Hello Everyone. Sorry I haven't been here in awhile. Things have been nuts since last August when my marriage blew up and I found out that my husband was addicted to the internet and had traveled to China twice to meet a young woman (who could be his daughter and almost his granddaughter) he met on the internet. I haven't lived in my matrimonial home since the beginning of November because my ex became increasingly vitriolic and volatile towards me both verbally and physically culminating in an assault by him against me in mid November on a public street down town. I lived at my neighbor's place (given her $ as I'm not a free-loader) for November and most of December but things got tense with her as she become increasingly autocratic demanding 'progress reports' from me every day when I came back to her place from work to the point of me being filled with agitation. Then, I moved out of her place and house sat for a friend over the Christmas and New Year, storing six boxes of clothes, plus my 1792 Italian violin and private papers in the archives vault - with a bank combination vault door - at work in the basement!). After the holidays I had no-where to go so I ended up at this woman's shelter downtown and was stuffed into a room with two other women, one of them a drug user and prostitute who tried to steal my purse forcing me to sleep with my purse under the blankets with me. I survived there a week becoming increasingly more and more distressed (this on top of a full time job) until another girlfriend took pity on me and I'm staying in her bachelorette apartment for January and hopefully for February and by then things will hopefully have moved on enough with the legalities of separation and divorce that I'll know better where I stand.
In the meantime I was scared for quite some time to even retain a lawyer because my ex threatened me not to. But I did retain one in late December and we had our first meeting on January 3 of this year. Her name is Jeanette and she's one tough and strong woman. (Wish I could be more like her!) She told me to do four things that freaked me out and I thought I could never find the courage to do them: a a) get 3 realtors to valuate our two properties (but how would I get my violent ex out of the house to do that?!), b) go to the police and file a report on what my ex did to me downtown (he chased me up the street, yelled "I'll kill you!", backed me up in to someone's yard, grabbed me, shook me, shoved me, threatened me some more etc). So file a report with the police and have the police officer visit my ex at the house and warn him not to see me in person unless accompanied by lawyers, (and how could I ever do that?! Wouldn't that make him even more violent?!), c) open two new bank accounts of my own at a separate bank and put most of our available home credit line into that account after clearing more of it out of our joint account (but how could I do that?! That will make my ex go really ballistic and make him potentially violent against me again! Even though he's already taken nearly $6,000 out of the credit line for this two trips to China), and d) get my automatic pay check deposit diverted from the joint account with my ex to my own account at my own separate bank. (But again that will cause my ex to blow etc!) I was really afraid to do all those things, but now I've don't them all 'm tired of being afraid all the time and how crippling that is. So at this point all those things have been done and yesterday my lawyer sent a letter by courier to my ex at our house advising him that I've retained her and that he's got until January 29 to get himself a lawyer and fill out the necessary financial forms or do it on his own. She's also talking about doing a 'forensic audit' on him because I know he's taking at least $1,000 of our rental income for himself because I"ve done the math. I gave my ex two financial statements that I made up for Nov and Dec 2013 showing the shortfall of the $1,000 each month and he took the statement saying he'd get back to me and he never did. So it's via lawyers from here on in.
Needless to say I'm stressed. Have gone from a size 14 (that I was last spring) down to a size 8 and I'm 5'8" tall so I'm looking rather bean-pole-ish these days. I went through a lot of grief and feelings of loss during the summer months, the fall and through the Christmas holidays. But I've switched into 'kick-butt-mode at this point. I'm starting this course called 'Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends' by Dr. Bruce Fisher and Dr. Robert Alberti that goes for 11 weeks every Thurs night from 6:30 to 9:00. This, on top of all the lawyer stuff, full-time work, moving around all over the place, and at least 5 AA meetings a week and keeping in close contact with my sponsor. I am blessed to have many new friends that I met in AA, some of them really close at this point. I never had women friends I could get together with and really talk with and share before AA.
Thanks for reading this long tome. I thought I better update folks here and get back on board keeping in touch with you all.
Helene.