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

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."