a flake and a poor excuse for a man. He even chickened out of accompanying me to the abortion clinic. I had to go through it all on my own."

"What's the use of having a husband if he's not there for you?"

"I'm considering going ahead and having a sperm donor baby," confides Leanne. "I know it will be difficult being a single mom, but considering the woeful quality of potential husbands and fathers out there I believe it's the only option open to me?"

"Wish me luck!"

(Leanne's story first appeared as true colors and is reprinted with permission.)

pre-divorce house sale scam

Nina is 34 and separated with two children. She thought her marital troubles were over until she agreed with her husband's request to sell the family home prior to divorce.

"It seemed a reasonable sort of request - better to clear up all matters between us as quickly as possible," explains Nina, "and when I approached the Kettles they understood my situation perfectly."

"I know that real estate agents are supposed to be as snaky as used car salesmen," says Nina, "but the husband and wife team that ran one of the local real estate agencies looked as down to earth as Ma and Pa Kettle - and that's why I call them the Kettles."

"They just didn't look like snake oil scammers," confesses Nina, "and that's why I trusted them over all of the other agents with the sale of the family house. How dumb of me! Their mild looks and manner belied what they were really like!"

"They told me that they had helped lots of women in my situation and encouraged me to relax and let them do all the worrying."

"When a nice old couple take you under their wing and tell you that everything is going to be alright you want to believe them, you want to trust them, and I did," sighs Nina. "I guess being the baby of my family has affected me in that way. I am far to quick to trust people and let them take care of me."

"The first thing they told me was that I should auction my house rather than go for a private sale," says Nina, "and my ex agreed that even if we didn't get top dollar for the house it was worth a small loss to get the house sold quickly. That should have caused my alarm bells to go off - but it didn't. For a man who was a congenital liar - and would sell his own grandmother for a quick buck - I should have been on my guard, but since our separation I guess I was so glad to be out of the marriage that I didn't imagine I was still at risk."

"The Kettles said that I'll have no problem selling at auction, the market was booming, the buyers were banging on their door and to clench their certainty about the auction they suggested I move out of the house into an apartment."

"They told me that I wouldn't have to worry about the kids messing up the place during the auction period if I moved out," says Nina, "and they convinced me that it was a smart thing to do."

"I was a bit wary about contracting to rent an apartment before the house was sold," confides Nina, "but the Kettles were adamant that they knew what was best for me - it will all be over in six weeks, they said, and then I wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to live in a hurry when the house sold at auction."

"It made sense to me and the Kettles found me an apartment the same day I signed the auction papers," says Nina. "The kids and I moved into the apartment the same week."

"The first few weeks in the apartment were great," confesses Nina. "I was starting a new direction - my future looked bright and rosy - and I was so grateful to the Kettles for taking charge and relieving me of all the stress of selling."

"I'm a Gemini, you see," confesses Nina. "I'm all nervous energy and the slightest thing stresses me to pieces. As if I didn't have enough stress in my life with the separation and two kids to look after!"

"I checked on the house every few days to empty the mailbox and sweep the paths," says Nina, "and apart from discovering once that they had left a window open I was reasonably satisfied that they were doing a good job."

"I'd speak to them before and after every inspection day, and they never said anything to indicate that there hadn't been lots of interest in the house."

"In the third week of the auction period I couldn't find the auction advertisement in the newspaper," explains Nina. "My stress levels went sky high when I saw, instead, an advertisement for my house with a price attached to it that was half the value of the land without a house on it!"

"I went straight to the Kettles and demanded to know what they were doing," says Nina, "and they just smiled sweetly and said that the auction advertisements hadn't attracted much interest so they were trying to drum up interest with a bargain sale type advertisement."

"Because my address wasn't on the advertisement, they could claim that it wasn't my house at all!"

"I was shocked because what they had done was fraudulent. They had put a ridiculous price on my house and had abrogated the auction advertisement contract."

"On their advice I had contracted for an expensive auction campaign and they had not only misinformed me about the market but they had also failed to inform me of their intention to insert the fraudulent advertisement. Their behavior was totally unethical."

"They told me that I had given them carte blanche to sell the house," says Nina, "but that's not true. I didn't give them the right to place fraudulent advertisements. I had signed an auction agreement, and an auction campaign was what I expected."

"I told my ex what had happened and he cautioned me about dumping the Kettles," says Nina. "He told me to relax and let the Kettles do their job. He had absolute faith in them, and - like he always did when I disagreed with him - he accused me of being paranoid. That did it! I then became suspicious about his involvement with the Kettles behind my back."

"It was to his advantage as well as mine that the house sold at the best price we could get for it. The price the Kettles had put on the house in the dummy advertisement was abominable. What was going on?"

"I wasn't divorcing my husband for nothing," explains Nina. "He had been a secretive, manipulative guy from the start - always wheeling and dealing - and it suddenly occurred to me that he may have had a private deal with the Kettles and a stooge buyer that would give him, and them, a financial advantage."

"By moving me into the apartment, the Kettles - and probably my ex - thought they had me at their mercy and could rip me off easily," says Nina, "but they thought wrong."

"On legal advice I terminated both the auction contract and the tenancy contract on grounds of breach of the auction agreement and moved right back into the house," laughs Nina. "The Kettles and my ex didn't have a leg to stand on and were speechless!"

"The Kettles had shown stacks of people through the house on the basis of the fraudulent advertisement," says Nina, "and I felt more sorry for these people than I did for myself."

"One young couple actually knocked on the door a few weeks later wanting another look at the house, and when I told them what the Kettles had done they were very upset because they loved the house and confided that they did think it very odd that it was selling so cheaply and wondered what was wrong with it."

"After that," says Nina, "I decided not to sell the house until the divorce was finalized - if at all - and my ex, naturally, wasn't happy about this. In fact he was furious - which suggests I was on the right track to suspect him of some sort of complicity. There was no legal requirement for me to sell the house before the divorce was finalized. I'd thwarted him and that's why he was furious."

"I was absolutely frazzled with all the moving I had done and all the stress the Kettles had put me through," says Nina, "and although my ex was required to pay half of the abortive auction costs he refused to pay half of the costs I had to pay renting the apartment for myself and the kids."

