[Solved] My horror story - part one

In 2009 I met my now ex partner. We fell in love and within a few months she moved in with me with her two children. I already had two much older children who within the same year moved out to live lives of their own. They're not really part of the story. At this point I was renting a lovely three bedroom house and supporting myself and two children.

According to my partner, she had been in an abusive relationship with a man who was focused entirely upon his son and was abusive to her and the daughter. He had apparently violently raped my partner as their relationship ended and ours began. She said that she wouldn't go to the police and would just move on with her life. Her daughter was in her first year of primary school and her son was a one year old toddler. The daughter was still wetting the bed which my partner claimed was a result of her ex's abuse towards her. My ex also revealed that she had wanted to kill her daughter when she was born because she resented her for taking her life away and because she had lost friends. She couldn't deal with the constant crying and was under a lot of stress. It seemed understandable, I know a lot of parents struggle with young children.

I listened to telephone conversations between her and her ex and his attitude was very aggressive and their conversations often resulted in arguments. I felt very protective at this stage and banned him from entering my home when he came to pick up the children.

During this period, my ex also began to relate stories of how she had been sexually abused by multiple men in her past. These included her grandfather, her first boyfriend and a babysitter. The stories she told were almost too incredulous to believe. Her first boyfriend had apparently sold her for [censored] in exchange for drugs, tortured her with cold showers, tied her to a tree and raped her, etc. I listened to the most horrendous stories of abuse for years - abuse from a sixteen year old boy.

She seemed almost obsessed with sexual abuse and over the years I became increasingly convinced that she was fabricating the whole thing. This was backed up by other things that happened and what seemed to me someone who would constantly tell lies to get attention. There were countless examples but they're just too much to tell for this story.

In the meantime, our first daughter was born. I was utterly overjoyed. From the day she was born she was my little girl. Between us, my partner and I agreed that I would give up work and she would get a part time job. I was to be a stay at home dad and everyone was happy with the arrangement. Especially my ex who had agreed that she couldn't cope with new born babies and crying, etc.

But our relationship was already showing signs of trouble. She had absolutely no control of her children - they constantly made a mess and were unruly. My ex was having extreme mood swings with no rational explanation. An example would be when I ate a chip from some chipshop chips and she utterly lost it. This resulted in a huge argument because she just wouldn't let it go.

She would come home from work and end up in tears and throwing temper tantrums because our daughter showed more attention to me and seemed to want little to do with her. She was showing signs of extreme insecurity and jealousy - nothing I said or did would placate her. She started manipulating our daughter to stop spending time with me and to spend more time with her. Until she started crying that is - then she was mine.

It was becoming increasing obvious that my partner was emotionally unstable. Her father had bipolar disorder and her sister was receiving care from the NHS for mental instability, regularly attending clinics and taking medication for her behaviour. I began to wonder if it was a genetic condition.

Encouraged by his aggressive father, her son started being very cruel and aggressive towards our daughter. This continued throughout our relationship and caused many arguments. It was made worse because my partner had no idea of how to control him - most times she would just excuse his behaviour as if he was doing nothing wrong and other times she would resort to physical violence and screaming at him. But this didn't come until later in the relationship. The general consensus between them however was that our daughter was a spoiled "daddy's little girl".

On several occasions I witnessed my ex beating her son and screaming at him constantly for hours - he was sent to his bedroom for hours at a time or forced to sit in the utility room where the washing machine and tumble dryer were. The reasons for her violent and aggressive treatment of him were often petty things, such as him not understanding his homework.

Throughout this time, my partner was passing out regularly. She had a heart condition that caused her heart to beat extremely fast. She refused to go to the the DVLA or the doctors to have herself assessed and I was constantly finding her lying on the floor. I was extremely worried that this would happen when she was driving. This happened at least once every two weeks. She assured me that she always knew when it was going to happen as she had warning signs.

Also throughout this time, my partner had been telling me that she believed she could heal people with her mind. She looks after severely disabled people in a care home and would regularly come home and tell me how she had lost tablets and use her mind healing in replacement for critical life saving drugs. This as well as telling me that she would give too much or too little medicine to the patients on many occasions. Eventually one of the patients at the home died and she was distraught because the other employers there had blamed her.

The first big sign of trouble was when I removed our daughter from the house because I was extremely worried about her safety. My partner and her two children had been leaving things that were dangerous to our daughter lying around. Needles, small toys that could be swallowed, all manner of things. I tried to explain to them on more occasions than I can recall how dangerous it was, but I was ignored. One day our daughter got hold of some pills that had been left in my partners handbag. I was lucky that I spotted her in time. An argument ensued and I picked my daughter up and walked out. I was barely ten minutes away when I decided to calm down and try to fix things. As I approached the house, the police turned up. She had told them I was trying to kidnap our daughter!

The police sat her down and explained to her that I had full parental responsibility and it wasn't possible for me to kidnap my own daughter. Things calmed down and the police left. No further action was taken against me. This is relevant later on when our relationship ends and my partner accuses me of attempted kidnapping and later on the court papers that I had attempted to kill our daughter on that day. I'll get to that later. But in the meantime I was regularly told that if I ever tried to split up with her and try to gain custody of the children she would destroy my life, that fathers had no rights and that I would end up losing our daughter.

Afraid of walking out again for fear of the lies that she would make up to the police, I continued with the relationship, hoping that things would get better. Our second daughter was born. The threats continued however that I would have no contact with the children if things turned sour between us. I had absolutely no money - every penny was controlled by her and she received all of the children's benefits and her wages. Arguments continued and once the children were past the crying baby stage I was constantly accused of failing to support the family because I would not look for work. The truth is that I simply didn't trust her with the children - that her violence and lies, her mood swings, heart condition, her jealousy and insecurity and the constant episodes of neglect and abuse were enough to convince me that the kids were better off at home with dad. This feeling was multiplied because of the constant bullying from my partners son towards the girls - he was an angry little man who would do anything to cause trouble for them. I had no income, nowhere to go, and little chance of getting help from the government in the form of housing or benefits. I couldn't leave and go back to work - who would look after the children? But then there was the constant worry that she would win custody anyway - the system was and still is biased towards mothers.

I doted on my daughters - they were my world. Every day I would teach them everything I possibly could. I would do everything I could to keep them safe and happy, safe from their bullying brother, safe from their mother. The love between us went both ways and my partner grew ever more resentful, ever more irrational. Every episode of insecurity would result in me trying to placate her, lots of tears, and things would calm down. Each time I believed we could work things out, that we'd get there in the end.

This was until 2015 when the relationship started to really feel the strain. We separated in January 2016.

To be continued...