help me solve this mystery

[eandz]

I don't feel like I need to name change. I actually hate having to justify name changes/talking about being a vintage mner.

Before you read this, please note it is long winded and I'm bad with editing. There are two parts to this post, if you don't want to read the background, the actual story is marked with a * and is below.

Prologue:

We've been together for almost 10 years. We come from religious backgrounds, but adhere to our own set of morals. My DH has had a dx for Aspergers from when he was younger. Our son now has a dx of ASD. For my little family, this is a slight hiccup since we are a new family and I'm not from the UK. We are confident though, that we will be able to get through this so although there is a little stress, there isn't any sadness/depression/anxiety.

So, most people don't realize my DH has massive social issues. When we met, he asked me to help him, and since we've been married (almost 5 years) his social abilities have really improved. When people meet us, they usually think I'm the one who isn't 'sociable'. When I say his social issues are 'huge' I'm not exaggerating--if he finds someone 'mentally compatible' he refuses eye contact, unless I'm there. He only does social activities for me, because I am incredibly lonely outside our marriage and I do want friends. He finds almost everyone 'tedious' and I do understand why. When we had our son, we wanted to meet other couples who shared our faith. The sample we've met over the past two years has been poor quality and we've only made friends with about 50% of them. It's not too bad, but none of the friendships are deep.

There is one couple however who have been. On our first meeting, I could tell it wasn't going to work out. Within the first 20 minutes the husband had decided to figure out where I was from, because he can't tolerate a specific culture. Even though, I'm not from the particular background he detests, I was offended. (Who wouldn't be?). I let it slide, hoping it was a joke in poor judgement--surely he couldn't be serious! (was I wrong!) Let's call this couple Rabida and Ratface. Rabida being the wife, and Ratface being the husband.

At our first meeting, we were also introduced to another couple Lets call them Sunshine and Ed. We made friends with Sunshine and Ed.

About two months later, it became apparent that these two couples were becoming great friends. We didn't feel any jealousy, everyone has a right to be social/make friends. We also became better friends with Sunshine and Ed, they are easy to be friends with.

Eventually though, we heard from other couples we were meeting that Rabida and Ratface were good credible people and they thought that I was crazy. So in turn, they told everyone they met. I thought it was weird and rude, but didn't care too much because as I would meet more people and establish better relationships with people, they would get to know me and my husband and could judge us for themselves. I didn't bad mouth them, because I didn't know them enough and pointing out their unfortunate looks was too cheap a shot. (I am aware that I'm taking that very cheap shot now).

One day, Sunshine and Rabida decided to have a picnic and invited all of their couple friends. We were invited and we decided to go, especially since it was in our neighbourhood. (All of these couples live very very far away).

When we got to the picnic we realized something was up, and towards the end of the picnic it turned out that Rabida and Ratface were hosting a party to watch some game+dinner party that everyone was invited to (except of course us). Sunshine later said she did find that picnic tense and awkward because she figured we would have been invited too. I felt that in a cluster of about 8-6 couples it was rude and I personally would never ever have made anyone feel that way. This behaviour has happened many times after giant meet ups/parties. Sunshine will invite everyone to a party/dinner/religious event and then Rabida and Raftace will have a party a week or two after and we are always that couple that are never invited. We do get invited to other things by other people and they do wonder why we aren't invited. Then last November, I had decided that I would do a family thanksgiving dinner, and not invite anyone. Magically, Rabida called me and was complaining about not being home for the holiday. Although I didn't want to, I did invite her. She came and brought food she had made on the spot. A week later though, she wanted my recipe for stuffing. I didn't give it to her and days later it transpired that she wanted it for a dinner party she was hosting, and again we weren't invited.

I blocked her on fb. She then started to text/call and asked to meet up.
I casually ignored Rabid and Ratface for over a year, and heard from many other couples that they kept projecting how crazy I was. The final straw for my husband was at a religious event when we ran into another couple who told me upfront that they had absolutely no interest in getting to know us because of what Rabida and Ratface have said about us.

It was harder to meet people that shared similarities professionally, culturally,religiously who haven't already met them and haven't already heard about us. At this point my DH has decided to regress back into 'nutshell mode' and wonders why making friends in within this subgroup is important for me. I've given up. I see the 50% of the couples we have made friends with occasionally, but spend most of my time with women from my neighbourhood. I don't mention this drama because I dislike having drama.

I am not overly concerned as I know I'm here to stay, I'm consistent in my personality and even with my many faults I'm confident with who I am. However it's been over a year and this episode won't end, and now a new one is starting and I'm not exactly sure how to deal with it.