"Sure, I got myself into debt - I had to borrow money from my big sister to pay the rent and legal costs - but the greatest cost, really, was all the stress I had to go through," says Nina. "How stupid of me to trust real estate agents and to believe that my ex wouldn't want to screw me one final time!"

"I'm sure that there must be honest and trustworthy real estate agents out there - and honest and trustworthy men, too," sighs Nina, "but after my recent experiences I have nothing but disgust and loathing for all of them. It's the single life for me from now on!"

"I've also decided to hang on to the house for as long as I can," says Nina. "After all, I'm the one left with the kids and my ex will discover that there's no court in the land that can force me to sell, especially when another stressful period of selling, after all I've been through, is likely to make me ill and incapable of looking after the children."

"Serves him right for not playing fair with me when I was willing to sell," snaps Nina. "I was even willing to find a job and not depend on him for maintenance, but not any more. He's going to pay big time to keep me in the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom for as long as I feel like it."

"Woe betide anyone who tries to outsmart me again!"

(Nina's story first appeared as the kettles and is reprinted with permission.)

why did I ever change my name to his?

After a marriage to a womanizer that lasted barely two years Cleo, 32, is in the process of reclaiming her maiden name - a task that is not easy, but acts as a salient reminder for her of the selfless madness that overtakes women when they fall in love, get married and give up their independence.

"I never even liked Jack's surname," laughs Cleo, "but I was so in love with the guy that I was willing to give up my own name and identity in order to be his wife."

"It just didn't occur to me that Jack would continue seeing other women after we married - and that eventually I'd be so humiliated that I'd fall out of love with him and sue for divorce," sighs Cleo. "Divorce happens to other people, doesn't it?"

"Thankfully I was smart enough to put off having children until we had established ourselves better," explains Cleo, "but obviously I wasn't smart enough to keep my name."

"I changed everything - passport, banking accounts, library cards, sporting clubs, etc - from my maiden name to my married name," laughs Cleo. "What a klutz I was!"

"It isn't just the expense and inconvenience of having to change everything back to my name," explains Cleo. "It's also the humiliation of the exercise that gets to me."

"I have to provide evidence of my marriage and separation to all of these institutions - along with my birth certificate."

"Imagine the looks I get from the counter staff," laughs Cleo. "It's humiliating and yet that's just the sort of treatment I deserve for being so stupid as to change my name to Jack's."

"I know that these days women are not required by law to change their names when they get married - I guess the exercise I'm going through has been done a million times before and institutions are sick of it," explains Cleo, "but when you're as stupidly in love as I was you just don't think right."

"I guess it's only when society actually forbids women from changing their name when they hook up with some guy that this sort of ridiculous exercise will end."

"Until then, otherwise smart women like me will continue to give up their name and identity during the period of love madness that precedes marriage."

"Let's face it," laughs Cleo, "in all other periods of temporary insanity we go through in our lives society has set up safeguards to stop us doing silly things - and yet when it comes to love and marriage society just sits back and lets women make fools of themselves."

"Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot," says Cleo. "Do you think men - in love or otherwise - would be silly enough to change their names and identities upon marriage? I think not!"

"Men are very proud of their names - even Jack was proud of his silly surname - and there's no way he would have given it up for me or any woman."

"The supreme sacrifice men make upon marriage is to give up their freedom - and Jack couldn't even hack that," sighs Cleo. "But women are always under a subtle influence to make two supreme sacrifices - give up their freedom and their names!"

"I don't know how the custom ever came about," sighs Cleo. "It must have been just another one of the male plots to subjugate women - but funny thing, Jack thought he was bestowing an honor upon me by giving me his name. And guess what, I fell for it!"

"It's great to be me again - with my old familiar name," says Cleo, "but I worry about the future."

"I'd like to have children one day, but if that means marrying a guy and giving my children his name I am not too happy about that."

"After all," muses Cleo, "I'm the one who'd be carrying them for nine months, going through the agonies of childbirth, doing the breastfeeding and diaper changing - not to mention taking time off work and losing out financially in order to raise them - so why shouldn't the children carry my name?"

"It's all too hard so I should really decide never to go there and be satisfied with my independence instead."

bad therapy for marital ending

When Rosa's marriage of eighteen years ended she became so upset and out of control that she feared she was losing her mind and, quite naturally, she sought help from her medical practitioner who referred her to a therapist.

"I was very reluctant to see a therapist," explains Rosa. "I didn't want to tell a stranger, even a doctor, the sensitive details of my inner life. I just expected my doctor to give me some pills to calm me down but he insisted I needed professional help. Trusting he had my best interests at heart, I acquiesced to his medical judgment."

"The lady he sent me to see seemed to be very nice," says Rosa, "and as I had gone this far to seek help in getting my life together, I decided to continue seeing her."

"She put me through a series of exercises where I had to keep a journal of everyone I had dealings with and everything I did," says Rosa, "and in doing these exercises I surprised myself in realizing just how crazy my life was. I was dating four guys at the time!"

"She asked about my childhood and marriage and despite my telling her that I had a happy childhood, and seventeen years of happiness in my marriage before my husband went crazy and left me, she maintained that I was kidding myself."

"Hello? She seemed adamant about making me believe that my life up to now had been a lie," says Rosa, "and this just didn't sit well with me because I knew that I had been loved and wanted by my parents and ex husband."

"From the little I knew about therapists they are supposed to be supportive and instrumental in building up self-esteem," says Rosa, "but this lady seemed to be determined to shred me to pieces."

"I started to get suspicious when she talked about another client of hers - a man who had apparently fallen in love with her and was annoying her by calling her at home."

"She suggested that he would make a good friend for me," explains Rosa, "and she kept on asking me to meet with her at a bar where she would arrange to introduce him to me."

"I refused the introduction because frankly I had far too many guys in my life already and I certainly didn't want to get mixed up with someone in therapy - even though I was," explains Rosa. "If anything, I felt I needed to strip people from my life and mix only with reliable and happy people capable of helping me over this period in my life."

