Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters.
Speaker 2: This podcast is recorded on. This episode deals with some
Speaker 2: strong themes. Listener discretion is advised. The trick to mastering
Speaker 2: manifestation is to speak what you seek until you see
Speaker 2: what you've said, and when the universe not only listens
Speaker 2: but delivers, it's truly a powerful thing. Just ask Jess.
Speaker 1: I felt so valued, so seen, so respected. I felt
Speaker 1: like my whole life had been building to this point
Speaker 1: where someone was finally seeing how amazing I was and
Speaker 1: I wasn't having to point it out to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was on a pedestal, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: deserve to be there.
Speaker 2: But what's more powerful, the manifestation added, it's best, dear listener,
Speaker 2: It's that little thing called a gut feeling when everything
Speaker 2: seems perfect but your intuition suggests otherwise. Sometimes it's subtle,
Speaker 2: but other times it raises an internal alarm that can't
Speaker 2: be ignored.
Speaker 1: There were just so many disturbing experiences, and as the
Speaker 1: weeks rolled on, I became convinced that he was trying
Speaker 1: to kill me. It felt very orchestrated that he was
Speaker 1: in no way trying to make me feel good anymore.
Speaker 1: I felt like everything was a trap and a setup.
Speaker 2: I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an ex
Speaker 2: Come with me as we dive into a collection of
Speaker 2: unconventional stories about relationships past through the eyes and the
Speaker 2: hearts of the very people who live them. Meet Jess
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen. She had the world at her feet,
Speaker 2: a good job, a wonderful family, and great friendships. There
Speaker 2: was only one thing missing.
Speaker 1: I was thirty, the most successful and happy I had
Speaker 1: ever been in my life, and absolutely ready to have
Speaker 1: a baby. And it was a driving force. It had
Speaker 1: me online on Tinder and every other dating app.
Speaker 2: Jess knew what she wanted. Love sounded great, but she
Speaker 2: didn't want to muck around with a dating and games
Speaker 2: back and forth. She wanted to find her baby daddy,
Speaker 2: and she wanted to find him now, and she made
Speaker 2: no secret of that. When she matched with Matt.
Speaker 1: Right from the get go, he stood out because he
Speaker 1: was actually having proper conversation on Tinder. He was not
Speaker 1: making any sexual references. It was very respectful. He was funny,
Speaker 1: he was personable. He was asking me questions instead of
Speaker 1: me having to ask him questions, he initiated the conversation
Speaker 1: all the things that you want to happen on online
Speaker 1: dating men don't do, and yeah, it was wonderful. We
Speaker 1: hit it off very quickly in messages and established that
Speaker 1: we had lots of things in common, including place where
Speaker 1: we both had played volleyball. I played volleyball there at
Speaker 1: the time and he had previously played volleyball there. And
Speaker 1: actually it was him saying that he had played volleyball
Speaker 1: at that particular venue that really reduced that anxiety that
Speaker 1: you have about meeting someone because we had a shared location,
Speaker 1: and on that basis, I agreed to meet him in
Speaker 1: real life. So we arranged to meet. He set the
Speaker 1: location and the time. It felt wonderful. I was so excited,
Speaker 1: and he picked a place that he told a beautiful
Speaker 1: little story about the name of the pub where we
Speaker 1: were going to meet, and what a beautiful name it was,
Speaker 1: because and he weaved it into a story that made
Speaker 1: it seem like it was just a pitch are perfect
Speaker 1: fairy tale place to meet. And I got to the
Speaker 1: venue at the time, and I was in my car
Speaker 1: and something felt wrong and I didn't know what felt wrong,
Speaker 1: and so I rang my best friend and she said, no,
Speaker 1: it's just that it's so right. All the stars are aligning,
Speaker 1: and it's just never been this good. That's what this is.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is it, this is the guy, this is
Speaker 1: going to be the baby daddy. That's what you're probably feeling.
Speaker 1: It's those nerves of it's so good you can't believe it.
Speaker 1: And then I got into the pub. He wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and I called. He didn't answer. I messaged, he didn't respond.
Speaker 1: I felt humiliated and I was so overwhelmed, went back
Speaker 1: to my car, burst into tears. I was almost ready
Speaker 1: to leave when he sent a message and the message
Speaker 1: said where are you? You're still coming. I'm feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit overwhelmed that you hadn't arrived yet. Are you okay?
