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dating men don't do, and yeah, it was wonderful. We hit it off very quickly in messages and established that we had lots of things in common, including place where we both had played volleyball. I played volleyball there at

the time and he had previously played volleyball there. And actually it was him saying that he had played volleyball at that particular venue that really reduced that anxiety that you have about meeting someone because we had a shared location, and on that basis, I agreed to meet him in real life. So we arranged to meet. He set the

location and the time. It felt wonderful. I was so excited, and he picked a place that he told a beautiful little story about the name of the pub where we were going to meet, and what a beautiful name it was, because and he weaved it into a story that made it seem like it was just a pitch are perfect fairy tale place to meet. And I got to the venue at the time, and I was in my car and something felt wrong and I didn't know what felt wrong, and so I rang my best friend and she said, no,

it's just that it's so right. All the stars are aligning, and it's just never been this good. That's what this is. Maybe this is it, this is the guy, this is going to be the baby daddy. That's what you're probably feeling. It's those nerves of it's so good you can't believe it. And then I got into the pub. He wasn't there, and I called. He didn't answer. I messaged, he didn't respond. I felt humiliated and I was so overwhelmed, went back

to my car, burst into tears. I was almost ready to leave when he sent a message and the message said where are you? You're still coming. I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed that you hadn't arrived yet. Are you okay? And I thought what? I was there and then he said where are you? And I said, I'll win my car and suggests, but did you go to? And he named the venue and I'm like, no, because that's not where you set the time or the place for us

to meet. And he said no, no, no, I set the time for five o'clock at and he gave me the name and I was like, no, you said it for five point thirty and I gave him the name the actually said, and I was like, I can go back through the Tinder messages and find this, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't need to do that. It's okay, it's okay. Just come to where, come here, come here.

guilty because now there were two drinks lined up. He was so eloquent, he was just so charming. He was better looking than he had been in the Tinder photos, and he just looked and behaved in such an immaculate way that I felt foolish that I had doubted meeting this guy. I was in a complete fog from the moment I met him, and it felt so different to

every other first meeting. It was like being in a fairy tale, and no matter what I said or did, he found a way to compliment it, to make me feel good about it, to elicit a response out of me. Where I was being really vulnerable and honest and sincere and sharing things that I'd never shared before, and it just felt so honest. I was just feeling vulnerable, silly, beside myself with excitement that this wonderful person had come

into my life. So it went from one drink to two, and then he asked if I'd like to have dinner, but he wasn't forward about it. He was like, I don't want to be disrespectful. I understand and appreciate that you might want to go home and debrief, and you've had a long day, if you'd like to have dinner Like it felt like there was no pressure whatsoever. And I loved the dinner. I loved everything about it. It

was wonderful, It was respectful. I never felt like he was then going to ask if you could come back to my house. And there were several other dates that followed that where it was this same magical experience and no expectation of sex, no expectation of anything, and it just felt like the kind of fairytale story that you would tell at a wedding about how we meant and how magical it was. And it was such a wonderful story.

Every day was wonderful fodder for taking into work and telling telling other girls about you know, like it was just so perfect. And he had all this very specific knowledge about places and things, and such an incredible memory for everything that I had said, even way back at the tinder point, and I was so impressed by everything he said.

carrying on these conversations with other people. And then I felt like, Oh, I'm such a bad person that I'm considering these backup plans, and you're such a better person than me. You've really dedicated yourself to me, whereas I was struggling to remember, you know, what suburb he lived in, and he could remember what suburb I grew up in.

It just felt perfect. And he sent me a screenshot of of him asking his mom if he could bring a girl who he had just started seeing because it was just so magical, and would he mind? And I just thought, what a respectful guy that he's asking his mom if she's okay with it, And so he sent me the screenshot of this conversation with his mum, which then felt more abort and so I just felt honored

to have been invited to this family dinner. And when I arrived at the family dinner, I was welcomed as if I was just part of the family, and that really solidified it for me, and I felt like this was meant to be. It was all the stars had aligned. I felt so valued, so seen, so respected. I felt like my whole life had been building to this point where someone was finally seeing how amazing I was and I wasn't having to point it out to them. Yeah, I was on a pedestal well, and I felt like

