I’m sorry, I haven’t been on here much, but I’ve got to offload this one somewhere. I’m so furious I feel I could burst with it.
My ex H, who I split up with three years ago, has sent me a text saying “I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to upset you”.
I’d been a bit frosty with him, you see. Not rude or unkind, just not chatty when we’d met to pass the children over to each other on contact weekends. I used to chat and maybe even have coffee with him sometimes, pass the time of day. I thought it was the best thing to do, the best thing for the children, and that it would just generally make for a better life.
I don’t think he’s ever stopped being furious at me for asking him to leave, and every so often over the past few years he’d stop being friendly and would throw me some kind of curve-ball – some nasty comment or whatever that would indicate he was still unhappy with me. I would swear to myself I’d be less friendly in future, but I always thawed out. It’s not in my nature to do otherwise.
Three months ago I received the news that my mother was dying. She’d been ill for some time so I always knew it was coming, but it was still devastating and I was told it would happen quite quickly. I arranged to have her care moved to my area and got ready to look after her at my home. I told my ex H, because I thought I’d need him to look after the children more. He hugged me and told me “if there’s anything I can do, just tell me, I’ll do whatever you need”.
Four days later, the day after my mother moved in with me so I could care for her while she died, a letter arrived on my doormat. It was a long letter from my ex, telling me he’d looked up all sorts of information about me online – how much I sold my last house for, how much I bought this current house for, how much my car was worth, what businesses I had shares in – and that he had made the decision to cut the maintenance he paid me for the children because I had too much good stuff in my life.
He had decided how much he wanted to pay for them three years ago, and he has already cut it three times over that period for a variety of reasons, usually because I’ve done some thing he didn’t like. I’ve never fought back. This time, bubbling with rage and grief, worrying how I’d support the children if he kept cutting maintenance, I decided I couldn’t let it go unchallenged and took legal action. Those were precious last weeks with my mother and I knew he had chosen that moment to send me the letter because he thought I’d be too distracted to fight.
I’ve been so appalled at this behavior that I’ve found it hard to speak to him since, except to be civil when we’ve handed over the children. He’s clearly noticed I’m quieter than usual because I’ve had this text, apologizing for “whatever I’ve done to upset you”.
How can someone genuinely apologise if they don’t know what it’s for? And how can I even start explaining why he’s upset me? That one statement has brought up everything that he did to me over the last ten years. Do I say I’m appalled that he used the fact that my mother was dying to reduce the money he’d already promised in a court order to pay for his children? Do I go back further and tell him that it was just the final nail in the coffin, given that he’d reduced our money to such an extent in the past that we were forced to use food banks? Or further back than that, telling him it was because of the time he’d slashed someone’s tyres outside my house because he didn’t like the fact that I was dating someone else after the car crash of our relationship ended? Or even further, referring to the time he’d hit our three year old round the head because he had an accident when he was potty training? For the times he’d called him a “dick” or a “tit” when he hadn’t got something right. Or further back than that, when he destroyed the flowers I’d bought for my mother who was in hospital, or when he gave my books and clothes to charity without my knowledge because he thought I had too much stuff and didn’t keep it tidily enough? Or when he refused to let me have an email account unless he could have all my login details and duplicate accounts on his own computer so he could monitor everything I said to anyone (and when I refused, putting keylogger software on my laptop and doing it without my knowledge). Or when he quite literally “tore me a new one” during a sexual assault while I begged him to stop, then told me it was just a misunderstanding? Or all the times he shoved me so hard I had to grab onto something to stop myself ending up on the floor, and when I complained saying “I didn’t push you, I was just moving you out of the way”. Or the time he shoplifted and hid the stolen goods in my children’s shopping bags which he then got me to carry out of the shop for him.
“I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to upset you”. Where do I start, and what the hell do I do with this rage?