Speaker 1: And I thought what? I was there and then he
Speaker 1: said where are you? And I said, I'll win my
Speaker 1: car and suggests, but did you go to? And he
Speaker 1: named the venue and I'm like, no, because that's not
Speaker 1: where you set the time or the place for us
Speaker 1: to meet. And he said no, no, no, I set
Speaker 1: the time for five o'clock at and he gave me
Speaker 1: the name and I was like, no, you said it
Speaker 1: for five point thirty and I gave him the name
Speaker 1: the actually said, and I was like, I can go
Speaker 1: back through the Tinder messages and find this, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't need to do that. It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1: Just come to where, come here, come here.
Speaker 2: Gosh, this was a mess. This is absolutely not the
Speaker 2: fairy tale start to a relationship anyone wants. But she'd
Speaker 2: got dressed up and she had been excited. What was
Speaker 2: there to lose?
Speaker 1: And then, of course I felt guilty because here I
Speaker 1: was being petulant. I'd probably been the one that's stuffed
Speaker 1: up the way that I'd interpreted the incorrect name to
Speaker 1: this pub and the incorrect time, and I felt bad.
Speaker 1: He'd been waiting there for half an hour, though he'd
Speaker 1: set the time, and it was just a mess. And anyway,
Speaker 1: when I got there, he'd already ordered me a drink,
Speaker 1: which was really lovely. He'd ordered me a second drink
Speaker 1: so that it was fresh. And then I felt extra
Speaker 1: guilty because now there were two drinks lined up. He
Speaker 1: was so eloquent, he was just so charming. He was
Speaker 1: better looking than he had been in the Tinder photos,
Speaker 1: and he just looked and behaved in such an immaculate
Speaker 1: way that I felt foolish that I had doubted meeting
Speaker 1: this guy. I was in a complete fog from the
Speaker 1: moment I met him, and it felt so different to
Speaker 1: every other first meeting. It was like being in a
Speaker 1: fairy tale, and no matter what I said or did,
Speaker 1: he found a way to compliment it, to make me
Speaker 1: feel good about it, to elicit a response out of me.
Speaker 1: Where I was being really vulnerable and honest and sincere
Speaker 1: and sharing things that I'd never shared before, and it
Speaker 1: just felt so honest. I was just feeling vulnerable, silly,
Speaker 1: beside myself with excitement that this wonderful person had come
Speaker 1: into my life. So it went from one drink to two,
Speaker 1: and then he asked if I'd like to have dinner,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't forward about it. He was like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be disrespectful. I understand and appreciate that
Speaker 1: you might want to go home and debrief, and you've
Speaker 1: had a long day, if you'd like to have dinner
Speaker 1: Like it felt like there was no pressure whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: I loved the dinner. I loved everything about it. It
Speaker 1: was wonderful, It was respectful. I never felt like he
Speaker 1: was then going to ask if you could come back
Speaker 1: to my house. And there were several other dates that
Speaker 1: followed that where it was this same magical experience and
Speaker 1: no expectation of sex, no expectation of anything, and it
Speaker 1: just felt like the kind of fairytale story that you
Speaker 1: would tell at a wedding about how we meant and
Speaker 1: how magical it was. And it was such a wonderful story.
Speaker 1: Every day was wonderful fodder for taking into work and
Speaker 1: telling telling other girls about you know, like it was
Speaker 1: just so perfect. And he had all this very specific
Speaker 1: knowledge about places and things, and such an incredible memory
Speaker 1: for everything that I had said, even way back at
Speaker 1: the tinder point, and I was so impressed by everything
Speaker 1: he said.
Speaker 2: Jess had met her match, so it wasn't long until
Speaker 2: the other matches were no longer necessary.
Speaker 1: The second date, he and it wasn't abrupt, it wasn't creepy,
Speaker 1: like I must have said something like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: remember what you said about that thing. I have to
Speaker 1: get Tinder out, and he was like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: check Tinder because I deleted the app. He seemed to
Speaker 1: have completely stopped talking to every other girl on Tinder
Speaker 1: the second that we had connected, whereas I was still
Speaker 1: carrying on these conversations with other people. And then I
Speaker 1: felt like, Oh, I'm such a bad person that I'm
Speaker 1: considering these backup plans, and you're such a better person
Speaker 1: than me. You've really dedicated yourself to me, whereas I
Speaker 1: was struggling to remember, you know, what suburb he lived in,
Speaker 1: and he could remember what suburb I grew up in.
Speaker 2: So that was it. Really, there was no more Tinder,
Speaker 2: no one else. There was really only one more step
Speaker 2: to make this officially official.
Speaker 1: We had had maybe three dates that weren't long ones.
Speaker 1: There was the long one, the first one, then there
Speaker 1: were a couple of little ones that just fit in
Speaker 1: with my schedule around what I was doing in that week.