I deserved to be there and validated. For all of the men that I had not followed through with previously, all of the breakups, it all felt like it was coming to this moment, this magical experience, and like I had won some sort of love lottery, and ah, yeah, it's the best feeling, best feeling. It was never a conversation, I think that he posted some photos perhaps of some dates, and it just sort of naturally kind of evolved and

never needed to be sort of announced. And previously men hadn't posted things on Facebook, but here he was taking the lead and gently, respectfully posting photos of activities that we were doing and making little comments like this is when we changed our status updates because a decade ago now, but Matt is on a magical date with the most impressive woman, and without naming me or tagging me or putting a photo of my face, I knew that he was talking about me because there was a picture of

our feet over the water or something like that. And yeah, just naturally gradually happened, and he had me meeting his friends and family or within the first couple of weeks, but organically, so the dinner was an actual invite, but the other things that he organized, activities that were little that, you know, like a couple of hours here because I know you've got this important thing, and so I thought maybe we could just have this coffee and then you know,

a friend would be walking by of his and I would be introduced to that friend, and that friend would say, oh my gosh, I've heard so much about you, and then I would feel so honored, and then that friend would invite me to something that was happening that weekend, and it was just overwhelming. It just consumed about three weeks of my life, and I met every single person in his inner circle within that first month.

natural time that it would happen in Hollywood. It wasn't at the same time though, as every other relationship, which is after sex, and so for me, I remember thinking, well, this must be real because it's not after sex, and I had alluded to that and my desire for that to one day happen in a blog. So it was something I definitely thought about, but I don't recall where it was. I just remember that the feeling I had

was it has to be real this time. I did not immediately say it back, and I don't remember when I did, because the whole first month felt like I was being taken on a magic carpet. I didn't make any choices. I didn't plan any of the dates. I didn't plan anything. I was just going on this wonderful ride. And I wasn't leading the conversations or leading anything, and I was really enjoying that, so I was soaking it in. I don't remember it being a particular moment because I

hadn't planned it or thought about it. It's not my style to have sat it so early or to have felt it. I was just responding, so at some point I imagined that I just started saying it back because I was overwhelmed, overwhelmed with happiness, not overwhelmed like, oh this is terrible and I should say it, but it

just yeah, you just get swept up in emotions. Right from the very first time we met, we had very intense, very deep, serious conversations about you know, that I wanted a child, and that at thirty, I wanted a child yesterday, and I couldn't wait to sell my unit and buy a white picket fence house. And I shared all of those things because he was so interested in them, and he agreed with every aspiration I had. I wanted children he wanted children. I was hoping for two. He was

hoping for two. I wanted to live in the suburbs and get out of the city. He wanted to live in the suburbs. I was very attached to the beach. He didn't mind where it was. It was all so perfect and aligned, and there were never any you know, bombshell conversations because everything I said he agreed with, and if he expressed any kind of disagreement, it was in such a positive Oh that's not how I was thinking. But you know, that's a better idea. The one you

have is so much better than my own. Everything just was aligned. I felt like I was on the verge of getting everything I'd ever wanted, and that thirty years of waiting was all coming to fruition. I was about to be delivered my Prince Charming. It was only moments, it felt like before he was going to whip out a glass shoe and put it on my foot, and I was like, bring it on. I was so ready for it.

counted the weeks. But when we got there, he told me that it had been a month and that he was marking the month by bringing me to this wonderful place that on date two I had said that I really wanted to go to. And he said something like, wouldn't it be wonderful if we got married here? And I said, yeah, yeah, that would be wonderful. Yeah, And I was hypothetically talking, and he said, well, exactly two months from now will be your birthday, your thirty first birthday.

Why don't we get married here on your birthday? I was like what. And it was the first time that I felt like that's too fast, that's too fast. But then he said, look, you know, let's let fate decide. Let's see if the venue's even available. You know what, this is such a popular venue. Let's just see if the stars align and if they have a vacancy in any of the areas. And he called the waiter over and he asked, could you just humor me, could you tell me if the wedding area here is available on

this particular date. And that person was like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll go check. And he went and checked and he said, oh no, look that area isn't available, but we have a separate area that we could create, but you would have to have under one hundred guests. And then my boyfriend said, oh, I've never seen that, Jesse. Have you've seen that? And I was like no, I didn't even know that existed as a venue. And he said, could

we have a tour now? He had orchestrated this. It was a surprise, and so this was a wonderful build up to me being taken off into this area and then him saying, will you marry me? I've picked out a ring, this is a venue. I just think we should start our lives now. And I laughed and said no. And because it was the first time that I had felt like no too soon alarm bells. It was my first alarm else. And then I just thought, you know, I had this other voice in my head, Oh, yes,

you're a bit of a schmuck. You need to say yes to this. And I thought, me as a person, would usually be more reserved, be more cautious, be more rational, say no to this. And I thought, that's why you're thirty and until recently single, because you don't say yes to things like this. And in this really quick moment with this guy who's giving us a tour, and my birthday is coming up, and now I really wanted a baby, all of these things and I just thought, oh, just

do it. And so I said yes, and he picked me up and spun me around, and it was so exciting, like a fairy tale. We just felt there was no point in waiting. We knew what we wanted from life.