*

Actual mystery

The week my son was diagnosed with ASD (May 20th) a complete stranger-- a woman started to message me over facebook claiming to 'know' my husband. She knew a few things, but the meetings she claims to have had with my husband I know for certain cannot be true. That entire year we spent travelling together through Asia. The way she describes my husbands interactions with her and his way of starting the affair also are not consistent with my husband. It's true that he could have fooled me, but my husband has serious rationalization issues and having sex for him is not just a 'physical' act. I blocked this woman, and generally I'm harder to find on FB because I do have strong privacy settings in place.

Yesterday afternoon, I received a few more messages over email/facebook/text messages from someone with another name claiming to have had sex with my husband, but again gave dates I know are incompatible with his free time. (We travel very frequently, and because of his social issues, I travel with him specifically for work functions, entertaining clients).

I don't have a rational reason to think this, but I feel like Rabida may be behind this.

My only two (very random, completely irrational) reasons behind this are:
*All the aliases she has used are always consistent with her cultural background

*All the claims regarding dates she makes are around dates of travel, and generally I don't talk about travelling so many people assume that I don't travel with my husband especially the year we travelled together since we were not married at the time.

My DH thinks that this is really dangerous behaviour and that we need to inform authorities...should I really be this worried? I do find someone trying to poke holes in a marriage as demented and incredibly unhealthy, but can it get any worse if I don't feed into it? What do you think?

thats awful, that someone is doing this again.

points to it being one person, if the original fb account was deactivated. Is there any way on fb in the settings, that you can stop just 'anyone' messaging you to your inbox on there?

I think only 'friends' should be allowed to message us. iyswim

you can change settings so not just anyone can message you.

you go:

account
privacy settings
click on 'view settings' by connecting on facebook

you can change how people can contact you in there.

HTH

i'm so sorry this is happening again xx

I would also suggest talking to the police, just to get something on record and some advice. I wouldn't accuse anyone, but just get an official record (print out what you can), especially as they mention your son. You could also contact facebook but I would do this after the police.
You just need something on record incase anything else happens, this is harassment, but if you can't be sure who by it could be difficult to do too much, but it could escalate so you want to be prepared.

That is all v odd.

I recommend not interracting at all.

There's a weirdo who is convinced someone in my circle has slept with his wife (I neither know nor care whether this is true). This guy has emailed my private email address (not sure how he got that), my work email address and left a voicemail for me at work. I have not responded or engaged in any way. He got bored and tried his luck bothering someone else in the group. I mention this to illustrate that these people feed off whatever it is they get back. Save the messages in case whoever it is tries anything more serious but the chances are that if you ignore it, it will go away.

I will revamp my security settings. I thought I was only visible to friends anyway. I wonder what I did wrong. I feel like perhaps I only set it to 'friends of friends' because everytime they message me we have at least one mutual friend.

blah. I'll redo my fb stuff right now. I'm still quite annoyed with why it would happen again and again to me. I'm assuming something can be gained from it?

Do save a copy of the messages, just in case.
What people who do this kind of thing get from it I don't know. There are sick people out there. (We had an abusive letter through the post once, the police recorded it and told me just to chuck it, but if it had continued it would have been taken more seriously; I think it was sent to the wrong house personally.)

I had a peek at your profile, this might come over as very shallow but you're actually extremely good looking and that actually ANGERS some women to the point they become vindictive little bitches. I would not be at all surprised if the very root of this is something as simple as good old fashioned jealousy.

Wow, this all sounds seriously screwy, OP, must say you are taking this all very calmly!

This is what I thought when I read the background bit:

Rabida and Ratface (wonderfully evocative names, btw) sound jealous of you and your husband to me. They are deliberately seeking to marginalise you in order to undermine you and belittle you. If it was just a question of dislike or even racism, they would give you a wide berth, would they not? But they need you in your place in order to elevate their own positions. You have not been playing the game for a year, have stopped seeing them and other people in the group who have become hostile. If they truly don't like you, they'd be relieved, surely? But no, you've turned off their supply, and they need their supply, hence the continued attempts by Rabida to contact you, even though she had no intention of socialising with you.

So, to the harassment. If it was me, I would be thinking Rabida, but that's just me. I would be thinking, I've cut off her supply, her ways of getting to me legitimately (in the guise of "friendship"), but she still needs to get to me and this is her way. Anyone who goes around branding other people as mad for no obvious reason is probably mad (and a bit dangerous) themselves, imho.

If it was me, I'd want to know exactly who is behind this. You sound well to do from the info you've given - sorry if that's a bit presumptious. Could you afford to engage a professional cyber sleuth to track this stuff down? If you know who it is or where the messages are coming from, then if you need to make a complaint to the police, doing so armed with some tangible trace back to a specific pc/account might help.

Really sorry you are having to go through this, it must be hard enough as it is being in another country. I really hope it's resolved soon.

Mummytime
I am saving copies of these random messages. Thank you for reminding me.