Speaker 1: And it was the second week that we had known
Speaker 1: each other, and his family had a Friday night dinner,
Speaker 1: and he invited me to the family's Friday night dinner.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel rushed, it didn't feel too full on,
Speaker 1: It just felt perfect. And he sent me a screenshot
Speaker 1: of of him asking his mom if he could bring
Speaker 1: a girl who he had just started seeing because it
Speaker 1: was just so magical, and would he mind? And I
Speaker 1: just thought, what a respectful guy that he's asking his
Speaker 1: mom if she's okay with it, And so he sent
Speaker 1: me the screenshot of this conversation with his mum, which
Speaker 1: then felt more abort and so I just felt honored
Speaker 1: to have been invited to this family dinner. And when
Speaker 1: I arrived at the family dinner, I was welcomed as
Speaker 1: if I was just part of the family, and that
Speaker 1: really solidified it for me, and I felt like this
Speaker 1: was meant to be. It was all the stars had aligned.
Speaker 1: I felt so valued, so seen, so respected. I felt
Speaker 1: like my whole life had been building to this point
Speaker 1: where someone was finally seeing how amazing I was and
Speaker 1: I wasn't having to point it out to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was on a pedestal well, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I deserved to be there and validated. For all of
Speaker 1: the men that I had not followed through with previously,
Speaker 1: all of the breakups, it all felt like it was
Speaker 1: coming to this moment, this magical experience, and like I
Speaker 1: had won some sort of love lottery, and ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the best feeling, best feeling. It was never a conversation,
Speaker 1: I think that he posted some photos perhaps of some dates,
Speaker 1: and it just sort of naturally kind of evolved and
Speaker 1: never needed to be sort of announced. And previously men
Speaker 1: hadn't posted things on Facebook, but here he was taking
Speaker 1: the lead and gently, respectfully posting photos of activities that
Speaker 1: we were doing and making little comments like this is
Speaker 1: when we changed our status updates because a decade ago now,
Speaker 1: but Matt is on a magical date with the most
Speaker 1: impressive woman, and without naming me or tagging me or
Speaker 1: putting a photo of my face, I knew that he
Speaker 1: was talking about me because there was a picture of
Speaker 1: our feet over the water or something like that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just naturally gradually happened, and he had me meeting his
Speaker 1: friends and family or within the first couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: but organically, so the dinner was an actual invite, but
Speaker 1: the other things that he organized, activities that were little that,
Speaker 1: you know, like a couple of hours here because I
Speaker 1: know you've got this important thing, and so I thought
Speaker 1: maybe we could just have this coffee and then you know,
Speaker 1: a friend would be walking by of his and I
Speaker 1: would be introduced to that friend, and that friend would say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I've heard so much about you, and
Speaker 1: then I would feel so honored, and then that friend
Speaker 1: would invite me to something that was happening that weekend,
Speaker 1: and it was just overwhelming. It just consumed about three
Speaker 1: weeks of my life, and I met every single person
Speaker 1: in his inner circle within that first month.
Speaker 2: And then come those three little words.
Speaker 1: It wasn't during sex. And the reason I remember that
Speaker 1: it wasn't during sex was because I definitely had a
Speaker 1: thing and I'd written a blog about it, and he
Speaker 1: had read all of my blogs, my public blog, and
Speaker 1: I remember being impressed because it was at an organic, beautiful,
Speaker 1: natural time that it would happen in Hollywood. It wasn't
Speaker 1: at the same time though, as every other relationship, which
Speaker 1: is after sex, and so for me, I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this must be real because it's not after sex, and
Speaker 1: I had alluded to that and my desire for that
Speaker 1: to one day happen in a blog. So it was
Speaker 1: something I definitely thought about, but I don't recall where
Speaker 1: it was. I just remember that the feeling I had
Speaker 1: was it has to be real this time. I did
Speaker 1: not immediately say it back, and I don't remember when
Speaker 1: I did, because the whole first month felt like I
Speaker 1: was being taken on a magic carpet. I didn't make
Speaker 1: any choices. I didn't plan any of the dates. I
Speaker 1: didn't plan anything. I was just going on this wonderful ride.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't leading the conversations or leading anything, and
Speaker 1: I was really enjoying that, so I was soaking it in.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it being a particular moment because I
Speaker 1: hadn't planned it or thought about it. It's not my
Speaker 1: style to have sat it so early or to have
Speaker 1: felt it. I was just responding, so at some point
Speaker 1: I imagined that I just started saying it back because
Speaker 1: I was overwhelmed, overwhelmed with happiness, not overwhelmed like, oh
Speaker 1: this is terrible and I should say it, but it
Speaker 1: just yeah, you just get swept up in emotions. Right
Speaker 1: from the very first time we met, we had very intense,
Speaker 1: very deep, serious conversations about you know, that I wanted
Speaker 1: a child, and that at thirty, I wanted a child yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't wait to sell my unit and buy
Speaker 1: a white picket fence house. And I shared all of
Speaker 1: those things because he was so interested in them, and
Speaker 1: he agreed with every aspiration I had. I wanted children
Speaker 1: he wanted children. I was hoping for two. He was
Speaker 1: hoping for two. I wanted to live in the suburbs
Speaker 1: and get out of the city. He wanted to live
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. I was very attached to the beach.