and that was that it was very soon. But everyone in my life and his seemed so excited when we told them, and I had really expected people to raise eyebrows, but he was just so charismatic, and everyone knew how much I wanted to have a baby and get married and have the picket fence, and all of my friends had done it already. Everyone knew, and so it just seemed too good to be true, and what's the worst that could happen? Was the sort of general response.

just was here's what's happening. We're getting married, come to the wedding, and it was just one big celebration rather than being a drawn out one. And I was aware that also there were people who were going to come to that wedding who'd never met him and who'd never heard of him, and who their first mention of him

was in an invitation to the wedding. So I was a bit embarrassed by that, and I was glad to be done with the rigmarole that goes with you know, you meet a guy and you follow this timeline and you do this, you do that, you go on your first trip together, and you see how you go, and yeah,

I just thought people do that all the time. And then, of course, when you start telling people on Facebook and just in your day to day life that you're going to get married to someone you just met, all of a sudden, everyone's telling you all their stories of people they know that were successful and who got married after knowing each other a week a month, And everyone starts coming out of the woodworks with their stories and their bailed opportunities. That time they didn't say yes, and that

guy was the one and they missed out. And there's a lot of confirmation bias coming at you that reinforces your decision because people want to be supportive. There were lots of things that made him an imperfect person and us an imperfect couple, but nothing that seemed like red flag. One of the things was that him spelling things on me never stopped. He was very clumsy, but he was always so embarrassed by it, and so even though it was annoying, it wasn't a deal breaker. You can't break

up with someone because they're clumsy. But he broke a lot of my things in my house. He moved in like immediately, it was never even a thing. He didn't pay rent or anything, and I didn't like that. I'd never had someone just move in and not pay rent. But he just sort of was always there and just seemed natural. He was watering my plants and feeding my cats, and it just seemed natural. He was often late for things.

He would set the time for things or the place, the venue, and then he was either not there or he wouldn't show up. He had to work late, and it was a pattern. And I remember tallying up in my head the things that made him not the perfect guy, and they were silly things like he's always late, he works really long hours. But he always compensated for those things by when he did show up. He was a life of the party. He was always really apologetic. It

always seemed to be sincere. He would arrive with stories about what had happened at work that made him a hero, and that's why he was late, because he had a heroic job, and everyone would be so enamored by his incredible story that you couldn't hold a grudge. I definitely didn't hold a grudge when he was late, because it was that he was helping people and everything that he did that was irritating or that I didn't like. He was a terrible driver, and he didn't have a car,

so he drove my car terribly. All of these things just seemed like petty things. Do you know. I thought, Wow, if this is it, if this is all I have to put up with. I mean, look at all my exes been drunks and men who didn't earn money. There had been violent men, men who didn't have good relationships with their friends or family. This guy had at all. He was just perfect, so that he was clumsy, late, and often got the dates and times of things wrong. Who cares?

he'd been late arriving. And then he got a message, and then he went and took a phone call and it seemed to be quite serious, and he came back and he ended the dinner early, which is not something he'd done before, and he said, oh, you know, I've got to deal with this important thing, and it made it sound like it was an important work thing and that we had to leave. And then he said we had to go to his parents' house, and he wouldn't tell me why we were going to his parents' house,

and the uncertainty it was unsettling. I wasn't quite sure, and then I thought it's probably a surprise because he was like that, and I thought, oh, I wonder if we're having like an engagement party or something that I don't know about, because it's weird that he would take us away from our friends early and not tell me why. So yeah, I kind of had it in my head that we were going to something special. And then when we got to his parents' house, it was that his

ex girlfriend had sent his parents a letter. She'd found out that he was getting married, and she had sent them a letter saying, please, can you let his potential bride know that he's dangerous. When we got to the house, his dad took him off to another room and his mum fussed with me, but she wouldn't tell me what the fuss was, and I realized that something bad had happened,

but I wasn't sure what bad thing had happened. And then they came out they fussed about a bit more, and I got quite upset and angry because no one was telling me what was happening, and there was something clearly wrong that no one was telling me. And I got very angry, and I did some yelling and swearing and said how uncomfortable I felt, and all of those feelings in my stomach came back, and I said something like I am not marrying you without knowing what this is.