Kalinda
I have redone and reset my privacy settings on FB, I thought they were stringent before, don't know where to find a cyber slueth, I'll ask a computer scientist friend if she can help. I'll have to pay her in coffee though. It's the only currency I have a lot of.

Bottleofbear
I have noted the kind words about my pictures, but people only post good pictures of themselves. Although, I wouldn't mind if the root of all of this was something this simplistic.

eandz, the root of it all makes no difference, the fact it is, is what's concerning.

People often have very simple motivations for behaviour like this, it's not normal, no matter what their reason is. Whoever it is it actively trying to destroy the whole foundation of your life, make you doubt your husband etc... that's about as low as it's possible to go. IME people who do this kind of thing, do it because they want to undermine you; because they're envious of what you have and don't want you to have it.

Rabida's behaviour raises red flags of jealousy to me. At this very moment I have a woman rabidly jealous of me because a man who is interested in me (I'm married so it's not reciprocated) is not interested in her. The kind of rationale behind it all is so similar. Blame him? (not that there is any blame to be apportioned to him just because he doesn't feel that way about her) no, blame me because if I was out of the way he'd OBVIOUSLY want her. People like that don't see sense. If he wanted her, he'd be with her, it's Jeff all to do with me but it's easier to aim the spite at me. See where I'm going with this?

I thought the same about your good looks as BottleofBeer said OP. I have no advice. I am completely clueless, just sorry you are going though this.

eandz hope your friend can help.

Bottleofbeer I've also been on the receiving end of this kind of jealousy. It happened in a work environment for me, and I had to move jobs in the end. It makes you feel so helpless when you are not actually doing anything other than living your life and somebody decides to take out their issues on you.

It's true, some people only aim for targets they find easy to hit. Melted chocolate thank you for your sympathy, you have no idea how sad this truly makes me. It's just soo much at such a sensitive time for me. If I wasn't having to cope with writing a statement

bottleofbeer
I'm sorry that some woman is harassing you because her crush prefers you, her conclusion suggests that perhaps everyone else would prefer you too. I don't think I could neber handle being friends with someone wich such egocentric tendencies, but then again I've had very limited success when it comes to friendship in the past 5 years.

Rabida and her closest friends do put me down at every chance they get, I don't think they are jealous of me soo much, but looking back I do think they may have issues with the amount of freedom and happiness my marriage seems to have compared to theirs? We are not religious but we do observe religious events+holidays. I don't know, I'm just trying to figure out why else they would want to get between our marriage.

Funnily enough, I've just realized we've been invited to another event where Rabida has mentioned she may or may not come (right after my sister confirmed her attendance, but stated she didn't know if I would be able to make it).

I'm looking through the timestamps on the event page and the notification time on my phone of the friend request+message). Too coincidental, and I really wish I could just say 'yup this is Rabida' but even if it is, and even if I do report this (which I plan on doing this evening) what really will be the social consequence?

On one hand I'm quite lonely and the religious (ramadhan) holidays are coming up and I really can't bear to think of another full month of religious celebrations alone. So I feel like perhaps I should try, she's not the only person invited and I might make another friend (not likely, I know) and the person who has invited me (Sunshine, who was mentioned in my original post) did take the time to invite me. On the other hand though, I feel like if I go, I'll be disrespecting myself by throwing myself back into a pool just to sink. Goodness, this thread is becoming quite self indulgent isn't it?

kalinda

That would make me very mad! I guess in the interest of being professional, what other choice did you have. Sorry :(

ah good, so at least noone can message you now.

Yes,Piratecat hopefully nothing else will happen.

Although I've now been getting mass emails from a certain group, no harassment this weekend. (Thank goodness!)

But I did spend an entire evening at Sunshines birthday party having to listen to how everyone is going to the same party tomorrow. I don't know whose throwing it, but I know I was the only one not invited.

At this point, is it completely okay for me to just ditch this group and admit social defeat. And where do I go from here?

eandz This group is London-based Muslims and you're American-Muslim living in London is that right?

I wonder whether your comment about being observing but not overly religious and happy and free in your marriage are also the source of their jealousy as well as your looks (although they've obviously not seen you out Walmart at 3 in the morning )

Are you based in a very Muslim area of London? Are there plenty of other groups to join or is this through a particular majalis or mosque you attend and hence why it's particularly difficult? I'm just thinking that London is pretty cosmopolitan, with plenty of little enclaves of various groups (Americans and Muslims and some who are both too) so I would be ditching them and moving on. Loads of Americans AND Muslims where I am (Maida Vale/Paddington/Notting Hill area) so I'd suggest if distance is not too far searching out some other groups to join. Also some of us none American none Muslim London types are alright-ish - plenty of toddler/mum and baby groups to join too?