Speaker 1: He didn't mind where it was. It was all so
Speaker 1: perfect and aligned, and there were never any you know,
Speaker 1: bombshell conversations because everything I said he agreed with, and
Speaker 1: if he expressed any kind of disagreement, it was in
Speaker 1: such a positive Oh that's not how I was thinking.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's a better idea. The one you
Speaker 1: have is so much better than my own. Everything just
Speaker 1: was aligned. I felt like I was on the verge
Speaker 1: of getting everything I'd ever wanted, and that thirty years
Speaker 1: of waiting was all coming to fruition. I was about
Speaker 1: to be delivered my Prince Charming. It was only moments,
Speaker 1: it felt like before he was going to whip out
Speaker 1: a glass shoe and put it on my foot, and
Speaker 1: I was like, bring it on. I was so ready
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 2: So it's safe to say it was a fairly intense
Speaker 2: first few weeks together. Surely the whirlwind would soon slow
Speaker 2: down and they could fall into that beautiful mundaneity of
Speaker 2: normal relationships.
Speaker 1: At the end of the first month, he organized a
Speaker 1: dinner at a place that I had really wanted to
Speaker 1: go to that i'd only ever been to in the day.
Speaker 1: We'd been on a day date there, and I'd expressed
Speaker 1: how much I enjoyed the really beautiful place, beautiful venue.
Speaker 1: And he took me there on what was a month
Speaker 1: since we had first met, and I hadn't actually because
Speaker 1: it was such a whirlwind, hadn't counted the days, hadn't
Speaker 1: counted the weeks. But when we got there, he told
Speaker 1: me that it had been a month and that he
Speaker 1: was marking the month by bringing me to this wonderful
Speaker 1: place that on date two I had said that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to go to. And he said something like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be wonderful if we got married here? And
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, yeah, that would be wonderful. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was hypothetically talking, and he said, well, exactly two
Speaker 1: months from now will be your birthday, your thirty first birthday.
Speaker 1: Why don't we get married here on your birthday? I
Speaker 1: was like what. And it was the first time that
Speaker 1: I felt like that's too fast, that's too fast. But
Speaker 1: then he said, look, you know, let's let fate decide.
Speaker 1: Let's see if the venue's even available. You know what,
Speaker 1: this is such a popular venue. Let's just see if
Speaker 1: the stars align and if they have a vacancy in
Speaker 1: any of the areas. And he called the waiter over
Speaker 1: and he asked, could you just humor me, could you
Speaker 1: tell me if the wedding area here is available on
Speaker 1: this particular date. And that person was like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go check. And he went and checked and he said,
Speaker 1: oh no, look that area isn't available, but we have
Speaker 1: a separate area that we could create, but you would
Speaker 1: have to have under one hundred guests. And then my
Speaker 1: boyfriend said, oh, I've never seen that, Jesse. Have you've
Speaker 1: seen that? And I was like no, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that existed as a venue. And he said, could
Speaker 1: we have a tour now? He had orchestrated this. It
Speaker 1: was a surprise, and so this was a wonderful build
Speaker 1: up to me being taken off into this area and
Speaker 1: then him saying, will you marry me? I've picked out
Speaker 1: a ring, this is a venue. I just think we
Speaker 1: should start our lives now. And I laughed and said no.
Speaker 1: And because it was the first time that I had
Speaker 1: felt like no too soon alarm bells. It was my
Speaker 1: first alarm else. And then I just thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I had this other voice in my head, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you're a bit of a schmuck. You need to say
Speaker 1: yes to this. And I thought, me as a person,
Speaker 1: would usually be more reserved, be more cautious, be more rational,
Speaker 1: say no to this. And I thought, that's why you're
Speaker 1: thirty and until recently single, because you don't say yes
Speaker 1: to things like this. And in this really quick moment
Speaker 1: with this guy who's giving us a tour, and my
Speaker 1: birthday is coming up, and now I really wanted a baby,
Speaker 1: all of these things and I just thought, oh, just
Speaker 1: do it. And so I said yes, and he picked
Speaker 1: me up and spun me around, and it was so exciting,
Speaker 1: like a fairy tale. We just felt there was no
Speaker 1: point in waiting. We knew what we wanted from life.
