My Own Backstory

Man standing on hill

I started this blog because I’m frustrated and saddened by the state of our court system here in the United Kingdom, when it comes to supporting good fathers who are trying to parent in split families. Just like insurance scams cause premiums to rise, sadly there are a number of fathers out there who don’t care to be involved with the children they have created, and they are spoiling it for the rest of us.

So I want to explain some of my own personal history, which will hopefully serve as a foundation for some of my future discussions around co-parenting, fatherhood, divorce, separation and life in general.

Growing up

For about the first 9 years of my life, I was lucky to grow up in a middle-class British family. This meant I went on holidays abroad once or twice a year, we were able to go out for dinner relatively regularly, and I attended a nice public school in a seemingly nice area. When I was 7, my family and I migrated to New Zealand, which is where I grew up and spent the next 19 years.

But once we moved to NZ, my parents started arguing a lot. My Dad would spend days and nights working away from home, coming home at the weekend. I remember one night when I was 8 desperately wanting to spend time with my Dad. My Mum told me he’d be home soon, so I waited on a chair in the driveway for over an hour until he arrived (and got absolutely mauled by mosquitoes in the meantime), only for him to be too tired to spend time with me.

Then one Christmas we got an unusual amount of presents, and I noticed the dynamic between my parents felt really tense throughout the day. They seemed to talk to my sister and I, but rarely to each other. I’d only just turned 9, and I didn’t know how to interpret the situation and so I was just ecstatic we got so many presents.

The New year rolls over, and on the 2nd of January, my Mum told my sister and I to come with her as she wanted to take us to dinner. As we were leaving, I looked back and saw my Dad sitting on the balcony with sunglasses on just staring into the abyss. As I turned my head one last time, my mum told me not to look at him, and to just keep walking.

When we came home after dinner, the family car was gone. My Dad had packed up a bunch of his clothes and belongings, and left. There was a note on my sister’s bed and one for my Mum in the kitchen, but I couldn’t find a note for me. So as I would normally do, with all the chaos going on downstairs, I wondered upstairs to play on my Nintendo. I found a post-it note stuck to the underside of my controller.

It read: “Take care son. You are the man of the house now.”

I didn’t know it in that moment, but my life was about to change forever.

A rock and a hard place

Person leaning on wall

As we’re growing up, there is a special comfort we have from not fully understanding the world. The magic of Christmas and Santa Claus or the Tooth fairy. Or not needing to care about the bills, or whether there will be food and running water.

This “magic” comes at a price. At some point, reality comes calling and depending on how well you are built and how hard that reality hits you, will dictate your future. My Mum had always been the disciplinarian. As kids it was a firm smack in the mouth if we were being out of line. Or a smack on the rear end, or being dragged by our upper arm and thrown down somewhere to think about our actions.

But that was just mild in comparison to how she treated us once my Dad had left. My sister eventually had enough of my mum’s abusive behaviour after getting close to a black eye from an altercation, she called my Dad who at the time lived only a couple of miles away, and asked to move in with him. He accepted.

A few years later after a number of incidents of my own with my Mum, cutting my wrists for attention and being choked by mum until I blacked out on multiple occasions, I asked my Dad for the same help. But he told me there wasn’t enough room for me. I had never felt so alone in my life, my Mum hated me and my Dad wouldn’t take me in. Then to make matters worse, when I was 13, my Dad and sister moved back to the UK.

My Dad insisted he had to try and get my sister (then 16) out of an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, by moving her overseas to keep her from going back. Things take a drastic turn for the worse. Now everyday when I come home, my Mum has “a bone to pick with me”. I’ll either catch a beating most days or she’ll turn the power off so I can’t use any electronics. She refuses to buy me new clothing, and eventually she locks the pantry because and I quote, “you keep helping yourself”.

The abuse went on until I was 16. My Dad was due to come back from Europe later that year, but his ex-girlfriend offered to house me in the meantime, as my Mum kicked me out. I came home to new locks, and all of my stuff sitting in boxes on her doorstep.

Just before I moved in with my Dad’s ex-gf I met a girl, who again, would change my life forever.

Red flags and poor choices

Man and woman on bench in woods

I’m sure it goes without saying, but when you’re 15, you really don’t have the strongest sense of what love is, nor of what a relationship should look like.

This is made even worse if you grow up in a broken home. You may also struggle to understand love and relationships for any number of reasons including:

Now cue my situation:

To top this off, my Mum told us not to talk to other people about my parents separation, because it would embarrass her and our family.

Between 13 and 14, I spent a lot of time with girls my age fooling around. You know kissing and then the other stuff early teens do that isn’t sex. I had a great time, and because I only had my Mum at home and no other family for more than 12,000 miles, my close friends and the girls I would meet became my family.

Then when I turned 15, that all changed.

I met a girl and it became my first long-term relationship (more than 6 months). At first things were going fine, and it was electric and exciting as all relationships are at the beginning, but then I straight away knew something wasn’t right.

About 3 months in, she told me I couldn’t have any friends who are girls, as boys and girls can’t just be friends. So in my love-stricken state, I obliged, and stopped talking to a lot of my close girl mates who I’d been friends with for 3-4 years.

That was just phase 1. On to phase 2, she told me I needed to hand over my social media passwords so she could post on my behalf and check I’m not sneaking around. Again, I obliged.

