Quote: Liv, even though you share a L, could that fellow contact H and tell him he can't unilaterally change the financial arrangements without potentially facing court action? That way, he's protecting H's interests, too. What do you think? I think it matters what the intention of the L is when he relays advice to a client! So, if the L INTENDS to save H the risk of punishment, then he's acting in the client's best interest.
It did occur to me that they could surely do that.
I got another email from H this morning.
Says when I am with my family in other country, he expects me to get D to ring him, as he won't ring. Because he claims my brother in law refused to pass on messages or tell him when he could talk to D.
What happened, only months after the bomb in the summer of 2003, is that H rang once just after nine in the evening, and D was already in bed (my sis and brother in law are particular about kids being in bed before adult TV starts, unlike H, and good for them. D was seven at the time.) So when H rang, my BIL picked up and told H that D was already in bed, asleep, so no, he couldn't speak to her. Then he asked to speak to me. I had already told BIL and sis that I didn't wish to speak to my H, this was while he was holed up with OW1. He had the option of sending me emails about anything important. So when BIL said I didn't want to speak to him, he got hopping mad and abusive. Then he rang again and sis picked up and he was abusive with her, and she doesn't take that stuff, and told him so. Ever since he has not wanted to ring that house. He later wrote me a stupid email about how I am trying to interfere with access to his daughter....
But it is the same story isn't it - he is rude, agressive and abusive, and then plays the vicitm about no one wanting to deal with him!
Next he tells me if I want to know the amount for the house tax, I will have to ring him, then he will tell me the amount and email me the document. Yes, he is emailing me to tell me to ring him, so that he can email me something. Just shows the depths of his perversity. He points out that it is not his job to do this for me (Like I told him it wasn't my job to ferry D into town for him to visit). He says he pays his accountant, who prepares the document...
As it is the same accountant as my good friend, I got the telephone number off her, rang said accountant, and he sent the document to me by email in a few seconds flat. This is going to make H mad... but I am soooooooooooo tired of his games.
Next H says that while I expected him to tell me his plans for the summer two or three months ago, I only told him about going to other country a week ago.
What can you say about this man? I am NOT interested in his summer plans in the slightest, except the part where he wants to have D, and I GAVE HIM FIRST CHOICE, as it states in the agreement (alternate years, first choice, to be decided by end April). He sees that as me pulling a fast one on him! I was only able to make my travel plans after hearing about when he wanted D anyway. My flights cost more because of booking later. The guy is barking mad. He is so keen to spite me, that he will cut off his nose.
Then H ends his email with saying that he will be glad to hear from my lawyer, so he has the opportunity to discuss our agreement and make it more equitable.
All I can say is, this man is past reason. Well past it. I wonder if discussing anything with him, with or without a solicitor, will get me anywhere. He can ONLY think of himself.
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
LNL - Just another, possible, viewpoint on H's behavior: I'm getting the vibe that he may be starting to feel a little desperatethat he's losing you.
I think you want to choose your responses carefully so as not to provoke him unnecessarily, and to stick to the high road and not get sucked into passive-aggressive behaviors yourself.
First:
Quote: Says when I am with my family in other country, he expects me to get D to ring him, as he won't ring. Because he claims my brother in law refused to pass on messages or tell him when he could talk to D.
Yes, your H was completely in the wrong here, but it is old water under the bridge. H likely doesn't want to face them, and who could blame him? And H's fears that you might keep D from him are very common in this sitch - WASs often start to think the LBS may be capable of the kinds of things the WAS has been doing. (And, to be truthful, in your particular sitch, it has crossed your mind to move, which would limit him seeing his D).
I would handle this particular issue by simply saying "of course, you will have D call him. What times work best?". This actually works better for you, since it means no one else has to talk to H! You can be conveniently in the bathroom and unable to take the phone when she finishes
Quote: Next H says that while I expected him to tell me his plans for the summer two or three months ago, I only told him about going to other country a week ago.
Sorry, LNL, he's right here. If you are taking D with you, he has a right to know. Just tell him "sorry, I couldn't make these plans until you had decided when you were taking D, next time I will inform you as soon as I make my travel arrangements".
Quote: As it is the same accountant as my good friend, I got the telephone number off her, rang said accountant, and he sent the document to me by email in a few seconds flat. This is going to make H mad... but I am soooooooooooo tired of his games.