Speaker 2: When it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and
Speaker 2: everything just felt so right. I mean pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: The next two months prior to my birthday and day
Speaker 1: we got married. In the back of my head, I
Speaker 1: still had that weird feeling, that gut feeling, that i'd
Speaker 1: had right back on the first date, but I had
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason to believe that that feeling was anything
Speaker 1: except for me being overwhelmed with how wonderful it was.
Speaker 1: But also now I had a solid reason for the feeling,
Speaker 1: and that was that it was very soon. But everyone
Speaker 1: in my life and his seemed so excited when we
Speaker 1: told them, and I had really expected people to raise eyebrows,
Speaker 1: but he was just so charismatic, and everyone knew how
Speaker 1: much I wanted to have a baby and get married
Speaker 1: and have the picket fence, and all of my friends
Speaker 1: had done it already. Everyone knew, and so it just
Speaker 1: seemed too good to be true, and what's the worst
Speaker 1: that could happen? Was the sort of general response.
Speaker 2: So it was time to plan a with it.
Speaker 1: I love exciting things like that. I love planning trips
Speaker 1: on a whim. I love adventures, and at the time,
Speaker 1: because I was at the peak of my life, I
Speaker 1: could afford to do it. There were no barriers to that,
Speaker 1: and I felt like it was exciting and special and
Speaker 1: made us unique that it wasn't this drawn out, long process,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't much for pomp and ceremony, so I
Speaker 1: liked that there wasn't a Hen's Night, and that there
Speaker 1: wasn't a kitchen tea or any of that. That it
Speaker 1: just was here's what's happening. We're getting married, come to
Speaker 1: the wedding, and it was just one big celebration rather
Speaker 1: than being a drawn out one. And I was aware
Speaker 1: that also there were people who were going to come
Speaker 1: to that wedding who'd never met him and who'd never
Speaker 1: heard of him, and who their first mention of him
Speaker 1: was in an invitation to the wedding. So I was
Speaker 1: a bit embarrassed by that, and I was glad to
Speaker 1: be done with the rigmarole that goes with you know,
Speaker 1: you meet a guy and you follow this timeline and
Speaker 1: you do this, you do that, you go on your
Speaker 1: first trip together, and you see how you go, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I just thought people do that all the time. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, when you start telling people on Facebook and
Speaker 1: just in your day to day life that you're going
Speaker 1: to get married to someone you just met, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everyone's telling you all their stories of people
Speaker 1: they know that were successful and who got married after
Speaker 1: knowing each other a week a month, And everyone starts
Speaker 1: coming out of the woodworks with their stories and their
Speaker 1: bailed opportunities. That time they didn't say yes, and that
Speaker 1: guy was the one and they missed out. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of confirmation bias coming at you that reinforces
Speaker 1: your decision because people want to be supportive. There were
Speaker 1: lots of things that made him an imperfect person and
Speaker 1: us an imperfect couple, but nothing that seemed like red flag.
Speaker 1: One of the things was that him spelling things on
Speaker 1: me never stopped. He was very clumsy, but he was
Speaker 1: always so embarrassed by it, and so even though it
Speaker 1: was annoying, it wasn't a deal breaker. You can't break
Speaker 1: up with someone because they're clumsy. But he broke a
Speaker 1: lot of my things in my house. He moved in
Speaker 1: like immediately, it was never even a thing. He didn't
Speaker 1: pay rent or anything, and I didn't like that. I'd
Speaker 1: never had someone just move in and not pay rent.
Speaker 1: But he just sort of was always there and just
Speaker 1: seemed natural. He was watering my plants and feeding my cats,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed natural. He was often late for things.
Speaker 1: He would set the time for things or the place,
Speaker 1: the venue, and then he was either not there or
Speaker 1: he wouldn't show up. He had to work late, and
Speaker 1: it was a pattern. And I remember tallying up in
Speaker 1: my head the things that made him not the perfect guy,
Speaker 1: and they were silly things like he's always late, he
Speaker 1: works really long hours. But he always compensated for those
Speaker 1: things by when he did show up. He was a
Speaker 1: life of the party. He was always really apologetic. It
Speaker 1: always seemed to be sincere. He would arrive with stories
Speaker 1: about what had happened at work that made him a hero,
Speaker 1: and that's why he was late, because he had a
Speaker 1: heroic job, and everyone would be so enamored by his
Speaker 1: incredible story that you couldn't hold a grudge. I definitely
Speaker 1: didn't hold a grudge when he was late, because it
Speaker 1: was that he was helping people and everything that he
Speaker 1: did that was irritating or that I didn't like. He
Speaker 1: was a terrible driver, and he didn't have a car,
Speaker 1: so he drove my car terribly. All of these things
Speaker 1: just seemed like petty things. Do you know. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: if this is it, if this is all I have
Speaker 1: to put up with. I mean, look at all my
Speaker 1: exes been drunks and men who didn't earn money. There
Speaker 1: had been violent men, men who didn't have good relationships
Speaker 1: with their friends or family. This guy had at all.