It was the first time I'd really asserted myself, and the first time I'd felt like things were really off and something was wrong. I just went into overdrive, hyperreacting to it. And so I think they felt like they just had to tell me because there was no kind of getting out of it, and they let me read the letter, and it was just shocking, and it was like it had been written about someone else. I couldn't

compute it. The letter said that he was violent, that he was always yelling at her, that they'd been together for several years, and that it was an abusive relationship, and it listed all different kinds of abuse, and none of it correlated to what I had experienced at all. It was like I was written by someone else about someone else. It was just it was bizarre because he never yelled at may, he never even raised his voice. He was so elegant, and he'd never done anything that

was overtly even close to abuse. He had posted things on his social media that were really pro women and anti abuse. He'd said all the things that you would want a man to say that were very feminist and liberating. He was really compassionate about his ex and said things like, look, she's got a lot of mental health problems and I didn't tell you about them because you know she's crazy, And he said it in such a sympathetic way, and he gave a few examples, and it was just so sincere.

He never got mad, he was never rattled by it. He genuinely seemed to be sad for her. He said that he would call her and check that she was okay, and he expressed that her family had a lot of mental health issues and she had a lot going on and that had been why they'd broken up. And he revealed things about their relationship that she would have been hurt by because he didn't want to be with her in the end because he couldn't care for her the

way she needed. There didn't seem to be anything jarring, but it completely unraveled things. And then for the rest of that week, leading up to the wedding. It just created such cognitive dissonance in me. All of a sudden, I was thinking, no, none of this is right. Everything is wrong. He's not paying a rent. He said that the reason he wasn't paying rent was because he was so impressed by my management of the house and my mortgage and how incredible I was, and that he wouldn't

want to undermine my financial integrity. And he really elevated me so that anytime that he had been saying something, it was almost a backhanded compliment that would get him out of doing something or excuse him from things. And the whole week it was just a mess. I didn't go to work. I'd planned to go to work because the wedding was planned and I had a job, but

I didn't go to work because I couldn't function. I was all of a sudden just replaying every kind of thing right back to that first Tinder conversation, and it was all just unraveling in my head. I felt terrified, like when you're watching a horror movie and you know that something bad is coming, but you don't know what

it is. I felt horror and terror, and then I felt crazy because I didn't know why I was feeling horror and terror, And when I would try to explain it to him and he would so patiently listen to me, I would think, you're losing your mind, Jess, because when I would try and explain to him why I was feeling so overwhelmed, he was able to come back with quips to explain things in such a rational, sensible way. He was so patient, he was so thoughtful. He listened

to all of my concerns and comforted me. And I just felt stupid, because when you explain things and you're like, well, you're always late, it just feels like such a silly thing to be upset about. And then when I tried to explain it to my best friend, I was like, right, so I've been putting the pieces together, and what I'm thinking is that maybe he was late because he was still seeing his ex. Maybe she is bitter and angry, and she wrote the letter to try and break us up.

And I was creating this completely fictional narrative about what I thought. I was trying to fill in the gaps because all of a sudden, I could see all the gaps. I couldn't believe everything had turned around so quickly all at once.

So then the same week, when all this is happening, and I didn't go to work that week to take my mind off it, he said, you want to come to work with me and help me clear out my desk. You know, like you're so good at organizing things. As you've organized all the wedding, you're probably just pulling it, clutching its straws because you're so overwhelmed. Come to work

with me and help me clear out my desk. It's such a mess and you're so good at that, and I came to his work and you couldn't have scripted it better. He had just a really messy desk and really messy draws, and in one of the really messy drawers was a journal. And in the journal when I opened it up, because I'm human and I couldn't help myself when I opened it up, and it just was

perfect timing that I pulled that drawer open. The journal was under very few things as I was tidying them, and he walked out of the room to get something and announced, you know, like I'm just going to get

us a cup of coffee or something. I opened it up, and it really explicitly, in very messy handwriting, but really explicitly was talking about as she and saying, you know, she doesn't know what's coming, make her feel vulnerable, make her feel disoriented, make her feel confused, like that's where the last entry was, it's where like a book was.

And then perfectly timed, he walked in. So I shot the book and I put it away, and I just pretended like it hadn't happened, even though in those few scrawled sentences it was actually piecing every fear I had all together because that's exactly what it was. But for some reason that is inexplicable to me, I couldn't process it, and so I put it back and I didn't confront

him about it. Even now when I try and think about that, in that moment, I could have taken it, and I could have run off, and I could have shown all my friends. Look, look, see, he's written a journal and this is like entry fifty. This is every date we ever had, and he's been chronicling it, and he's been following a rule book. He refers to that he's achieving rule number like forty three or something. Even then, because it didn't have my name, I still felt hopeful.