"I thought it was very odd and possibly unethical for a therapist to be acting as a matchmaker," adds Rosa. "I wanted to get my life back together so that I could be a good mom for my kids and do well at work, but all this woman was doing was upsetting me more than I was already."

"I may have been out of control and totally scattered when I first saw her," says Rosa, "but after a few weeks of her so-called therapy I was climbing the walls!"

"I guess my displeasure didn't go unnoticed because at the next therapy session I was surprised when the therapist didn't invite me into her office," says Rosa.

"Instead, she sat in the waiting room with me -- actually she sat way across the room from me, rather than next to me -- and proceeded to ask me all the usual questions about what I had been doing since she last saw me."

"I felt terribly uncomfortable and terminated the session early," says Rosa. "I paid her for the hour but decided after that session not to see her again."

"I felt she was playing mind games with me," explains Rosa, "and while that is probably the sort of thing therapists do for a living I didn't feel she was doing it in my best interests."

"Maybe it was all her round about way of getting me to assert myself and face the fact that I deserve better in life than what I had been dished up," says Rosa, "but it all left a bitter taste in my mouth."

"Rather than coming away from a few months of therapy feeling good about myself," explains Rosa, "I ended up feeling absolutely worthless."

"I thought: If a therapist I was paying to help me ended up treating me like dirt, then what hope did I have to get my life together?"

"I spend the rest of the year reading a lot of self-help therapy books and they turned my life around," says Rosa. "Actually, the books helped but it was my own inner guidance that steered me on the right track."

"The therapist actually called me a few times wondering why I hadn't make another appointment," laughs Rosa, "and I told her quite truthfully that I didn't feel the sessions had helped me."

"She told me that I needed to complete the sessions in order to get benefit from them," says Rosa, "but I wasn't going to buy into that nonsense."

"As far as I was concerned she had betrayed my trust and twisted my vulnerable situation to her advantage."

"The self-help books were telling me that I was a beautiful person and deserved a beautiful man and a good life," explains Rosa, "and this was what I needed to hear because it matched what my inner guidance was telling me all along. How silly that I needed someone else to tell me what I knew already!"

"Everything that the therapist had told me was designed to make me feel bad about myself," says Rosa, "and if I had continued with her sessions I would have probably ended up penniless and totally dependent upon her for any sort of worth."

"I suppose therapists have a vested interest in keeping their clients feeling bad about themselves," sighs Rosa, "but I didn't go there feeling bad about myself. I went there feeling bad about the lousy people in my life - and she became just one more lousy person in my life that I needed to get rid of!"

"My childhood had been happy, and my marriage had lasted seventeen happy years before my husband went through the mid-life crisis and went off the rails."

"By robbing me of those memories of happiness -- trying to get me to believe that it was all a lie --that therapist was acting, in my opinion, in an unethical manner."

"I thought about reporting her to the professional body, to safeguard some other poor soul from falling into her clutches" says Rosa, "but I decided against it."

"Let's face it," laughs Rosa, "I was a client, a woman with emotional problems, and who do you think would be more believable - the crazy therapist or me?"

"If problems can be scaled," says Rosa, "then that therapist had far more problems than I had. People in positions of power who use and abuse vulnerable women are sick."

"I'm back on track now and feeling good about myself," confides Rosa. "and the next time I feel ill or upset about anything I'll be turning to self-help books rather than doctors!"

(Rosa's story first appeared as the therapist and is reprinted with permission.)

the butt of cruel jokes

Up until her children left home three years ago, June endured eleven post-divorce years of abject misery because of constant interference from an abusive ex who manipulated her through the children, regularly defaulting on access visits and child maintenance and poisoning the children's minds against her and the few men she had dated.

"Becoming an empty nester ended all that misery for me," says June, "but irreparable damage had been done. My life is ruined."

June explains that her miseries started when she was about 40 and first felt affronted by her husband's cruel ageist and sexist jokes. Cruel jokes about older women are popular among most men, but women generally never take much notice of these jokes until they reach an age at which they suddenly realize that the jokes are directed at them.

Her husband thought it was very funny to humiliate her by telling such jokes in company, and he paid for this and his other follies with divorce. However, June, now 56, did not get away easily. She paid for her assertiveness in divorcing her husband fourteen years ago by becoming the butt of the cruelest joke imaginable.

During the prime of her life, from 42 to 53, June lived on the edge and often considered suicide as a way out of her misery. She couldn't see an end to the vendetta her ex was conducting against her. She felt that he would carry on until the men in white or the undertakers carried him, or her, away.

The misery she suffered at the hands of a nasty and vindictive ex totally overshadowed her 40s and early 50s. She looks more like 76 than 56. Her hair is white, her eyes are dull, her complexion is ashen and she has that jittery mannerism that is more common in elderly women than a fifties woman.

It's easy to say that the option is always there for women in June's former situation to pack up, change their name, leave the country or do whatever they have to do in order to get a vindictive ex off their backs, but as June explained this was not an option for her.

"It would have meant sacrificing the children," says June. "My ex had visitation rights and the only way I could have escaped from him was to give him the children. I couldn't do that because he didn't want the children. He was just using them to ruin my life. And he succeeded not only in ruining my life, but the children's, too. They've turned out to be as screwed up as he is."

Women who gain custody of children after a marital split rarely gain respite from the children's father, and this constant harassment not only deprives these women from enjoying a normal relationship with a man but also a normal relationship with their children. June is now resigned to never seeing her children again.

"They are ashamed of me," explains June. "One of them calls me an 'old bag' and other pejorative names that their father called me."

When children are constantly subjected to hearing their father deride their mother, it's a rare child who can see the injustice of the situation and want to put it right.

June says that all her suffering was wasted.

"I might as well have put the kids into care and fled, cutting all ties with them as well as their father," sighs June. "It will silly of me to expect the children to appreciate that I remained their mom. I should have realized that their father would have more sway over them than I would"

If her children are more concerned about what she looks like than what's in her heart, then that's due to their father's indoctrination and there's nothing much she can do about it. And yet, it is not just her ex-husband who poisoned her children's minds against June. The youth culture, and general lack of respect for older women, is to blame, too.

