Deep Dive - divorce...

Pre-amble - this is a very, very long post. It covers roughly 19 years of my life - from my perspective - with a person I'd thought was an amazing human being, who instead turned out to be mentally, emotionally, and even verbally abusive to people he claimed to love. There's a lot here, so if you don't want to dive in, I understand. 

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I've spent the last year, trying to figure out how to explain what happened in a way that wasn't going to be a "he said, she said" type of situation. I've stopped myself from publishing things so many times I've lost count. I've kept quiet about situations for *years*, because I didn't want to rock the boat, or seem ungrateful, or be taken as just being spiteful for the sake of spite - or being taken to task by him, because HOW DARE I MAKE HIM LOOK BAD. I've kept mum about a lot of things over the years because I was afraid of losing friends who might feel like they were being forced to take sides in this whole situation. But, the fact is, things happened. A lot of things happened.

While some information was given to me second and third hand, I was also a witness to much of it. I'm ashamed I didn't say anything about it, and didn't leave sooner. I wanted desperately to believe that what I was witnessing, and/or being told wasn't true, or was being misconstrued. I now don't think that it was a misconception, or some sort of miscommunication. If even a third of what I've learned about and/or remembered over the past year is true, I should have left a long time ago.

When I first met him, he was handsome, winsome, and laughed a lot. Jovial came to mind. I was swept away with the amount of attention he gave me. I wasn't looking for a relationship. I'd already been in a disastrous one for 11 years, and had escaped with a lot of emotional scarring. I knew he was cheating by being in a relationship with me. I knew, and I did it anyway. I'm not proud of it and that's probably a great deal of why I allowed his own cheating on me to repeatedly happen once we were together - even when he had no reason to cheat.

He constantly showered me with attention, all the while telling me how terrible his relationship with his partner was, and how he'd been duped into getting another girl pregnant with his (then) third child. He said he was told by her that she was on birth control, so he didn't use a condom... Because apparently all we need to worry about is pregnancy in this day and age. He claimed she was itching for a baby-daddy, and he ended up being the unlucky draw. He had to pay $500/month until the child was 18, and he was *very* unhappy about it. He badmouthed her every time he could, until I asked why he hadn't used a condom anyway, since STDs are a thing. He stopped talking about his "frame job" for the most part, only occasionally being verbally nasty about her. 

He seemed happy when we got pregnant. We were getting married already and found out I was pregnant about a month before the wedding. His oldest son was still living with us. We weighed the possibility of moving to a larger apartment so that we had enough room. Ultimately, he offered his son and his ex wife the chance to have the next 4 years down in California. They leapt at the chance, and headed down there. We never really heard from them again, other than to have me blocked after saying that the ex was doing an amazing job, and I was so glad that they had the chance to reconnect. 

Here's the thing, though... That last paragraph glosses over the verbal abuse he piled on his son every time something was done incorrectly. If homework wasn't completed on time, if chores weren't done to how he wanted them, if he looked at his dad the wrong way... Screaming happened. He took pride at saying how, when his son was 10, he took a switch to him in retaliation for his son hitting another kid. His son lived in terror of him, and I didn't do anything to stop it. I didn't know how. I didn't have the tools I needed to step up and be a barrier between him and his son. At the time, I didn't think I had the right. He would regularly slam doors, punch walls, and even punched a hole into doors when he got angry, and eventing with him was... A challenge. He'd get into arguments with people at events, or get drunk and pass out in another encampment. 

Our son was born in 2008, and things seemed OK. But I asked him to put the polyamorous relationship we had on hold, for a year, while I wrapped my head around being a mum. He refused, and I didn't feel like there was an option to say "No - respect my request. It's not unreasonable." He just kept doing his thing, and I... I was depressed and tired, and I couldn't process things properly. I figured he just needed to have another relationship because he craved that "person which you can't have 100% of the time" thing... Again, justifications for poor behavior. He had met someone the weekend I got pregnant (see the previous post if you want, about murder and mayhem in Portland), and continued on seeing her through the first 3 years of my son's life.