He loved writing short stories, and I thought could be a novel, could be a short story, could be something he wrote in the past. He's got such a messy desk. This could be about the X, could be about anyone. It may not even be his handwriting. It's hard to tell. I put it back in the draw and pretended I hadn't seen it and just decided to go ahead with this wedding.

he'd been planning for a long time. And then he showed it to me and it was a watch for him, and I was so confused. He was explaining what a thoughtful gift it was because it was going to make him on time, and that he had engraved it, and that the engraving was symbolic of how he was committed to me, and that he just knew how much I would love that he had got this gift for him to wear because it would make my life better. Happy birthday. I got really angry, and even though I had not

wanted to. And then I was so embarrassed that I got really angry, and I expressed why I was hurting, all of these emotions that I'd been toying with, and I just said, this is not right. Why would you do that? That doesn't even make sense? And then he left his stonewalled me, wouldn't talk to me, and that was the first time he had done that, wouldn't talk to me, and just left. And then the wedding wasn't till the afternoon. We'd had all these plans of things.

We were going to go get the rings together. There are all these different things that we were going to do, and he didn't turn up for any of them. His groomsman, his family, didn't know where he was. His brother came over to comfort me. He was missing an action, and I thought, oh my gosh, he doesn't want to marry me anymore, because I'm such a selfish person that I

expected a birthday present on my birthday. On my wedding day when I woke up, You're such a bad person, yes, And so yeah, he was gone long enough for me to embarrass and humiliate myself in front of every close person that we had and make it so that a lot of people coming to the wedding that night were going to know what had happened. Was humiliated, still couldn't cancel it because now I was canceling it if I canceled it, canceling it because I didn't get the birthday

present I wanted. And by the time he showed up, you know, after being missing an action, he said that he had been off seeing his ex. It was about six hours later, and it was really at the last possible minute. He turned up as if nothing had happened and expressed, you know, that he was disappointed that things had played out this way, but that we would work through it together. And it was the first time he hadn't apologized for something that was clearly his fault and

that he was not taking any ownership for. And I was just so confused, But I was so relieved that he was there, because now he was going to be there for the wedding. So I apologized again for being so selfish, being such a selfish person, and begged him to marry me, and that I would be a better person and that I would be less materialistic and less self consumed. And that I understood why he had gone to see his ex, because she would understand him better

than I did, and she would understand him. He said he'd gone to talk to her to try to see if maybe the problem was him and if he had done something wrong. He wanted someone who knew him really well and deeply to give him the best idea of what he could do to fix this situation, because he didn't know how to move ahead with the wedding, and he was considering whether he had been premature in asking and whether it was a mistake, and that she would

provide him comfort. And he told me that she did provide him comfort and that she was really helpful and I should be very grateful to her for the help that she provided him so that he could go ahead with marrying me. He needed that sort of comfort and that he knew I would grow to be that kind of support for him too one day, which is why he wanted to marry me. It was beautiful and everything

went off without a hitch. Everything played out perfectly. He made such a beautiful speech and made me feel so valued and made me feel very embarrassed that I had hung our dirty laundry out for everyone to see that day, and that I'd made such a big deal out of such a silly thing like a watch. That was my fault. That's how I felt. That was my fault. He didn't disappear. I pushed him away because I was not being rational and because I was not being my best self, and

it was all my fault. So we went on our honeymoon, which we'd been planning, which was so exciting. He had primarily planned the honeymoon, and I had primarily planned the wedding, so I was so excited. As soon as the honeymoon started, he started revealing, bit by bit things that he had not revealed before that I hadn't even thought of as being necessary to reveal reasons behind choices he had made.

He started revealing how he'd planned our the proposal, and how he had talked to the venue beforehand, and all of a sudden, he was revealing all these things about how he had read my blog, which I hadn't really done anything with for years, and he revealed that the reason he knew and understood so much about me was because he loved my blog, and I really hadn't thought

about it. It was just sort of sitting there on the internet for so long, and all of a sudden, he was just revealing all this information that I didn't know, and I really thought i'd known so much about him. And he started walking in on me when I was in the bathroom, but like when I was on toilet, little things like that that were just strange things that he knew that I didn't like. And he'd been so respectful in the three months leading up to the wedding

with everything. He just seemed to understand every nuanced feeling that I had, even ones that I hadn't expressed to him, and it was because, yeah, he had done his research, and he was revealing that he had done his research. He'd read my blog, and he revealed that he'd gone through my Facebook and looked at every status that I had had since two thousand and seven, and that he loved reading and looking at all the pictures. Except that

now it just felt creepy. I didn't feel valuable. I felt stalked by someone who I had just married.