June's ex-husband very clearly succeeded in increasing his power by decreasing hers. What he did to her wasn't illegal, and because it is sanctioned by a male dominated society it wasn't considered to be immoral either.

"To everyone else he was an aggrieved dad," explains June. "I initiated the divorce and split the family. Therefore, I was considered to be the bad person and in punishing me he was seen as giving me what I deserved. Nobody cared that the kids were getting screwed up in the process."

"He was driving me mad, and screwing up the kids," explains June, "but everyone else saw him as a good guy. Nobody cared about the reason why I left him. Nobody cared that he was abusing me. He managed to convince everyone that I had left him and broken his poor little heart for no good reason whatsoever. "

As long as these guys have a mantle of approval from society, they can carry on forever. And bitter and twisted ex-husbands and ex-lovers often do.

When asked why, at the age of 56 and after three years of freedom from the kids, she has not picked herself up and started a new life - one far away from her ex, her children and all the bad memories - June shrugs and says that she just doesn't have any energy left.

"As long as I they leave me alone I feel safe," says June. "The hell is over and I just want to enjoy peace and quiet now."

When women use the word 'safe' it usually indicates that they are otherwise living in fear, and this is exactly how June is living despite the fact that the children - the only 'hold' her ex had over her - are no longer in the equation.

June said that she could not have lived with herself had she given up her children and fled fourteen years ago, and yet by doing what she considered to be the ethical and natural thing for a mother to do she exposed herself to further abuse.

the maltese postman

Gillian is 42, but looks 22, and is childless and newly separated from her husband. She found the tranquility she needed to get herself together, put the past behind her and make plans for the future by taking a trip to Malta.

"The tiny island of Malta basks in the warmth in the Mediterranean Sea and once played a strategic part in the various military operations of the last century - particularly for Great Britain," says Gillian, "and it has since become a delightful tourist resort for Britons involved in more personal operations like mine."

"I desperately needed a diversion from all the thoughts that I just couldn’t still in my mind - thoughts of my estranged husband, Joe, with his new woman; thoughts of my lovely new home that was now up for sale; thoughts of all the pitying faces at work and at the club when knowledge of my marriage break-up became known; and thoughts of my parents who took me back home to live with them and, as expected, couldn’t wait to remind me that they had warned me not to marry Joe."

"I highly recommend that newly separated women take a break - anywhere - in order to muster strength for what lies ahead," says Gillian, "and Malta is ideal because just about everybody there speaks English, if not as their primary language then as a very close second."

"I didn't want the hassle of using my schoolgirl French or German," says Gillian. "I just wanted to get away, and far enough away to be foreign. Know what I mean?"

"Some cynics would say that once you've seen one Mediterranean island you've seen the lot," says Gillian, "and I tend to agree in part but what was most memorable about being in Malta was not the falcons -- I doubt that there are any on the island -- but the people. In particular, the Maltese Postman."

It was a warm late October afternoon and Gillian visited a small post-office on the outskirts of the capital city, Valetta, to get some stamps. Behind the counter was George.

Delighted to meet an off-season tourist, and bored with his work, George insisted on closing the post-office and showing her around his island.

Gillian thinks that George had done this sort of thing lots of times before, but having no fear whatsoever that his intentions were anything other than honorable she felt quite safe being shown around the island by him.

"He was old enough to be my father - not that an age difference deters older men, or younger women if it comes to that - but there was something about him that assured me that his first love was Malta and he wanted to share that love with anybody who was interested. And I was."

"George was a mine of information about the history of the island and its significance during both world wars," says Gillian. "Apparently huge fleets had anchored in Valetta Bay and George remembered the island being full of servicemen on shore leave when he was a boy."

Had Gillian taken a notebook with her she would now have a unique story of one man's life on Malta during an exciting time in its history, but alas all she has are shreds of information gleaned from the hours that she and the Maltese Postman had spent together.

After a delightful few hours zooming her around the island, George delivered Gillian back to her hotel, safe and sound, just like a good postman delivers a letter.

She cannot imagine very many postmen in any part of the world having the authority to shut up shop in order to show a tourist around, so Gillian felt honored by the experience and hopes that nobody had wanted his postal services while he was AWOL.

Maybe it could only have happened in Malta?

Gillian’s story about George lacks the sexual liaison that so many separated women feel compelled to indulge in after a marriage fails - similar to that portrayed in the Shirley Valentine film - yet it shows how a simple encounter with a nice man can diffuse a lot of emotional tension.

"There are nice men out there," says Gillian, "and I’m not going to allow a failed marriage spoil the rest of my life. I am going to love again!"

Yet it wasn’t just Gillian’s experience with George that changed her attitude.

"I experienced a spiritual rebirth during my stay on the island of Malta," explains Gillian. "There was something about the island that made it so easy for me to put everything into perspective."

the beat goes on

Joan, 35, married a musician old enough to be her father. She had what she thought was an amicable separation with him but by staying in the same marital apartment block with a male neighbor with whom her husband remains friendly her amicability was stretched to the limit.

"My husband, Ken, is a huge Beatles fan and believes, like I do, that war is wrong and that people should love one another," says Joan. "The Beatles said it all in their classic song, All You Need is Love, but the type of love the Beatles sang about is not exactly the type you'd apply to everyone."

"I was incredibly naive and idealistic when I met Ken and he seduced me into having sex with him and I hated it," sighs Joan. "Nevertheless, I carried my loving idealism to extremes by marrying a man for whom I merely felt a sort of cosmic brotherly or neighborly love."

"It took me a long time to realize that some people are totally unlovable in any sense of the word," laughs Joan. "and while it was never in my being to hate Ken, the experience of being trapped in a miserable marriage with a drunkard and pot-head soon cured me of idealism."

"Because neither of us wanted to hurt our son, we agreed to separate on amicable terms," says Joan, "but the big mistake I made was to stay in the same apartment with a neighbor who remained friendly with Ken. It was a cheap apartment and far too convenient for work and shopping for me to move, but had I known what my ex was up to I would have been out of there like a shot."

"The neighbor Ken remained in contact with was an older man, a Vietnam vet, who lived with his mother and had mental problems," says Joan, "and when Ken visited to pick up our son for visitation rights he'd always drop by and see this guy."