Good job solving the problem. Stuff like this - bills that you have to pay - need to be set up so you don't have to go through your H - also so you don't have to rely on him. Don't make a big deal out of it, but you might also want to reiterate why you aren't interested in talking with H. Maybe something along the lines of:
"H, I got the amount for the taxes ($XXX) and have paid it. I'd like you to understand why I didn't call you about it.
I really prefer that all our future communication be by email whenever possible. You broke my heart, broke up our family, paraded your OW around in my face, and generally treated me with disrespect. Despite that, I tried for a long time to focus on improving myself and hoped for a reconciliation with you.
Now I know that hope was in vain, and frankly, in the process you have successfully killed off any feelings of love or admiration that I ever had for you. So much so that I really have no desire to even be a friend to you, since no friend would have treated me as badly as you have. I hope for a calm co-parenting relationship, and feel that right now that is best achieved by communicating through email, which gives me the distance I need to move on with my life.
I'm sure if you think about it for a minute you will be happy about this, since this is what you have wanted all along, for me to leave you alone and quit attempting to reconcile. I wish for you that you find the happiness you are seeking. "
And I would NOT bring up the attorney issue. Wait and see what H does by the end of the week. He may cave and send you the rest of the money - if not, then you just have an attorney contact him and stay out of it.
Quote: Sorry, LNL, he's right here. If you are taking D with you, he has a right to know. Just tell him "sorry, I couldn't make these plans until you had decided when you were taking D, next time I will inform you as soon as I make my travel arrangements".
Ellie, I couldn't make my plans until he told me when he wanted D for sure. I first asked him early April. The Agreement says the parent who has priority that year has to decide and inform the other parent by the end of April. This way one can make plans as the holdiays start at the end of the first week of June. Summer is the peak season, and I am paying lots of extra money for my tickets as they were booked late. H only gave me his answer on the 27th of May, after I reminded him many times, and he finally emailed me "...I already told you" which was a blatant lie. But I have come to expect this. I am realising just how this thing works, which is that he can lie, "forget" or make up stuff any time he wants, and if he is aggressive enough about it, I will back off (he thinks) and not challenge him. Do you think if he had really told me his dates, I wouldn't have gone straight out to make my bookings?
I let him know our plans to visit my family as soon as I bought the tickets (within three days), on 14th June. I had already told H weeks ago it would be in July, but something came up for me, workwise, in the other country, so we are leaving a week or ten days earlier, on June 24, so I can get to it.
You know that H is free to travel at any time he likes, and he doesn't have to clear it with me, he merely informs me. Whereas if I wish to travel (more than a few days) on my own, I can ONLY do it while he has D during his one month of summer visitation. So it is critical that I know well in advance the dates available to me. He knows this prefectly well, and uses it to jerk me around.
As it happens, I have booked a flight to my country of origin for August, and will be working flat out on my project, the nature of which you are aware of.
I don't think H likes the fact that I can do this either. He always talks about having been behind me, but his resentment is HUGE. I have got a literary agent interested in my work, and have set up some work appointments in the country of my family too. So it isn't all just HOLIDAY, the word which he LOVES to use. But you now what? This work is stuff that has to be self initiated. It is a labour of love, and hasn't been commissioned by anyone. I had the idea and started it. Like IOVVA wrote her book and has just got publishers interested in it. I started this project way back in the late 90s. The last two years it has been on the back burner due to my being an emotional basketcase or not having the opportunity to work on my own, without D in tow. The work requires extensive travel. My H leaving has well and truly grounded me.
H took up the same profession as me in the late 90s and has since discarded it as "boring". Typical narcissist trait, it seems. Easily bored. And another thing, when he first took up this interest, it was subsidised almost fully from my money/work, for about 17 months worth of travel. Yes, you read that correctly. But remember, I didn't do ANYTHING in this marriage. We were staying with MY friends and relatives in my country of origin. Spending MY money.
All this stuff is so much water under the bridge, I wouldn't think of bringing it up here if it wasn't for H constatnly going on about how I contributed nothing to this marriage and trying to get out of any responsibility now.
Quote: Stuff like this - bills that you have to pay - need to be set up so you don't have to go through your H - also so you don't have to rely on him.
It's only in this blessed country that one can receive a tax demand without the amount due specified!
I will find out how to get the info in the coming years without going through H's accountant.