About at the 2 year mark, things took a very dark turn. In 2010, he started stalking his secondary partner online. He had made dummy accounts to spy on her, and even gotten her user name and password to read her emails and check her Facebook account. He bragged to me about it, saying he knew that she'd been cheating on him and this was justification for him to "keep tabs on her". I told him it wasn't a healthy relationship any longer, and the fights... Oh, the fights... He'd sulk for days, not talking to me. Not paying attention to his child. He'd go and spend the weekend with her, and come home angry and drunk, slamming into walls and knocking down picture frames and breaking them, saying they'd just fought all weekend and it was horrible. He would dissociate for hours on his computer, either playing war games or playing cat and mouse with her. 

Meanwhile, he was still hooking up with other women, and justifying it with "Well, she's cheating on me...". He hooked up with one of her best friends. I finally told him enough was enough and at the end of 2011, I told him he needed to break up with her. He said he did. But when a friend of ours from online came down to spend the day, and he tried hooking up with her without my permission, in our front room...  I was pissed as hell, and she left upset (because she'd thought it was fine, only to find out he'd lied to her, too) to go drop a few things off with the supposed ex-gf. She was surprised to leave the apartment and see him showing up there to visit. Six months later, I found out he'd continued on with his relationship with her, lying to me the whole time. He came home and found me packing my and our son's things. He begged me to stay, saying he'd stop seeing her, he'd so anything to save our relationship. He was sobbing, and I believed him.

I've since found out he continued to have affairs. Most of these were not told to me ahead of time, and I'm sure there are still some I don't know about. There was no reason to lie or cheat. We had such simple rules from the beginning:

1. Be respectful

2. Ask permission

3. Don't lie

4. Honor the no-fly list

It was really that simple. But, he never let the rules get in the way of what he wanted. His motto has always been "Better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission".

I ended up having a mental breakdown at that point. Work, parenting, my health, and the stress of our relationship semi-broke me, and I didn't work for 10 years because of it. We had moved a family friend into the apartment at that point, to save her from an abusive relationship, and she lived in our child's room. She paid over half the rent, and invested thousands of dollars in getting his leather business going. A business he later blamed me for having to create, because I wasn't working. He regularly picked fights with the friend over whether she deserved attention at all, and told her regularly she was worthless, all while happily taking her money and her pain meds. At one point (later on), at an event, he pulled her into the camp circle, in front of a bunch of onlookers, and screamed at her that she was worthless, deserved nothing, and no one was ever going to love her. She'd just handed him a brand new ebike that she'd gotten for him.

In addition, he worked the BDSM scene work with individuals in exchange for cash, pain meds, or sex... Or any combination of them. Mind you, I am not shaming him about the sex work. But there was definitely risky behavior that happened, that I found out about later. His proclivity for not wearing a condom was fairly regular. He didn't like the feel, said they didn't fit him, etc. His girlfriends were regularly fluid-bonded to him before he asked me about whether I felt comfortable with it. He met his next girlfriend through that scene. She was nice, and fairly independent, and seemed to be getting her life together. I liked her enough to offer to move her in with us when we moved. She agreed.

We moved into a house with the (now mentally tortured and abused) family friend and his new primary girlfriend. Just as with previous ones, I started seeing the fights, a lot of posturing, and a lot of compromise on my part... Not so much on his. He again started drinking, stalking her online, logging into her phone to read text messages and emails... His obsessions about where she went, what she was doing, and who with, was constant. He also regularly berated our child for not cleaning up, having wet nights, being loud, basically being a child. I tried to intervene, and he told me I wasn't doing enough to help the situation. I had seen this behavior before, between him and his first-born.

We had to move again, because the property was being sold. He was angry and bitter. We hadn't been able to meet the rent to own contract that had been negotiated, and the owners decided to cut their losses. He lashed out verbally, saying it was all them and not us. This wasn't strictly true. We had 3 years there where we could have put aside money to get a down payment for the house and do the work needed. It never happened. 