from the hotel. Before we were married, he wanted me to do something that he breast he really enjoyed in the bedroom, and I wasn't wanting to partake, and he

was very respectful of that. But from the night that we got married, most nights, while I was asleep, he would put lube on me and anally rape me, and then in the night when it was happening instantly, I would wake up and he would tell me that I was having a nightmare, and he would comfort me so it would only last for a second, but it was terrifying, and then he somehow in all of this managed to convince me that I was probably wanting it and feeling

guilty and ashamed of myself because I didn't want that. Before we'd got married, and maybe we should do it so that I could stop dreaming about it, stop having nightmares about it. So we did have anal sex, and I did not enjoy it, But then in doing it, I had sort of paved the way for when it would happen. Often in the night he would say things like that I had initiated it, or that sometimes it

was just that I had hallucinated it. And in doing all of that, he then revealed that my being so prudish about it is actually what led him to see a prostitute before we were married. And I was so confused, what was he talking about? And he said that he had felt such an urge, that it was so important to him, and that he'd been seeing a prostitute, and that that's one of the reasons that he'd been late

to events, because he was seeing a prostitute. And as it turned out, he hadn't seen his ex the day of our wedding, when he'd gone a war that had actually gone to a prostitute. There were just so many disturbing experiences, and as the weeks rolled on, I became

convinced that he was trying to kill me. He doing reading, he was always doing reading, and he was reading about a woman who had been killed by her husband on their honeymoon while scuba diving, and that had happened, I think in recent years at the time, and he was expressing how disappointing and how terrible that would have been. But it was really planning seeds in my head. And

then there are all these things. He would cross roads and be holding my hand, and then he would trip over because he was such a clumsy person, and accidentally push me into traffic on busy roads where we were, and when we would get out of taxis, he would accidentally trip and accidentally slam doors which would accidentally hit me. And there were just lots of little things. There was food that he would give me that just tasted wrong. I was worried that he was giving me drugs. I

didn't want to eat. I didn't want to drink anything that wasn't given direct to me by a waiter. And even when it was, I was suspicious that he had somehow construed for there to be something in it. He started just blatantly telling me lies he had made about his ex, about his job, about his financial status, about his life, his family. Just seemed to be opening Pandora's box, and nothing was eliciting it. He just really wanted to

tell me all these things. He just unraveled in telling me all these things, like we're married now, so I can tell you the truth. It felt very orchestrated that he was in no way trying to make me feel good anymore. He was actively trying to make me feel unsettled and scared. And he would then fall asleep while I was still talking, sometimes or at least pretending to

fall asleep. I felt very set up. It all felt very contrived and very overt, telling me that things that I had definitely experienced didn't happen, telling me that times when he had done or said things like not fed my cat for multiple days on a row, even though he'd been telling me that that didn't happen. All of a sudden, he was telling me things. Just everything that came out of his mouth was just stuff to confuse

and derail and scare me. And I was just in a heightened state, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, was scared that he was poisoning me. I felt like everything was a trap and a setup, and was I going to get somewhere? And he had arranged for something bad to happen to me. Was he trying to just hurt me or scare me? I locked myself in a hungry jack's bathroom and wouldn't come out about midway through the honeymoon and called my best friend and told her everything, and she was like, okay,

so just come home. And I was like, and so can I come home now and just tell everyone this? And she's like, I think this is pretty good cause to just come home. And I said, okay, we go

organize that. And what I decided to do in consultation with her is download an app on my phone so that I could have notes that had a password on it, because one of the things he revealed was that he'd gone through my phone and that he had read everything, and that he was doing it because he wanted to know me and he wanted to make sure that I

wasn't hiding anything. So I made a list of all the things that I could on my phone and I told my best friend on the phone the password, but I told it to her in code because I was convinced. Now I was just so paranoid. I was convinced somehow he had put some sort of recording device on my phone. I was now just going crazy, but I had to play along to get home, and I didn't know what he was going to do with my passport. I had no money. It was the worst few weeks of my life.

I was just scared, so scared.

by the police. I wanted them to take it seriously, and I thought, what has my life become? The police came to my apartment while he wasn't there. They were really good. They actually sent like special police who were trained to be I think, domestic valanced police, and I explained everything to them. They called my husband. This is all like in the day we got back. They called my husband. They told him he wasn't to come to the house.

couldn't work, went to my mum's house. Everything unraveled, and he sent comforting messages to my friends and family for the whole time of I hope she's okay, And you know, she really struggled with being overseas and being in your environments and really did his best to make sure that my family thought that the problem was that I'd had a break down and that had nothing to do with him, and so that everything that I was saying was just as a result of that. Yeah, my whole life unraveled.