"I never bothered too much about this," says Joan. "As long as peace prevailed - which it did after a while - I didn't care much what Ken did, but I did get suspicious when he started chiding me for not being neighborly towards this old guy and his ancient mother."

"The guy and his mother were creepy and I avoided them as much as I could," says Joan, "and I got really scared when the old guy started bailing me up at the front door with a silly smile on his face when I'd come home from work."

"He always seemed to be hanging around outside my apartment when I had visitors," says Joan, "and one day I even saw him rifling through my garbage bin."
"When I caught him at my mailbox one evening I confronted him and told him not to touch my mail," says Joan, "and he went on a long and rambling sermon about the evils of divorce and the joys of love and marriage."

"Hello! Where have I heard that garbage before!"

"I just brushed him off as a loony," says Joan, "but later it occurred to me that this guy was not only spying on me but also making a play for me, probably encouraged by the fact that I had married an older man -- maybe the dope thought all old men turned me on -- or maybe he had been encouraged by Ken himself. Why else would Ken tell me to be more 'neighborly'?"

"The next time I saw Ken I told him that the old guy was annoying me and I requested that he stopped visiting him and putting ideas into the old man's addled brain," says Joan, "and Ken had the cheek to start spouting all that All You Need is Love rubbish that he'd used on me years before."

"Despite my anger I had to laugh at the prospect of loving in any way whatsoever that deranged old man," says Joan. "Ignore, yes, but have a friendly neighborly relationship with, no way!"

"Ken seems to believe that if you're not in a loving relationship with everyone around you then you're in a hateful relationship with them," sighs Joan. "That's magical thinking - the sort of magical mushroom thinking that inspired his heroes the Beatles to write All You Need is Love. And when Ken talks about love, he means s-e-x, and that's exactly what the old neighbor had in mind, too. It's repulsive!"

"God know what Ken had said to that guy," sighs Joan. "I should have known better than to think that he would get on with his life without causing me further trouble."

"To me, indifference is the opposite to love, not hate," says Joan. "Hate is an aspect of love, a incredibly strong feeling that you can only feel for someone you might otherwise love. I don't hate anyone! I love only a few people. I like a lot of people. I am totally indifferent to everyone else."

"Finally, when I got really exasperated with Ken and the ridiculous turn his conversation was taking," says Joan, "he uttered a word that I particularly dislike - 'sorry'."

"Sorry is a word that always follows abuse - I lived with it daily in my marriage - and I don't want to hear it any more, especially from him," says Joan. "When his message was All You Need is Love, it seemed incongruous he would upset me and then say sorry. What's loving about that sort of behavior?"

"It worked on me when I so young and so green I might as well have been a lettuce," laughs Joan, "but now that I'm older and wiser I can't stand the Beatles and their All You Need is Love rubbish."

"I moved out of the apartment shortly after that episode," says Joan, "but can you believe that Ken used his visitation rights to get to know my new neighbors?"

"The other day one of them said to me: 'he's such a nice guy, why are you divorcing him?'," sighs Joan. "I kept my mouth shut - for my son's sake - but I'm beginning to think that Ken is going to continue to drive me nuts divorce or no divorce."

mad cows

Delores is 48 and has been separated from an abusive husband for five months. She has custody of their two children, plus a child from a previous marriage, and they all moved into a separate apartment when her husband became so violent that she feared for their lives.

"Unfortunately, my life became even more terrifying when I left my husband because he knows where I live and hounds me every night," explains Delores. "There is no peace in my life - or my children's - and I despair of ever being able to live a normal life again."

A restraining order didn’t restrain her husband, and poor Delores began to fall apart - which, of course, was his intention.

“All of this would have been bad enough had I not been working," says Delores, “but I was doing my best to hold down a customer service position and my usual friendly and calm service was sadly deteriorating.”

‘I know that every workplace seems to have either a sad sack or a mad cow, or both, " says Delores, “and I am just mortified that my estranged husband turned up at my workplace and made me look and act like the maddest cow you’ve ever seen.”

"The separation period is volatile for most women," explains Delores, "and divorce does not always close the book on a violent marriage. I just hope that one day all this madness will end and that my estranged husband gets help for his mental problems.”

Read more by Delores on this situation:

a wounded, divided life

menopausal mad cow

Sad sacks at work

mad old cows at work

declarations of war

When one person in a failed marriage refuses to separate peacefully, preferring to hassle the other person in punishment for daring to end the relationship, Athena, 44, believes that a declaration of war has been issued and even though it is not expressed as such it nevertheless exists.

"My husband effectively declared war on me when I could no longer stand his abuse and asked for a separation," says Athena. "I should have been alerted to an upcoming war - after all, an abuser never gives up, it's the nature of the beast - but I was protected by law and believed I would be safe."

"Because of continuing parental rights," says Athena, "I was forced by law to endure his continuing presence in my life via his access visits with our son, and while I could tolerate this - and indeed welcomed a break from parenting to have a life of my own - I did not expect him to stoop so low that he would be willing to destroy the little boy's life in order to punish me."

"The financial insults, and there were plenty of them, didn't hurt me at all," says Athena. "Sometimes the child maintenance money arrived, sometimes it didn't. He refused to put the money in a banking account. He insulted me by shoving it in my hand, as if he was paying a prostitute rather than giving the money to help support his son."

"The money he gave me was barely enough to cover my boy's expenses," says Athena, "but to have changed the maintenance payments would have required a court appearance and I didn't wish to beg or have further dealings with him other than was necessary."

"The war was on his part, and his part alone," says Athena. "I just got on with my life and did my best to ignore the gross inequalities in our financial situations. I was poor, but I was free."

"It was awful the way he insulted me by trying to poison other people's minds against me - including my family – and most of all our little boy’s mind," says Athena. "His poisoning behavior not only isolated me from support - forcing me to find new friends - but it also made me realize how shallow human nature can be.”

“Even though a lot of former friends may have drifted off because they didn't want to get involved, some definitely shunned me."

"Nobody really wins any war," sighs Athena, "and the war my ex-husband declared after we separated -- using our son as pawn -- was a losing situation for us all."