When we moved it was to a standard rental property. The girlfriend lived upstairs, another friend also lived upstairs, and we had the main floor. A year later, the girlfriend had moved out with the friend... And we had new roommates. Fred tried to make it work with the girlfriend, all while courting yet another girl (who had been on the gf's no-fly list). It didn't work out, of course. I went back to work to make up for the other half of rent we needed. But it wasn't always enough. Yet again, he wouldn't put aside his smoking habit to help make ends meet ($300+/month smoking can pay a number of bills), and he'd put out "all calls" to friends and fans to help pay our bills. He'd promise discounts on leather goods that he never got around to making for them.

When Covid hit, we weren't horribly bad off. With the help of several programs, we were able to pay bills and rent. I ended up moving to a temp job, that eventually led me to my current position. So it wasn't all bad. But having me home and him working yet again had him pissy. His new girlfriend was a psychology major, who had been in a messed up relationship with her ex. I liked her, but if you didn't agree with her side of things, you were persona non grata for her. I didn't always agree with her, so I ended up not really being anything but tolerated. She'd come over to "help with leather", which really meant that she was sitting and talking with him while he made things.

The girlfriend moved someone into her apartment that she was interested in - a non-binary person, they were escaping a terrible home life of verbal, mental, and emotional abuse. My ex went over to help with the situation, and ended up getting into a relationship with them - of course, it was never asked about, I was just told that he'd ended up catching feelings for them, and since they'd already been playing (which I hadn't known about), could he just add them to the roster... I said that I supposed... At that point, I figured it really didn't matter if I said yes or no - he was going to do whatever he wanted and fuck my opinion in the matter - he said that he figured I'd be OK with it.

About 4 months later he came to me upset. His tertiary partner was needing a place to land, he said. They were being booted out by his secondary partner, because things were just too emotional and frustrating, and the secondary couldn't deal with the tertiary along with the secondary's teenaged kids all living under one roof. I asked how long it's going to be for. He swore it was just going to be 6 months, no longer - they just needed a space to live while they navigated the system to get into housing. OK, I said. I could do 6 months...

The first few months were fine, but... Things deteriorated quickly. The tertiary partner was emotionally and verbally abusive to my son, and to our roommate. He followed suit, gleefully sniping about the roommate behind her back - sometimes loud enough I know she heard. The tertiary partner didn't look for a place to live, or apply for assistance because it meant having to be on phones, or dealing with people they didn't want to deal with. They started sniping at him, too, because he wasn't willing to stop seeing his secondary partner. There were, again, so many fights in the house. Slamming doors, screaming. At one point the tertiary partner would wake up howling and screaming, then slam their head violently against their wall, or their table, or desk repeatedly while sobbing.

They refused to seek mental health support. 6 months turned into 18, and I'd finally had enough. My nerves were constantly on end, I couldn't relax in my own house, couldn't be sure if I could work from home regularly because of their outbursts. My son became suicidal at one point because things were so out of control, and no one had been able to truly touch base with him regularly because we were all so traumatized by this situation. The secondary partner had come by almost every weekend, and at one point we have the police called on the house due to the domestic disturbance of her and him fighting in the driveway about the tertiary partner.

It was as though he craved both the attention and the trauma of being in the center of a universe where everyone wanted him. He was still taking heavy doses of pain pills under the counter, given to him by friends and sycophants of his from his fire dancing days. He ignored his son, other than to threaten to beat him if he didn't go to school and finish homework. There was never a point of calm in the house. Ever.

Finally, in the summer of 2023, everything came to a head. The house went to a pirate reenactment camp out. Everyone but me, as I could no longer go and enjoy camping easily. The following is a second hand accounting, which was corroborated by two different sources:

Saturday night, he'd already taken 1200-1800mg of gabapentin, a nerve disruption medication that helps with things like neuropathy and Fibromyalgia. He then started drinking. He drank over half a fifth of Jaeger, when he started getting belligerent toward the tertiary partner, who had gone with everyone. According to sources, they were worried that his movement was erratic enough that he might trip and fall down a hill they were near. He then started yelling at them regarding his mental faculties. When my son stepped in to assist as a buffer, he told my son he wished they'd never transitioned. My son ran to another encampment, horribly upset. 

Someone had brought in a family friend to help as a buffer during all of this. That person stood and watched while my ex made "funny" jokes about my son who must have drunk some of the Jaeger from the bottle, and that was why it was so low... He tried to calm my ex down, and eventually got him to the camp to lie down, only to have him riled back up again because he found the tertiary partner and my son packing their things to leave.

