I have several points to make regarding your observations:

1. On the times when I don't let him in, he is terrible to me and starts up legal action, remember his remark 'if I can't be friends with you I have to hate you.'
It makes my life easier when it's this way.

2. I didn't clean up the house before he came in, I just put the ironing away because I iron in the hall next to the front door so he couldn't have even let the DD's in unless I moved the stuff.

3. Talking about the book - it's better than getting solicitor's letters about it.

4. Talking about sex, he brought it up by saying about my 'sexual energy', I tried to diffuse it by mentioning the book rather than the here and now.

I have NOT slept with him and don't intend to unless we re-marry, then it would be on our wedding night, so it isn't the same.

I am also not going to DD2's birthday because it will be EX-OW'S birthday too.

5. Wrestling with him - he's 6 foot and I am only 5 foot 2 so had to. If I hadn't he would have gone on this site and read my thread, which I would rather he didn't.

6. They divorced us - er, no. Actually I DIVORCED HIM. He refused to. He didn't want a divorce whenever I mentioned it and got upset. He didn't sign the papers either.

So I'm guilty as charged really.

7. I am aware of all the awful stuff he has done and I don't condone it, however, I've done some pretty bad stuff too (which you will find out when you read the book).

8. He did want married life but for a lot of our married life I was ill with various long-term syndromes which meant I was in pain 95% of the time, and quite difficult to live with. He had to watch me suffer and my self-confidence decrease as time went on, and we seemed to spend half our life at the hospital (I only touched on this briefly in the book).

I'm sure you'll agree that if it was your wife going through that and you were powerless to help, after 8 years of that, you'd be at breaking point.

Then the relatives on both sides of the family didn't want us to be together. I was not made welcome at MIL's ever and she kept inciting arguments.

They even threatened to boycott our wedding, that's how bad it was, and when I was having DD1 they told me to get an abortion.

He loved me, I have no doubt, and I loved him, but sometimes it is just more complicated than simply 'he left me so why not come back?'

Hope this answers your comments.

Jo.