Someone at my work contacted me to say, are you okay, and something like if I say something, you don't have to respond to it. But there are a lot of women in the world who are being abused, and I wish I could help them, and I think people need to know that abuse is really common, and so I just wanted you to know. And she was just the first person who ventured that, you know, to ask who the first person I didn't. We weren't even that close, but she was the first person to objectively go, maybe

Jess isn't the problem. I had an epiphan in a moment of all this fog. I had a moment where I thought, oh, I wonder if I can contact his ex, the one who'd sent the letter, And she immediately was just incredibly helpful and told me that everything that was happening to me is what in some ways had happened to her. And then her letter made sense because she had talked about physical violence, but about him actively breaking her things and actively hurting her, whereas he had morphed

that for me into it being clumsiness. So he'd clumsily broken all of my things. He had never yelled at me. He was like a disease that had morphed. You know that diseases in order to self perpetuate, they don't stay the same. With her, he had yelled, he had sworn. With me. He never yelled, He never swore. So that's why her letter didn't correlate to me. It didn't make sense,

didn't that up. It's like a different person. But he did break all of my things, and he'd broke all of her things too, But they were in a rage. She was terrified of him because of his rages. He never raged with me. With me, it was psychological abuse confusion, so he had morphed in order to get his next victim. Me. Talking to her, it all was really clear, and actually

she was able to identify it. She said that he had applied to be in the military, and that he had been denied because he had been diagnosed as having a personality disorder, and that they had encouraged him to seek guidance and assistance for that, and she had gone with him to the counseling sessions and tried to help him, and that she'd gone along with it for so long because her personality was to be helpful, and that she had supported him through it for years, and in the

end it was him who discarded her, not the other way around. So she felt abandoned by him, which is why she had sent the letter. She was scared, but she said even then there was still just this lingering sense of not having resolved it. She hadn't put it behind her. She was worried for the next person, and she still felt immeshed, and he was still contacting her, dragging her along through it, reminding her of things. Things

started becoming clear. I felt very validated. But the problem was that as I came out of the fog, and as I knew what was happening, and as I started going to a psychologist and getting assistants, I had a brief moment. And when I say brief, moment weeks where I thought I can fix him, she wasn't able to fix him. I can fix him. So even when I'm in the depths of despair, as I started to come out of the fog instead of getting as far away as possible, I felt like, oh, poor guy, he has

a personality disorder. I can help him with that. And then I started obsessively researching it. I tried to talk to him about it, and if you can just admit that you have this, wee can work through this together. I applied for a job, a new job. I told him about the job. I said, you know, we can buy the picket fence now together because I've sold my apartment because of that breakdown I had. And he was all on board with it, and he was like, yeah, no, cool,

that'd be great. I didn't want it to be at the end. I wanted to redeem myself and redeem the relationship. And then there was a waiting period for the new job where they didn't get back to me, even though it seemed like I was going to get the job, but they hadn't confirmed it. And then one day they

called me. Maybe it had been two weeks. They called me and They left a voicemail saying, just letting you know, respectfully, that your husband called to check how the progress of your job application was, which is a little unusual for us. But I just wanted to let you know that there's been some complications, but that we're not offering you the job, and we just wanted to let you know that your husband called. And fortunately that's what snapped me out of it.

That was the moment where I was like, what is happening when he'd inadvertently drawn outside people into it. This person had left me this strange voicemail that I then replayed a hundred times, and I was able to go, yep, no, that's right, Okay, this is not redeemable. Even if he is redeemable, it's beyond my scope. I am not a psychologist, and I'm done, cut it and run. You have to do mandatory counseling to end a marriage, and so I

told him that and he agreed to turn up. He attended I think maybe three counseling sessions was what we had to do. And he listened to me say everything, and he listened so respectfully, he nodded, he expressed empathy for me, and anyways, after maybe three sessions, the psychologist who had been seeing us leant over and looked me straight in the eyes. And it was the most startling thing that I think has ever happened, because I know

that it's not what he was supposed to do. And he said, Matt is dangerous and you need to end this. We're not going to do this anymore. And so I'm telling you that you need to just look at him and say I want a divorce and I'm done, and then he's going to leave the room and he will never contact you again. And I was so shocked by it. I did exactly what the psychologist said. I turned to him, I said those words. He was out of the room

before I had even finished them. I feel like he saw that the outside world had caught him and that there was no going back there, that he may as well just move on. And Yeah, that was it, normal messages, nom my calls, nothing, It was done. I developed pneumonia, I had to go to hospital. I wanted to die. I lost all my money, went back to scratch, didn't want to be a mother anymore. He was just waiting for a bus. Yeah, that's it was just the absolute