They did leave the following morning, which pissed him off again, since the tertiary partner was his ride, and the ride for the booth and stock. He had to call on his fans once again to help him cart everything back to the house.

When he came home, he tore through the house, yelling and fighting with the tertiary partner. They decided to break up at that point. I waited a few days, and then sat down with him and let him know that I was concerned with our relationship, with his relationship with his son, and his current choice of repeated substance abuse. This was, in fact, part of why he and other ex's had broken up with him. He'd agreed to not drink at events 5 years previous, but apparently he'd decided it no longer applied to him any longer.

He swore that nothing that the tertiary said or my son said was true. He swore he wasn't *that* drunk, and was just making funny jokes about my son (15 at the time) drinking half a fifth of Jaeger. He swore he never raised his voice at anyone. And then I pointed out that I'd corroborated the story with third party witnesses. They'd seen him. They'd heard him. He then said he was drunk, but that was because he'd forgotten he had taken gabapentin before. He said the tertiary partner was blowing things out of proportion, and it hadn't been as bad as it was reported.

I told him if he wanted us to work as a family, then I needed him to go to counseling. It was time. He was out of control, and needed help. He got very still, he carefully put down the glass of water and he looked me dead in the eyes and say one word: 

no. 

And that was the end from my standpoint. He wasn't willing to step up. He wasn't willing to work on himself, and he wasn't willing to do anything to help my son and their relationship. I got up and walked away, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. He was willing to throw out 17 years together because he didn't want to face that he had issues.

Two weeks later, he was back together with the tertiary, but didn't tell his secondary partner. He told me that as long as it didn't come up, it was fine - less arguing with her thinking it was just the two of them. It took another 3 weeks and she found out... And there was another argument about it again. The tertiary partner, while nice to my face continued to be mentally and verbally abusive to everyone else in the house when they weren't busy moping or getting high. 

There had been no further movement in getting them to move, they refused to discuss it. They were not employed, and not employable. I started looking for apartments to move into, for just my son and me. He didn't want anything to do with his father, and the ex was now spending most nights upstairs. I didn't want to be touched by him. I didn't honestly want to be in the same room with him most days. I started squirreling away money to try and get enough together for us to move.

With the new year in 2024, I was finally, for the first time, allowed to claim my son on my tax returns. We had filed separately our entire relationship because I had student loans, and didn't want the ex to be held responsible for them. The thought to ask me about whether I'd want to claim my son at any time in the previous 16 years never came up. It was simply done ahead of time, without asking me. He wanted to take me on a date for valentine's day, for some reason. We had announced we were separating, and the house was starting to be packed up. We didn't have much money to spare, but I said sure, for old time's sake. I shouldn't have. 

We got fried chicken from the deli, and went to a park. Prior to leaving, he'd decided to slam a 40oz beer. He had to get drunk to spend time with me. He said it was because he loved me so much, he was nervous and didn't know what to say. There was a parent with a very small child at the park, and he tried to talk with them, while I tried to sink into the ground. I was embarrassed, and felt like I was finally seeing him for the first time. We went back to the house, and I didn't say anything. If I'd been hoping for some sort of sign to stick it out, it didn't happen. 

During that general month timeframe, the word "bitch" was scratched along the driver's side door of the tertiary partner's vehicle. They said it was my son, though no one had seen anyone actually do it. They'd noticed it at the store and had melted down in the parking lot. I was yelled at by both of them for allowing this to happen. My son was yelled at and accused of doing it. He walked away after saying he didn't do it. The tertiary partner demanded that my son be held accountable. I told them I couldn't hold him accountable for something they had no proof of. If they had a photo, or had walked up on him doing I, then that would be different. They then came back to me and said that to avoid having my son charged with vandalism and having the cops come, I'd need to get vehicle spray paint in the exact color of the vehicle. I had until midnight to do it. The roommate was at work, so I had no car. I had to walk 2 miles to get to an Auto Zone, where I had to choose the closest color I could find. I then uber'd home, because I was in too much pain and it was now 9pm, and I had to work the next morning. They didn't say anything - just walked past me. I handed the can to the ex, along with the receipt, and let him know I'd tried, but if that wasn't the exact color, it wasn't on me. The ex tried to look understanding and sympathetic, but his face didn't match his eyes. 