Speaker 1: He was just perfect, so that he was clumsy, late,
Speaker 1: and often got the dates and times of things wrong.
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 2: Okay, dear listener, we know something's going to happen here
Speaker 2: a great guy falling madly in love, planning a wedding
Speaker 2: after a month that should be the most fun, happy
Speaker 2: and exciting time of relationship. So you might not believe
Speaker 2: me if I say one day things started going wrong.
Speaker 2: So I'll let just tell you.
Speaker 1: So everything sort of came undone the week of the wedding.
Speaker 1: The week of the wedding, we were out at a
Speaker 1: dinner with people who were going to be in the
Speaker 1: bridal party. It was a really lovely dinner, except that
Speaker 1: he'd been late arriving. And then he got a message,
Speaker 1: and then he went and took a phone call and
Speaker 1: it seemed to be quite serious, and he came back
Speaker 1: and he ended the dinner early, which is not something
Speaker 1: he'd done before, and he said, oh, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got to deal with this important thing, and it made
Speaker 1: it sound like it was an important work thing and
Speaker 1: that we had to leave. And then he said we
Speaker 1: had to go to his parents' house, and he wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell me why we were going to his parents' house,
Speaker 1: and the uncertainty it was unsettling. I wasn't quite sure,
Speaker 1: and then I thought it's probably a surprise because he
Speaker 1: was like that, and I thought, oh, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we're having like an engagement party or something that I
Speaker 1: don't know about, because it's weird that he would take
Speaker 1: us away from our friends early and not tell me why.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I kind of had it in my head
Speaker 1: that we were going to something special. And then when
Speaker 1: we got to his parents' house, it was that his
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend had sent his parents a letter. She'd found
Speaker 1: out that he was getting married, and she had sent
Speaker 1: them a letter saying, please, can you let his potential
Speaker 1: bride know that he's dangerous. When we got to the house,
Speaker 1: his dad took him off to another room and his
Speaker 1: mum fussed with me, but she wouldn't tell me what
Speaker 1: the fuss was, and I realized that something bad had happened,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't sure what bad thing had happened. And
Speaker 1: then they came out they fussed about a bit more,
Speaker 1: and I got quite upset and angry because no one
Speaker 1: was telling me what was happening, and there was something
Speaker 1: clearly wrong that no one was telling me. And I
Speaker 1: got very angry, and I did some yelling and swearing
Speaker 1: and said how uncomfortable I felt, and all of those
Speaker 1: feelings in my stomach came back, and I said something
Speaker 1: like I am not marrying you without knowing what this is.
Speaker 1: It was the first time I'd really asserted myself, and
Speaker 1: the first time I'd felt like things were really off
Speaker 1: and something was wrong. I just went into overdrive, hyperreacting
Speaker 1: to it. And so I think they felt like they
Speaker 1: just had to tell me because there was no kind
Speaker 1: of getting out of it, and they let me read
Speaker 1: the letter, and it was just shocking, and it was
Speaker 1: like it had been written about someone else. I couldn't
Speaker 1: compute it. The letter said that he was violent, that
Speaker 1: he was always yelling at her, that they'd been together
Speaker 1: for several years, and that it was an abusive relationship,
Speaker 1: and it listed all different kinds of abuse, and none
Speaker 1: of it correlated to what I had experienced at all.
Speaker 1: It was like I was written by someone else about
Speaker 1: someone else. It was just it was bizarre because he
Speaker 1: never yelled at may, he never even raised his voice.
Speaker 1: He was so elegant, and he'd never done anything that
Speaker 1: was overtly even close to abuse. He had posted things
Speaker 1: on his social media that were really pro women and
Speaker 1: anti abuse. He'd said all the things that you would
Speaker 1: want a man to say that were very feminist and liberating.
Speaker 1: He was really compassionate about his ex and said things like, look,
Speaker 1: she's got a lot of mental health problems and I
Speaker 1: didn't tell you about them because you know she's crazy,
Speaker 1: And he said it in such a sympathetic way, and
Speaker 1: he gave a few examples, and it was just so sincere.
Speaker 1: He never got mad, he was never rattled by it.