Quote: H likely doesn't want to face them, and who could blame him? And H's fears that you might keep D from him are very common in this sitch - WASs often start to think the LBS may be capable of the kinds of things the WAS has been doing. (And, to be truthful, in your particular sitch, it has crossed your mind to move, which would limit him seeing his D).
Ellie, the very first thing H said to me after the bomb was, you take the house, sell it and when you go to other country you can send D out to me here a couple of months a year. (He was proposing to put a seven year old on a plane, unaccompanied - little did he know or care that low cost flights don't take unaccompanied children, and he would have blanched at the price of scheduled flight prices in our part of the world.) Not only was he expecting me to do that, but almost suggesting it. How damn convenient! I just quietly slip out of the picture, and he can then parade around with OW1, former friend of mine!
That way, he would lose all the equity, but he could perhaps shack up with OW1, keep all his earnings for himself, and see D a couple of times on holiday. Voilà - no responsibility, no getting stupid lawyers involved, and free at last! He actually told my own friend in my country of origin that he was free at last! That's how sensitive he is. All this, while I was in hospital with D who had two operations for a broken elbow.
It gets right up his nose that not only do I get to use the house, but he has part of his income going on maintenance, so he can't live the life of Riley. He is not so FREE. What decent parent can think like that?
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
I can so relate. When XH was getting his stuff from the house he kept telling the two policemen that were there that he had bought everything in the house and supported me for years. I should get nothing. XH has been unemployed the majority of the last three years and I always made more money than he did. He always has to put on a show. My only comment in front of the police "Your unemployment checkstub is on the kitchen counter, be sure to take it." Not nice but he aggravates me with his outlandish lies. He even went so far to tell our mutual friends that the reason I filed for divorce was because I am lazy and don't want to work so I am looking for a rich husband. These people know he has been unemployed and know I make more money than him. He makes a fool out of himself with his lies.
I also get the outright lying, "forgetting" to tell me something, or swearing he told me and I must not remember.
As for telling him the reasons why you only want to communicate by e-mail, don't do it. Any time I have told XH how hurt I am by his behavior and that it pains me to talk to him he called me MORE.
I am inclined to agree with you, Moving Forward. I will email him soon, that I will only communicate by email, without giving him a list of reasons. I don't want to feed the monster.
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
LNL - You don't have to justify your anger at H to me. Just trying to point out the places where his requests ARE legitimate, so that you can stick to the high road and get him to be more cooperative.
My point about the last part was that you have never really told him you don't want to be friends anymore and are done with him. It may ease the confusion and pressure over you not talking to him if you make that a little clearer. Maybe just take a simpler way of stating it:
"H - I've paid the taxes in the amount of XXXX. Of course I will make sure D calls you - what times would be most convenient for you?
I informed you of our travel plans as soon as I was able to make them - I had to wait to make them until you confirmed which month you would have D.
At this point I really prefer to keep all of our communications via email if possible. It seems to me that this is a much clearer way for us to communicate, and should eliminate any confusion about D's schedule etc. I hope for D's sake that we can just stick to co-parenting issues and keep any conflict to a minimum.
Liv, it's funny that you mentioned the narcissistic sponge living off your income for years, and taking work in your field. The same thing happened to me. In fact, XH made less than half my salary for over ten years of our R. When he couldn't really break into my field, he began to disparage it. Now, however, he tells people that one of his lines of expertise is my former field. Whacked is the best word for it.
He has told people that I married him for his money. Funny, it all seemed to be my money.
Decide what kind of R you want with him, then live that. It's all you can do.
The first just over two years of our marriage H had a shop, which didn't make money. He borrowed for the business against the fully paid up small flat we had at the time (from his mother's inheritance). I helped in the shop in some measure, making the products that were sold.
He closed the shop the month our D was born. He started in the work that he is doing now, which he hates, but which brings in money. Then his Dad died and with his inheritance, he paid off the outstanding mortgage on our old flat. Then we went on trips to my country of origin, which I subsidised with money left to me by a relative and we also stayed with my friends and family for lots of the time, as well as hotels. This is when H got into my area of work.
I have freelanced in this area all my life but before I married H I also used to do other jobs to make ends meet and to subsidise lots of travel for the work.
After our D was born, I did a little of this work as best I could, while being a full-time Mum. A company owing me money went bankcrupt, so I lost a significant amount.