depths of despair. I didn't want to come back from it. It was the first time in my life there had been something so incredibly traumatic that I had been complicit in that. I was humiliated by that. I felt like I couldn't trust myself, couldn't trust myself to have another relationship, couldn't trust myself to be a mother, couldn't trust myself to do my job. I just wanted to die so much. And I was very lucky that my mom just I just felt like I couldn't go through with anything like

that because it would leave her. So yeah, I was very, very lucky that she didn't really leave me alone. Whenever she thought I was in the absolute pits of despair, she would fall over and hurt herself or things like that and then cry and be like, just come help me, I need help. And I'm like, you know, I wasn't going to stay in bed when she was yelling things like that out And she really played me in a good way. And yeah, I lived with her for a while.

And then the police contacted me to say that there was another victim and asked if I was prepared to talk to that person because I had expressed to them in doing a debriefing that I'd expressed to them that I would be prepared to be like the person who'd helped me. So I helped that person, and that was actually really cathartic for me to help the next victim who had a similar experience. Hers was worse. I would say. She didn't marry him, but the experience was worse because

he was able to make it more intense. She was a psychologist, and it destroyed her career, and she didn't trust herself to have that career. And it was validating for me to hear that someone smarter than me, who should have picked it, could have picked it. Maybe I don't know that she didn't pick it either. That was comforting. I then asked the police not to contact me again and said that I was done, and I felt really bad for any future victims, but that I couldn't do

that again. And even though I'd been the one to initiate and say please, I would like to help someone, I didn't want that to be my life. And I'd had enough therapy that I felt like I wanted to live again, and everything reminded me of it in the city where we lived, so I moved cities and started a new life and didn't tell people about it, and it's just one of those things we don't talk about now.

of it appealed to me. A psychologist said to me that when you're in a state like that, when you're in the middle of a forest and it's dark and everything around you feel scary, just know that forests aren't the whole world, and that if you just keep walking, even if it's slowly, even if you're crawling, you'll eventually get out of the forest. And the only time you won't get out of the forest is if you just give up. And so I just kept crawling. The moving

was good. It gave me something to do. And I met a girl at my new job who was a solo mum by choice, and I didn't know that was a big thing. I would have done that when I was thirty if i'd known it was a thing, because I just wanted to be a mom. I didn't really want a relationship. I just wanted to be a mom. She told me that that was a thing, and I didn't have any money anymore, so I used my superannuation and that gave me another reason to live, and I got pregnant, I had a baby. It's given me out

whole nother life that, yeah, I'm really grateful for. I would do all of it all over again to get the life I have now. But I hope that other people listen to this and if they know like I did, that they didn't really want a relationship. They just wanted to be a mom. I hope that they know that you can and you can just do it on your own. Relationships can happen later if you want them and never want a relationship again. I know that I could spend a lot of money on therapy maybe and change my mind,

but I don't want to. I'm actively I'm so happy from the moment I got pregnant, No, I felt like I was a new person for me. That death and being reborn as a mum was just so wonderful because it was whole new life and a whole new reason to live and changed my life. I wish I could, of course, skip the whole part in the middle, you know, age twenty five to thirty, all the bad relationships, because I'm just not good in them. I don't like them, I don't like being in relationships. They hard work for

me and I don't feel the value in them. And I knew that, but I thought that the only way to be a mum was to have them. So that's why I was looking for this elusive prince charming and at thirty, retrospectively, I was just so desperate to get on with it. You know, maybe the gut feelings that I had that it was wrong, I ignored them because I just wanted a baby daddy so much, didn't want a relationship,

wanted a baby daddy. Didn't know what a good relationship would feel like, so at least that was a different feeling to all the other ones. I've never been happier than I am now since the day I was pregnant. Like I don't have any medication, I stopped medication to do IVF. But from the day I got pregnant, I haven't had a bad day. There have been bad moments, bad things have happened. It've literally not woken up feeling

bad and gone to bed feeling bad. I can't even imagine what that feels like, and I hope to never feel like that again. But it never. No matter what terrible things my daughter has done, how many tantrums she's thrown, I feel nothing but just joy to be alive. I now use my experience to help other people, and so maybe you know that was my place in the world. I don't think that these sorts of things have to happen, and I don't think I hope that it's happening less

and less. That women are becoming more the more podcasts they listen to, the more articles they read, they become more aware of it. And I think society is evolving so that you can just say I feel like my gut is off and this is wrong and I'm going to end it. And we've become better at accepting that as the excuse to cancel weddings or to not go on dates. And so I guess I'm part of shaping that narrative, a new narrative for women to empower them more, and that's nice.

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