(but to answer your question - it is either Rabida or someone under Rabida's thumb - and if your husband is also handsome that's going to piss someone off someone who married a man who looks like a rat so much his parents named him Ratface . I think just accept that in your own mind, report the harassment & keep copies as you are, and try not to dwell on it. Easier said than done but whoever is doing this wants you to be thrown, questioning yourself, disconcerted and is trying to sow seeds of mistrust in your marriage. If you can be bothered, before you disengage, I would 'confide' in one of the group and say what has happened and how you know it's all rubbish because of the dates/travel/inaccuracies all over the place but thankfully the police have traced the ISP address of the fake FB accounts and have taken your reports v seriously. Let the little shit then shit themselves for a bit. I would then exit the group - and if anyone asks, it's just because you're busy, you would have loved to have come but you and DH are doing X, Y, Z exciting fun family stuff so you'll have to miss out this time.)

HellAtWork

Actually, they are all American Muslim wives married to British Muslim men :( and we're in London, actually I'm quite close to Maida Vale (St Johns Wood), the area I'm in has a lot of British Muslims but British Muslims are a whole other club. I've found it difficult to make friends period. I really think at this point there has to be something wrong with me. At First I didn't care if who the people I made friends with were, but then as time went by and I couldn't manage to make a single friend I figured if I looked for friends within groups that I had something in common with, it would be easier. Sadly, this hasn't worked.

Having said this though, I'm excited about this coming week, I've run into an old friend who wants to have coffee, and I just had coffee with a lovely neighbour the other day. So at least I have two opportunities to be social soon.

Although we've made a few 'good' friends over the years, as you know this area of London is quite transient and people seem to hop to other countries quite often. I feel like within the year of establishing a good relationship always ends with a good bye party. (Maybe I'm jealous that I'm still here? and haven't yet moved to an exotic location yet?)

I suppose your suggestion is my only way out, I can't bear to go to another one of these evenings where I'm not good enough to be spoken to except by one person. I can't put myself through any more of this! I will probably mention what's been happening with the harassment and then just disappear.

I really never anticipated having such a problem like this before. It's soo painful!

Have you tried Notting Hill Harbour Club? Gym with a creche - loads of Americans there - all playing tennis relentlessly! They do good baby swimming classes (the teacher is lovely - Fabiola) and have a creche which your baby can go to for up to 2 hours. They also do quiz nights you and DH might like? And other social events in the evening.

Also do a search for Maida Vale Mums - there's a good local group who do loads of meet ups for parents with kids at all stages and list lots of things going on in the area - not far from St Johns Wood at all as you know.

Find a book club and join it? www.moveflat.com has a local posting section with book clubs in it (and other groups)

I know what you mean about being transient in nature but there is also a community and plenty of people do stick around. I would focus on enjoying what London has to offer - there's so much that's great for kids round here (when it was really hot I discovered Serpentine Lido for the first time - amazing paddling pool and play area) and also on just making friends - not specifically Muslim (am sure you're not but just saying cast your net wide and see what you find)

FWIW my mum once got poison pen letters. We knew who it was. It was the mother of a boy who used to go to the same secondary school as me and who used to wait for the school bus at the same time and would see my parents drop me off. She had got it into her head that my mum (because she's friendly and said hello to the teacher who used to sit at the front if he was there) was having an affair with the teacher - which riled her because it was quite apparent she fancied him (full make up at 7am in the morning without fail, brushing her hair at the bus stop as the bus rounded the corner - the works! plus the simpering). Now my mum would have happily worn her pyjamas if I'd let her, as it was at 7am she didn't make too much of an effort. But the woman had made enough snidey remarks for us to know it was her. We never proved it. We did report to the police. But we knew it was her. So I guess I'm just saying, you don't need to prove it. There isn't some other strange person out there trying to wind you up. You don't need this hassle and you certainly don't need this group of 'friends'.

I did used to go to Notting Hill Harbour club, but I hate their machines so I go to another gym close by. I'm a part of Maida Vale Mums. I went to a few classes, but never ended up making any friends, I guess I'll go to their pub night this week.

Oh and I have joined a book club (the murder mystery one, but everyone in the club is in their 80's).

Eh, no one fancies me, my pictures on here make me look better than I do in person. I really wish the harassment had a simple answer, I really really do.

Gah, you're doing all the 'right' things to get out there but it's tough.

Ooh Murder Mystery book club you say? With octogenarians? I think I'll pass . I have also resolved never to join another Book Club - was in one for 2 years but knew I had to bow out when I was having to wikipedia the book before I went because I was only 20 pages in. Cheating for book club. Shameless.

Have PM'd you about Thursday but if I get out of my interview on time will see if I can join you on Wednesday night at the pub - have never been so we could dip our toes together?! Have no idea what it's like.

I do hope you can come to the pub night. Add me on FB if you want. :)

:) I've done it!