Speaker 1: He genuinely seemed to be sad for her. He said
Speaker 1: that he would call her and check that she was okay,
Speaker 1: and he expressed that her family had a lot of
Speaker 1: mental health issues and she had a lot going on
Speaker 1: and that had been why they'd broken up. And he
Speaker 1: revealed things about their relationship that she would have been
Speaker 1: hurt by because he didn't want to be with her
Speaker 1: in the end because he couldn't care for her the
Speaker 1: way she needed. There didn't seem to be anything jarring,
Speaker 1: but it completely unraveled things. And then for the rest
Speaker 1: of that week, leading up to the wedding. It just
Speaker 1: created such cognitive dissonance in me. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, no, none of this is right. Everything
Speaker 1: is wrong. He's not paying a rent. He said that
Speaker 1: the reason he wasn't paying rent was because he was
Speaker 1: so impressed by my management of the house and my
Speaker 1: mortgage and how incredible I was, and that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to undermine my financial integrity. And he really elevated
Speaker 1: me so that anytime that he had been saying something,
Speaker 1: it was almost a backhanded compliment that would get him
Speaker 1: out of doing something or excuse him from things. And
Speaker 1: the whole week it was just a mess. I didn't
Speaker 1: go to work. I'd planned to go to work because
Speaker 1: the wedding was planned and I had a job, but
Speaker 1: I didn't go to work because I couldn't function. I
Speaker 1: was all of a sudden just replaying every kind of
Speaker 1: thing right back to that first Tinder conversation, and it
Speaker 1: was all just unraveling in my head. I felt terrified,
Speaker 1: like when you're watching a horror movie and you know
Speaker 1: that something bad is coming, but you don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. I felt horror and terror, and then I
Speaker 1: felt crazy because I didn't know why I was feeling
Speaker 1: horror and terror, And when I would try to explain
Speaker 1: it to him and he would so patiently listen to me,
Speaker 1: I would think, you're losing your mind, Jess, because when
Speaker 1: I would try and explain to him why I was
Speaker 1: feeling so overwhelmed, he was able to come back with
Speaker 1: quips to explain things in such a rational, sensible way.
Speaker 1: He was so patient, he was so thoughtful. He listened
Speaker 1: to all of my concerns and comforted me. And I
Speaker 1: just felt stupid, because when you explain things and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: you're always late, it just feels like such a silly
Speaker 1: thing to be upset about. And then when I tried
Speaker 1: to explain it to my best friend, I was like, right,
Speaker 1: so I've been putting the pieces together, and what I'm
Speaker 1: thinking is that maybe he was late because he was
Speaker 1: still seeing his ex. Maybe she is bitter and angry,
Speaker 1: and she wrote the letter to try and break us up.
Speaker 1: And I was creating this completely fictional narrative about what
Speaker 1: I thought. I was trying to fill in the gaps
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, I could see all the gaps.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe everything had turned around so quickly all
Speaker 1: at once.
Speaker 2: Jess felt completely in over her head. Did she even
Speaker 2: know this guy she was marrying? Who she was marrying?
Speaker 1: This week, I felt very guilty because I had arranged
Speaker 1: this wedding, I'd invited all these people, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go through with it. I definitely didn't want
Speaker 1: to go through with it, and I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to cancel it, because if I was canceling it, I
Speaker 1: was saying, I'm canceling it because Matt is clumsy and
Speaker 1: he often forgets to feed my cats and says that
Speaker 1: he fed them like it just but there were hundreds
Speaker 1: of things that I was now tallying up in my head.
Speaker 1: So then the same week, when all this is happening,
Speaker 1: and I didn't go to work that week to take
Speaker 1: my mind off it, he said, you want to come
Speaker 1: to work with me and help me clear out my desk.
Speaker 1: You know, like you're so good at organizing things. As
Speaker 1: you've organized all the wedding, you're probably just pulling it,
Speaker 1: clutching its straws because you're so overwhelmed. Come to work
Speaker 1: with me and help me clear out my desk. It's
Speaker 1: such a mess and you're so good at that, and
Speaker 1: I came to his work and you couldn't have scripted
Speaker 1: it better. He had just a really messy desk and
Speaker 1: really messy draws, and in one of the really messy
Speaker 1: drawers was a journal. And in the journal when I
Speaker 1: opened it up, because I'm human and I couldn't help
Speaker 1: myself when I opened it up, and it just was
Speaker 1: perfect timing that I pulled that drawer open. The journal
Speaker 1: was under very few things as I was tidying them,
Speaker 1: and he walked out of the room to get something
Speaker 1: and announced, you know, like I'm just going to get
Speaker 1: us a cup of coffee or something. I opened it up,
Speaker 1: and it really explicitly, in very messy handwriting, but really
Speaker 1: explicitly was talking about as she and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: she doesn't know what's coming, make her feel vulnerable, make
Speaker 1: her feel disoriented, make her feel confused, like that's where
Speaker 1: the last entry was, it's where like a book was.