"Get married again? I don't think so!"

Read more of Athena’s story:

child poisoning access visits

postal harassment

Alice is 31, lives alone in a small apartment and earns an above-average income. She has been separated from her possessive husband for seven months, and hardly a day goes by without her friendly postman delivering a manipulative letter from her soon-to-be-divorced husband either begging her to change her mind or cursing her to hell.

When the letters first arrived, Alice opened them and read them but they upset her so much that she soon stopped reading them.

"All of them were designed to manipulate my feelings, to control me, to make me feel guilty or simply to annoy me," sighs Alice.

Alice then started to put all of his letters into the garbage bin unopened. She felt it was useless informing her estranged husband verbally or in writing that she did not wish to receive further letters from him. And she felt that it was equally useless to send the letters back to him ‘return to sender’.

"To respond in either of these manners," explains Alice, "would let him know that I was upset, thus giving him the reaction he wants."

When Alice informed her lawyer about what was happening, he advised her to keep the letters for evidence should a restraining order be necessary some time in the future. She then started to put all of his letters into a box and stored the box in an out-of-sight place.

Alice wasn’t too happy about keeping the letters, and it embarrassed her enormously to think that one day any of these letters could be read publicly in a court.

"Some men," says Alice, "are so intent upon manipulating their estranged wives that they actually want to appear in court - they want to drag their ex wives down as far as they can."

Finally, Alice got sick and tired of these letters arriving in her mailbox.

"I thought of asking a neighbor, a friend or a relative to sort my mail and remove the offensive letters before I got home from work," says Alice, "but I thought better of it. The less people knew of my predicament, the better. Who knows who might bear a secret grudge against me and cause me further grief?"

Alice’s brilliant solution to the postal pestering was to get a Post Office Box. She advised all necessary people and authorities of her change of mailing address, and then she paid a nominal fee to her Post Office to hold all mail that was posted to her home address. The mail hold option was for a maximum permissible period of one year, by which time Alice’s divorce would be settled and she hoped by then that her estranged husband would have got a life.

"If all else fails," says Alice, "I have the option to move and not leave a forwarding address, but I’d only contemplate such a drastic move if the stress was making me ill or interfering with my work."

So far, Alice has been very careful not to give her estranged husband the reaction he wants, and while it would be nice to believe that when you refuse to play games with a manipulative ex-partner he will eventually give up and go away, the statistics show otherwise - particularly for women who must continue dealing with an ex-partner because of access to children or maintenance payments.

Alice is relieved that her marriage had been short-lived, there were no children and the pre-nuptial agreement guaranteed no loss of assets, but with a pathologically possessive ex-husband she has good reason to remain afraid.

"I’m quite aware that some women continue to be harassed by their ex-husbands long after the divorce is finalized," says Alice, "and some have the awful fate of being hounded until they or their ex-husbands are carried away by the men in white or the undertakers. It’s a very unpleasant situation."

"The option is always there for women in real trouble to pack up, change their name, leave the country or do whatever they have to do in order to get the ex off their backs," says Alice, "but that option is often not available for separated women with children."

"I don’t blame women who thwart a manipulative estranged husband by getting themselves a new guy as quickly as possible," says Alice, "preferably somebody bigger, stronger and hairier than their ex. It is a very effective deterrent."

"And yes," sighs Alice, "I considered that option, too, but after my recent experience with a unhappy marriage I prefer to keep away from all men!"

assertiveness therapy

Charlotte is a lovely 52-year old woman, she has a lot of things going for her, yet her sweet and complaint nature was so horribly manipulated by her now estranged husband and their adult boys that she had to seek therapy.

"When I saw how my boys had grown up to be as abusive towards me as their dad, and had organized the house to suit themselves, I felt like an unpaid housekeeper in a men's domain," says Charlotte. "They never helped me around the house or listened to anything I said. They twisted all my words and made me look a fool."

"I needed to separate, to get away and find myself before I went mad," says Charlotte. "I'm in therapy, learning how to assert myself, and I hope that this new skill will help me find a satisfying job--not involving housework--and a decent new guy."

"Yes," laughs Charlotte. "I want to get married again. Why wouldn't I want to spend my sunset years with a guy who cherishes me?"

One of the first things Charlotte learned in therapy was to be aware of conversational manipulation, which can include something as seemingly innocuous as someone changing the subject. By changing the subject the manipulator prevents her from continuing a line of discussion that is important to her and damaging to the other party.

"If the subject is really important to me," says Charlotte, "then I must refuse to be side-tracked. I must assert myself, and return immediately to the topic I want to discuss. If my husband or the boys persist in changing the subject then I must stop the conversation immediately and advise them that I will put my case in writing and will have no further dealings with them until my issues are addressed."

Another clever conversational screw Charlotte is picking up on is the one where people make you repeat what you say in an attempt to make you look foolish.

"Unless the culprit is really deaf," says Charlotte, "I now recognize this ploy and suggest very sweetly that he or she needs their ears testing. There was a time when I used to fall for this trick time and time again with my husband. Now, I refuse to repeat what I say if I’m reasonably sure that I was heard the first time."

Silence, of course, is an age-old conversational screwing tactic. It is designed to infuriate you, test your limits and see if you will lose your temper. Faced with a stone deaf wall from her husband and boys every time she wanted help around the house, Charlotte often lost her temper. They gained power and she lost it. Given the choice to ignore the silence and chat away merrily - or to decide that these power games are not worth dealing with - Charlotte preferred to walk away and stay away.

A particular conversational screwing problem for Charlotte is her estranged husband’s use of unwarranted emotional outbursts - anger or tears - to unnerve her and distract her from a situation where he was at a disadvantage. Rather than being manipulated into feeling fear or sympathy when he uses anger or tears to unnerve her and distract her from a position of power, Charlotte now sees these ploys for what they are and is learning to ignore them.

"My boys are also particularly good at using anger to manipulate me," sighs Charlotte, "I suppose it’s a trait they learned from their father. I just hope I can teach them to respect women before they get married and start repeating history with their own wives."