H reallly got into the kind of thing I had been doing for years, and spent a lot of time and money going on independent trips, which I didn't complain about. He was techically in charge of the finances, I didn't have my own bank account in this country (I have never earned independently in this country, only abroad) and assumed everything was under control, as H was the one who said the amount of mortgage we took out for our new, much bigger flat was "doable".
The whole of our married life I was the one who did all the housework - shopping , cleaning, cooking, tidying, clothes washing, childcare etc. I held the home fort. H did very litte. He probably didn't come shopping with me more than a couple of times in the last few years of our marriage. I manage with a bicycle, by the way. I always used to think to myself, at least H has "weekends", I don't!
By his own admission, he used to tell me that he could do enough work in six hours flat, turn of his computer at 2pm and have the rest of the day free. Five days a week. About thirty hours in total? Oh, he had a hard life, he did.
I also put much effort and time into finding our new flat (things here don't work quite the same way as in the US), and things like nursing my mother when she fractured her hip. But I guess that last doesn't count, as it wasn't contributing to OUR marriage, not benefitting my H directly.
And, in addition to the things outlined above, I would put it on record here (very useful, that! ) that I paid 100% for our wedding, did up the first flat (painted etc) did up our present flat too, doing much of the DIY, (although we had a professional painter in this time) etc etc So you can see, the picture is complex.
As I have said before, the irony in all this, is that if H were living here now, and we were pooling our resources, we would be fairly comfortably off. I certainly would never have chosen to become a single mother, that too in a foreign country.
I am still wondering about how to approach H. Of course I would like to have a harmonious relationship, but I am beigninning to understand that for H, my "niceness" is taken as appeasement. And he thinks it is fine to abuse me one days and then turn up here and use the bathroom and be all chatty - probably no more than fishing for "evidence" is what I feel now.
Also, let's say I have a modest budget. I budget the spending, I am careful with electricity, phone calls etc, in order to afford a few nice things. H sees/hears about the nice things, and thinks that if I can afford that, then he is paying too much. You know? My life under a microscope.
He himself is a spendthrift and doesn't budget at all, just spends when he wants and deals with the consequences later. He also has expensive tastes. And he buys stuff and then gets bored with it and tosses it aside. And loses stuff ALL the time. I wonder how long it will be before D gets given his iPod? She has already inherited his Palm Pilot, which was just a casual purchase from before the bomb. Of ourse when he had just bought it, it was THE THING to have, you could read novels off it, downloaded from the internet, blah blah blah. I noted that I would rather read from a paper book, much more comfortable. Of course, then I didn't UNDERSTAND current technology, the way things were going in the future....
I think having a family and responsibilities just cramped his style.
Hey, no idea why I fnd myself on this rant! Sorry...
Ellie , I really appreciate all the time and effort you have put into advising me and taking an interest in me and my "case"!
A BIG THANKS!
I dont know if you have read up extensively on Narcissism, but if you have, you will see it is a very slippery fish one is dealing with. I used to think of narcissism as merely a bit of self centredness, but it is much more tricky than that. It has really allowed me to understand the dynamics of our whole ten years together and the two years post bomb. I don't wish to be intimately involved with an individual like that again.
Well, I'm off to wake up D and we have a busy day ahead of us, I am getting sorted out to leave for other country tomorrow.
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
I can feel the frustration you are going thru - i've not read evrything on your thread having just gotten back to the boards & trying to get updated - if you need to chat feel free to IM me - in the meantime i'll try to get up to date on your sitch
{{{Hugs}}} just feel that you need another cyber hug
Quote: I dont know if you have read up extensively on Narcissism, but if you have, you will see it is a very slippery fish one is dealing with. I used to think of narcissism as merely a bit of self centredness, but it is much more tricky than that. It has really allowed me to understand the dynamics of our whole ten years together and the two years post bomb. I don't wish to be intimately involved with an individual like that again.
Oh, I didn't think you did! Just trying to point out that you will more likely get a better reaction out of him if you are totally clear, and don't bicker with him unnecessarily (like over having D call him while you're gone, etc.).
And I'm glad you got the rant out of your system, but I hope you didn't think you had to justify your work history to us, of all people??? Just let your new attorney handle all that stuff.
This is going to make H mad... but I am soooooooooooo tired of his games.
Just let your new attorney handle all that stuff.