I want to pause now and explain why, because people reading this might be thinking why would you do that!?.

I’m 15, I have spent the last 6 years under the rule of an abusive mother. I only have my friends to talk to and I don’t talk about my home life much, and I don’t know how relationships are meant to work. I also don’t realise (at this point) that my girlfriend is extremely manipulative and probably narcissistic.

After about 9 months in the relationship, I lose my virginity. The first thing my girlfriend says is: “you’re stuck with me now. My Mum says that boys who sleep with girls and just leave are horrible human beings, so you wouldn’t leave right?”. I respond reassuringly: “of course not I’m not that type of guy”. This seems like a harmless conversation, but it leads into many more conversations like it. Little footnotes dropped at seemingly random points to reinforce what my girlfriend wanted. It’s about manipulation and getting into your head.

But this really is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next 3 years, she alienated me from groups of friends and made me ultimately choose between her or them. By the time I finished high school I went from having a wealth of friends to having literally zero, and starting from scratch when I joined university.

As it so happens at various points from the day we met, I tried to break up with her, and even my friends tried to help me break free, but my girlfriend had me wrapped up. She “joked” that her family are very rich and powerful (which they are), and that if I ever left her, she’d ruin my life and ruin my name so that no one would believe me or want to be with me.

The Long Haul

Man extended arms by the sea

I suffered through a total of 11 years in that relationship, and I prayed that I would one day have the courage to leave her or she would randomly die and I would be set free.

Let me share a couple of the things which I later realised aren’t normal in a relationship:

Here’s a couple of stories to augment that list.

Story 1: The degustation

My girlfriend’s father once bought us a voucher for a 7 course degustation in a nice restaurant. Afterwards we were walking to catch a cab home and my girlfriend stops in the middle of the pavement and just has a massive public freak out. Saying tonight was meant to be the night and I’m the biggest fuck up and she got all dressed up for nothing. I hadn’t even realised she expected me to propose, and apparently I’m an idiot.

Story 2: The fake suprise proposal

About six months or so later, feeling pressured by that incident, I insinuated that I might propose. She told me she wants to do it in the Grand Canyon and so she will organise for us to go on holiday. She picks her ring, books the trip and even pretends that she doesn’t know I’m going to propose. Then just after we land in the Grand Canyon I decide I’m going to do it and she acts all surprised in the moment. Afterwards she walks up to the helicopter pilot and other tourists flashing her hand. The Pilot awkwardly says congrats.

Story 3: Her self-consciousness is more important

I’ve always had overcrowded teeth growing up, and was never able to afford braces despite every dentist saying I needed them. By the time I’m in my early 20’s, I’m in a lot of pain as both sides of my mouth have got decay in the upper teeth, and I can’t eat or drink cold or hot food without wincing. At this point, both my girlfriend and I are working professionals, and I say to her I really need to fix my teeth, as they’re causing me a lot of pain. But she says we can’t afford it (even though we can, but we’d just need to make adjustments).

Fast-forward about 6 months and she receives a 10k+ inheritance. Whenever I had received money (it was never inheritance) but maybe a few thousand in tax rebates or back pay, my girlfriend would say “that’s our money, let’s put it on X”. She gets this inheritance and I suggest we put it to the debt we have, and she scoffs and looks at me in disbelief. She says “how dare you try to tell me what I can do with my inheritance”.

Note: The debt we had accumulated at that point had come from the swanky trip she booked for her own proposal, and a car she bought for herself.

Anyway long-story short, she uses the inheritance to pay in full for a 2-year orthodontic plan for her straight completely functional teeth. She doesn’t quite like the way they look and so wants them to look a little bit better to help her feel less self-conscious. I’m in a significant amount of pain daily, and could use even just a few hundred dollars spare to help get a filling to ease the pain.

Breaking Free

Handcuffs being taken off

There is a somewhat happy ending.

In September of 2019, I finally broke free, ending 11 years of abuse from her. I’d spent most of my life at that point either being abused by my mother or my ex-wife, and I finally cracked.

A catalyst of events led to that moment:

I later met a woman who I started dating and then eventually married. We now have a beautiful daughter together and I share custody of my eldest daughter with my ex-wife.

Conclusion

Although this article was long, this is really the condensed story. The main purpose of this blog is for me to freely share with other Dad’s out there in my situation, tips on what to do if you are considering separating from your partner or you’re already in the middle of it and are seeking advice. I made a ton of mistakes along the way and ultimately it cost me precious time with my daughter, and her precious time with her Daddy.

My situation feels like it sits at the unusual end of the spectrum. Men are the minority victims when it comes to domestic abuse of any kind, and sadly people often make comments like “just put her in her place” or “why didn’t you just leave”. That’s easier to say when you haven’t been through it OR when you have had a decent upbringing or have been taught how to handle those situations, and have self-confidence to do right by yourself.

But men can be victims of abuse, just as women can, and the unfortunate thing is our system is designed to help women almost exclusively, when parents decide to separate. This is where our system is letting down the good fathers, and I want to change that.

They always say hindsight is 20/20 and it’s true. But maybe if I can help just 1 Dad out there to have a better separation, and be able to see their kids more and be more involved, or have a better co-parenting relationship and get what they deserve, it would be worth keeping the lights on this blog.

Please share this story or this blog and spread the word for the good fathers who are out there.