Other conversational manipulations Charlotte is learning to deal with are situations where vital information is withheld from her, either allowing her to find out the truth from someone else or deliberately choosing to divulge the truth to her at the worst possible time when she is unable to protect herself. Rather than trusting people, Charlotte now makes a point to ask lots of questions and get things down in writing if necessary.

The main problem Charlotte has with her estranged husband is dealing with his bad language, insults and verbal intimidation. Charlotte has learned that this type of conversational screwing is done by very, very small men who need to build themselves up by putting her down. Nobody can put her down without her permission, and now that Charlotte is seeing things from a different perspective she is learning to laugh at verbal intimidation from him. She is learning to see it as a sort of backhanded compliment.

"If I weren’t the lovely lady that I am," she laughs, "he wouldn’t be attempting to put me down. Right?"

Charlotte is looking for a decent job right now and is doing her best to put her new assertiveness training into practice. Interviews typically place the interviewee in a position of powerlessness, and Charlotte is gaining a lot of confidence from being able to spot a manipulative interviewer from the start. Twice already she has stopped an interview in mid-progress and said that she was no longer interested in the job. She doesn’t want to work for a company that use screwing tactics on prospective employees.

"I put up with too much from my husband to ever want to be put down again," asserts Charlotte, "and now that I’m separated from him I’m becoming a new woman.

"There's a new guy waiting for me - I know it - when I've totally transformed myself into an assertive woman."

mrs. robinson

Cathy is 23 and is separated from her much older husband - a control freak - who had been a friend of her mother's.

"She had probably wanted to marry him herself," explains Cathy. "but the next best thing - to keep him in her life - was to marry me off to him!"

"Apparently this guy had felt sorry for my mom - a widow raising a kid on her own - and he had given her a job as a cleaner," explains Cathy. "He was a father figure for me for many years - but all the time he was waiting for me to grow up so he could own me."

"I don't think any money exchanged hands, but in effect my mom sold me to him, saying he was a good catch and would ensure I got a good education and a good life - whatever that was," sighs Cathy. "Sure, I had all the trappings of a good life, but it was not until I met Mick, an 18 year fellow university student, that I first understood what love or happiness really was."

"Mick and I fell madly in love and when it looked like we were close to becoming lovers I asked my husband for a divorce."

"He went berserk and called my mother over and the two of them verbally tore me to shreds - wanting to know all about Mick - where he lived - who his parents were and that sort of thing."

"They went over to Mick's house that night and confronted him and his mother," says Cathy, "and demanded their co-operation in getting me to do what they wanted."

"My husband came home, smug, and laughed at me, calling me a "Mrs Robinson", a cradle snatcher for wanting a little boy."

"I didn't understand who Mrs Robinson was," sighs Cathy, "but when I did hear Simon and Garkunkel's song Mrs Robinson from the film The Graduate -- in which an older woman seduces a younger man -- I couldn't believe that my husband could be such a hypocrite. Mick and I were closer in age than he and I were!"

"If anyone was a cradle snatcher - he was - but he failed to see the irony of the situation, or didn't think it applied to men."

"The next day I saw Mick and we decided to run away together - throw in our university careers - cut ourselves off from our families - and start a new life together."

"We left notes for our families so they wouldn't report us missing, and took off that afternoon - with the minimum of clothes - and drove all through the night, wanting to get as far away from everyone as possible."

"We consummated our love for the first time in a motel miles away from care," says Cathy, "but the next day Mick had a pang of conscience and called his mom to tell her that he was okay."

"What he didn't tell me was that he had told her where we were staying and the next thing I knew a policeman called at the motel and told us to go home."

"I couldn't believe that Mick had betrayed me," sighs Cathy. "And yet he was as much under his mother's thumb as I had been."

"He looked at me and cried - telling me how sorry he was - that we should go home and do things properly - whatever that meant ," says Cathy, "and I knew that he was telling me that he was torn between me and his mom and that she had won."

"I left him that day", sighs Cathy. "I took a Greyhound bus to the next city, found a job at a diner and started a new life of my own. There was no way I was going back to my mother and husband.

"Sure I'm upset that I couldn't finish my university course," says Cathy, "but I've got the rest of my life ahead of me."

"I wish I had run away from home at 15 and taken my chances," says Cathy, "but I was too much under my mom's thumb and scared by all the things she used to tell me about the big bad world."

"Well, as it turned out, she and my husband were the big bad world as far as I'm concerned and I can't wait for the divorce to come through."

"No, I don't expect to ever see Mick again," says Cathy. "He's got five more years to go before he's capable of cutting ties with his mom and in that respect maybe I was a Mrs Robinson -- but I sure as hell wasn't old enough to be his mother like the woman in the film."

when I'm 64

Jade grew up loving the Beatles and their songs - especially When I'm 64 - but having reached 50 with a broken marriage, a daughter who no longer wants to know her and her mop-topped idols either dead or in much the same trouble as herself, she has realistically faced the fact that nobody is going to love her when she's 64!

"I think that when the Beatles were writing that song in the 1960s they used their parents or the older generation as a yardstick," says Jade, "but a lot has changed in forty years and I doubt whether very many people will still be in love and bouncing grandkids on their knees when they're 64 these days."

"My parents aren't together any more - and they're not much older than the Beatles," says Jade, "so staying together until you're 64 must be a pre-WWII thing."

"It's a beautiful song - full of love and warmth - so different from the blatantly sexual nature of the other Beatles songs," says Jade, "and that's why it always had special meaning for me."

"I truly thought that my marriage would last the distance and Tim and I would still be in love when we're 64."

"Actually, Tim and I lasted longer than our friends," explains Jade. "All of them were divorced in their 40s. Tim and I felt very threatened by it all, and vowed to stay together, but eventually Tim strayed and left me."

"I'm nine months into the separation and sinking fast," sighs Jade. "I can't compete with the 25-yr old Tim fell for. She was our daughter's best friend and the whole sordid business not only split up Tim and I but the whole family, too."

"My daughter doesn't want to know any of us any more, and I don't blame her," sighs Jade. "I suppose she thinks it was my fault, in some way, for not being attractive enough for her father. It doesn't sound fair, but that's how things are these days. Everyone is crazy."