When we finally moved, it was a two week affair. Mostly done by me and my son, but we had help from friends on the weekends. I had to take out a personal loan on my retirement fund to pay the last of the utility bills at the house, because he wouldn't pay for his portion of them. My son hadn't finished cleaning his room yet. The ex decided to "help", even though we'd told him that my son would be there to clean the floors. He went through and threw away everything left on the floor, whether it was good or not. He made the decision to toss out a charger bank, a bunch of paperwork my son needed to go through still, and clothing. He then sent pics to me of how much he'd "helped". I went back through and vacuumed and cleaned and vacuumed again. My vacuum finally died and we had to toss it on the way out. He tossed the cable modem, which we were still renting. He told my son that he was welcome to come by and visit or spend the weekend anytime. He did this knowing that he was moving in the tertiary partner, who hated my son. He did this knowing this wasn't going to happen - he just needed people to hear how awesome he still was. 

When we finally were done, I asked if he was going to be able to make any support payments. He said he'd see. Two weeks later I had to beg him for $50 so I could pay a school fee for my son. That was the last I got from him. We were still paying off the rent to own house fees, and there was less than $500 left. I'd been left to pay the majority of them since it was my name that came first on the agreement. I told him he'd need to settle that bill. I then had to pay another $150 on it because he'd missed the payment and my cred it was being affected. When he finally finished it, he sent me a Pic of the email saying it had been paid in full.

We were struggling regularly to make ends meet from the time we moved. I had old student loans I was still paying on, and it was just enough to make food uncertain. I needed to get a car, because I was going to be forced back into work, and it was now too painful to take the bus commuting 2 hours each way. So I had another bill to add. Along with insurance... The raise I got didn't make a significant difference. My friends were regularly providing me upwards of $200-$300/month to make ends meet.

In August I started school again, and I had to take out more loans to make ends meet so I wasn't constantly mooching off my friends. I didn't want to continue the habit of doing that. It felt wrong, and terrible. I ended up taking out about $8K in loans to make it from August 2024 until now, because I didn't get any financial assistance from the ex. 

When the divorce was finally granted in December, I let the ex know that child support payments would be due starting in January. He said fine. January came, no payments. February came, no payments. I asked him what was going on, and he told me he'd prefer I have the state garnish him, so he'd just have it automatically taken out. He asked me to tell them to waive January and February for him. Since he hadn't updated his address with the state, they were forwarding all his paperwork to me. I kept sending the back to the state. I got more notices saying they couldn't reach him, so they needed more information on how to do that.

I reached out to him and let him know I was still getting his mail, because he never updated his address with the DMV or the state. He swore he wasn't trying to skip out on his responsibilities, and he'd come by to pick up the letters. I gave him the most recent two letters I'd gotten from the agency. His response was "I'm going to have to contest this. I can't afford it. I'm willing to pay some, but I can't do all of this". He made a post on social media about how he needed help figuring out how to contest the child support. He was then taken to task by our former roommate for the crap he'd pulled at the camp out, and how his son deserved this. He blocked her and took down the post. She posted a similar post on her own social media. The secondary partner tried to say that the information was heresy and didn't happen... Others came forward to say that they'd been there. They'd heard it.

And all this time... This whole damned time, I've held my tongue. I've not posted anywhere because I didn't want to stir up drama, my business wasn't anyone else's, I didn't want to lose friends over it, because I didn't want them to feel like they had to choose sides. But honestly, I've hit the done button. I've been verbally, mentally, and emotionally abused for a good portion of my life. And for only the second time in my life, I can honestly say that I'm happier where I am now, alone. Because with both my marriages, they started out as great. But when things got hard, I stepped up, and they didn't. I pulled the emotional part of those relationships, and hefted the mental acrobatics to figure out responsibilities, and chores, and follow-ups, and everything that makes a family *work*. And they sat there dissociating into a computer, or putting their energy into other relationships constantly.