The question I continued to ask myself as I ventured into the divorce process with Crazy was, what should I expect? I figure out quickly that I should expect the cruelest behavior possible.
I was a stay at home mom when I left the crazy ex-husband last May. Almost a year later, and he still has not provided any financial support for our children. He has yet to make a single child support payment. Good thing I didn't ask for alimony right?! My best advice for anyone leaving a non-physically violent cluster B person is, plan... Plan.... Plan... Plan on how you will support yourself. Where will you work? How will you initially pay for your lawyer? Because it takes time and money to have the courts enforce these things. My ex is thousands of dollars in arrears and I’m still waiting for the court to enforce. Granted, he has had his license suspended and levies on anything he owns but at the end of the day, that doesn't pay for daycare.
I left Crazy May of 2015 after finding out about his newest conquest. He denied, denied, denied but this was not my first rodeo. I physically removed myself and our children from the situation. I learned from my lawyer that leaving the home was probably NOT a good idea. It did not matter to me at the time, it was either my sanity or keeping random junk from the house. He sold EVERYTHING we had owned to buy the new girl a wedding ring. He even sold our children's things and told them someone had broken into the house.
When his mother inquired why I had suddenly up and left, I told her about the girlfriend. He denied it to her then proceeded to call, me, my mother, and siblings over 50 times in an hour period. He was raging that I was a liar. This is the same girl he married the weekend of our divorce and their child was born this past April….
While I was gone I thought I was going to lose my mind. He called endlessly claiming I kidnapped the children, although he knew where we were just chose not to come by as he was busy with the new girl. He would not call for a week at a time then tell the kids I had kept the phone from them. He lied, he cheated, and he stole. If his behavior was bad during the marriage, leaving him had made him even more disheveled.
When he finally decided he wanted to pick up the children, he refused to return them. I was destroyed. I had never been away from the children for any length of time. When he realized that this behavior affected me, it became his go to move whenever I disagreed or refused a demand. He refused to return the children so many times it became an ongoing joke at the lawyers’ office. Mostly because when I didn’t react, the children showed up on my doorstep earlier than planned.
We agreed to a divorce and parenting plan at mediation. When I signed it drove him mad. He refused to sign an agreement that took us eight hours to come up with. He said it wasn’t fair and that he was unhappy and so forth. He then spent the good part of a month threatening to take me to court if I did not agree to pay his credit card bills. The bills he acquired with his girlfriend! He refused to return the children. He threatened with court. He called me endlessly. I never responded. I followed my lawyers’ advice, say nothing. Needless to say, he agreed and eventually signed.
Materially we didn’t own anything so the only thing I cared about was keeping the children from dysfunction. He gets them every other weekend and four nonconsecutive weeks of the summer. Although it is not in the agreement, I make sure the children contact him for special occasions at school because at the end of the day, the children love him. Limited contact helps the kids have a relationship with their father and their new sibling.
This is the sparks notes version of my time trying to leave Crazy. For anyone taking the first step in divorcing one of these monsters just remember you can do it. Be calm, serene, and rational. As my amazing lawyer said let him hang himself. Let his behavior speak louder than his words. A book that helped me through this time was Splitting by Bill Eddy. Everything he warned about came to fruition.
I wish I could tell you that it ends there. It doesn’t! I deal with this mans “emergencies” at least once a week. Although we have a very specific parenting plan that outlines our interaction; in a classic narcissistic manner, he still does what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants. The truth is, I feel I will never truly be free of him.
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