"Tim wants to remarry, but I'm thoroughly disillusioned by love and marriage and who would have me in any case," sighs Jade. "I really believed that love was forever and that Tim and I would be like the Darby and Joan in the Beatles When I'm 64 song."

"Of course, some of the Beatles themselves divorced and remarried," says Jade, "and Paul McCartney is now going through a separation, too, after starting a second family in his 60s. Maybe the whole thing was an illusion from the start. But I bought it!"

"I think the words of the song should be changed to fit the reality of the 21st century," laughs Jade. "When you marry at 18 or 20, like Tim and I did, you should be asking will you still love me when I'm 44, not 64!"

"I really don't fancy the chances of Tim's second marriage lasting until he's 64," muses Jade, "but that's a chance he's willing to take."

"I couldn't bear the thought of marrying again and then finding myself alone and unloved at 64."

"It's bad enough at 50," sighs Jade, "but at 64 it would be the worst thing on earth to have your marriage fall apart."

candles in the wind

Elton John's rendition of Candle in the Wind to commemorate the death of Diana, reminds Clover not only of the beautiful woman who was once the Princess of Wales but also of her own life - and that of many other young women - whose lives are nothing more than flickering flames in a dark world ruled by ruthless men.

"To this day," confides Clover, "I still believe - like Dodi's father does - that Diana's death was no accident."

"The first thing I blurted out when I heard of Diana's death was 'they've killed her!' and that gut wrenching feeling remains to this day."

"I'm just an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life," says Clover, "but I know from my own divorce - and the men I met after it - that a lot of people wanted to get rid of me."

"I believe Diana was an incredible embarrassment to the royal family - Charles in particular," says Clover, "and by association the government of the nation was threatened, too."

"You see, it's alright for a man to marry a woman he doesn't love, saddle her with kids and then carry on with a lover on the side," explains Clover, "but it's not alright for the wronged wife to expose him, take revenge and divorce him."

"My marriage paralleled Diana's in that my husband treated me badly and he - and his family - were furious when I took the children and applied for divorce."

"For a while there I lived in fear of my ex-husband - or one of the thugs in his family - killing me," confides Clover. "I don't doubt for a minute that Diana harbored the same fears, but ten times worse because of her public position."

"I felt much safer when I got myself a boyfriend," says Clover, "but this fact in itself incensed my ex-husband and his family even more - and, just like Diana's new lover, my boyfriend turned out to be a rat, too."

"The misery of my marriage was compounded by the misery of a relationship with a rat - a man I loved and trusted and expected to marry and achieve happiness with."

"When I discovered that the new man in my life was no better than my ex-husband I broke off the relationship," says Clover, "and at the time he actually threatened to kill me!"

"Can you imagine how scared I was?"

"I don't know if Diana's rat threatened to kill her, but she had good grounds for believing he would publicly betray her - it must have been like hell for her."

"By finding happiness with Dodi - a Moslem - I think Diana tipped the scales against her," says Clover. "She was the mother of a future king - a future head of the Church of England - and while her relationship with a white skinned Christian rat was tolerated, a relationship with a dark skinned Moslem gentleman most certainly wasn't."

"I think my ex-husband and his family would have reacted similarly had I taken up with a black man."

"I still had the kids with me," explains Clover, "and those horrible people would not have tolerated their bloodline coming into contact with a black man on such a personal level. And the prospect of my marrying such a man and having a child with him might have caused them to hire a hit-man to prevent it happening."

"I know it sounds fantastic," sighs Clover, "but these things do happen. My flickering candlelight could have been put out as easily as Diana's was."

"When Diana died I listened to that song Candle in the Wind and cried and cried, like most damaged young women did," says Clover. "I suppose it reminded us of the fragility of our own lives and loves."

"I never remarried," confides Clover. "The kids are now grown up and so am I."

release him, let him go!

After ten years of marriage Livvy's husband started playing the old Englebert Humperdink song Please Release Me so often at home that she couldn't stand it any more. She took the hint and told him to leave and take his music collection with him.

"He was always blaming me and the kids for everything that went wrong in his life - he'd never look at himself and his own shortcomings," explains Livvy, "and that awful song was just his way of letting me know that I was just a ball and chain in his life, nothing more."

"I didn't for one minute believe that there was someone else he loved - he certainly wasn't a ladies man," says Livvy, "but it was pretty obvious that he no longer loved me - if he ever did - and he played that song and over and over again just to play the victim role."

"He got the shock of his life when I told him to leave," says Livvy, "but I expected that. He didn't actually want to be released to face life on his own - he just wanted to wallow in self-serving misery about being married to someone he didn't love."

"I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life listening to that plaintiff trashy song every night," says Livvy. "It was mental torture to listen to it."

"No decent person begs their wife or husband to release them, either directly or indirectly via a song," explains Livvy. "Marriage isn't a prison. If you want out, you get out, plain and simple just like that."

"You don't drive your wife or husband crazy with a pathetic song," says Livvy, "and if he didn't have the guts to leave of his own free will then I had no alternative but to give him a push."

"He had a job and a family to go to," laughs Livvy, "so I wasn't throwing him out on the streets with a fine toothcomb, like Bill Bailey."

"If he truly believed that the kids and I were holding him back from achieving all he wanted to do, then this was his chance to prove himself," says Livvy. "Or, in his case, to face up to his own shortcomings and realize that he had been using us as an excuse, blaming us for his failures in life."

"Sure enough," sighs Livvy, "without weeks he was begging me to take him back, and that was the most insulting thing he could have done. He didn't love me. I was just a comfortable old piece of furniture in his life. He was like a long-term inmate who commits another crime when released from prison, just to get back to a comfortable sheltered lifestyle that he can whine about every day."

"I wasn't going to play the role of his ball and chain!"

"When he realized that the marriage was well and truly over and he was on his own - as free as a bird," laughs Livvy, "guess what he did?"

"He went to a dating agency and within days of our divorce he married a woman with more kids than I had!"

"I shouldn't laugh," sighs Livvy, "but I bet you anything that he started playing that Please Release Me song to his new wife on their honeymoon!"