Speaker 1: And then perfectly timed, he walked in. So I shot
Speaker 1: the book and I put it away, and I just
Speaker 1: pretended like it hadn't happened, even though in those few
Speaker 1: scrawled sentences it was actually piecing every fear I had
Speaker 1: all together because that's exactly what it was. But for
Speaker 1: some reason that is inexplicable to me, I couldn't process it,
Speaker 1: and so I put it back and I didn't confront
Speaker 1: him about it. Even now when I try and think
Speaker 1: about that, in that moment, I could have taken it,
Speaker 1: and I could have run off, and I could have
Speaker 1: shown all my friends. Look, look, see, he's written a
Speaker 1: journal and this is like entry fifty. This is every
Speaker 1: date we ever had, and he's been chronicling it, and
Speaker 1: he's been following a rule book. He refers to that
Speaker 1: he's achieving rule number like forty three or something. Even then,
Speaker 1: because it didn't have my name, I still felt hopeful.
Speaker 1: He loved writing short stories, and I thought could be
Speaker 1: a novel, could be a short story, could be something
Speaker 1: he wrote in the past. He's got such a messy desk.
Speaker 1: This could be about the X, could be about anyone.
Speaker 1: It may not even be his handwriting. It's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: I put it back in the draw and pretended I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen it and just decided to go ahead with
Speaker 1: this wedding.
Speaker 2: It was here the morning of the wedding, three months
Speaker 2: after Jess had met Matt, she had a really bad
Speaker 2: feeling about something, but she pushed it aside. It was,
Speaker 2: after all, her wedding day.
Speaker 1: So it was the morning of the wedding, and I
Speaker 1: had resolved to have a great day, to commit to it,
Speaker 1: to go all in, to let go of all my
Speaker 1: anxieties because I was obviously the problem. And I was
Speaker 1: so excited because it was also my thirty first birthday
Speaker 1: and all my dreams were coming true. I woke up,
Speaker 1: he didn't acknowledge that it was my birthday, and I
Speaker 1: just thought it's because he's excited, and he'd been building
Speaker 1: up this gift that he was so happy to have
Speaker 1: gone out and got for me the day before, that
Speaker 1: he'd been planning for a long time. And then he
Speaker 1: showed it to me and it was a watch for him,
Speaker 1: and I was so confused. He was explaining what a
Speaker 1: thoughtful gift it was because it was going to make
Speaker 1: him on time, and that he had engraved it, and
Speaker 1: that the engraving was symbolic of how he was committed
Speaker 1: to me, and that he just knew how much I
Speaker 1: would love that he had got this gift for him
Speaker 1: to wear because it would make my life better. Happy birthday.
Speaker 1: I got really angry, and even though I had not
Speaker 1: wanted to. And then I was so embarrassed that I
Speaker 1: got really angry, and I expressed why I was hurting,
Speaker 1: all of these emotions that I'd been toying with, and
Speaker 1: I just said, this is not right. Why would you
Speaker 1: do that? That doesn't even make sense? And then he
Speaker 1: left his stonewalled me, wouldn't talk to me, and that
Speaker 1: was the first time he had done that, wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: to me, and just left. And then the wedding wasn't
Speaker 1: till the afternoon. We'd had all these plans of things.
Speaker 1: We were going to go get the rings together. There
Speaker 1: are all these different things that we were going to do,
Speaker 1: and he didn't turn up for any of them. His groomsman,
Speaker 1: his family, didn't know where he was. His brother came
Speaker 1: over to comfort me. He was missing an action, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my gosh, he doesn't want to marry
Speaker 1: me anymore, because I'm such a selfish person that I
Speaker 1: expected a birthday present on my birthday. On my wedding
Speaker 1: day when I woke up, You're such a bad person, yes,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he was gone long enough for me
Speaker 1: to embarrass and humiliate myself in front of every close
Speaker 1: person that we had and make it so that a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming to the wedding that night were
Speaker 1: going to know what had happened. Was humiliated, still couldn't
Speaker 1: cancel it because now I was canceling it if I
Speaker 1: canceled it, canceling it because I didn't get the birthday
Speaker 1: present I wanted. And by the time he showed up,
Speaker 1: you know, after being missing an action, he said that
Speaker 1: he had been off seeing his ex. It was about
Speaker 1: six hours later, and it was really at the last
Speaker 1: possible minute. He turned up as if nothing had happened
Speaker 1: and expressed, you know, that he was disappointed that things
Speaker 1: had played out this way, but that we would work
Speaker 1: through it together. And it was the first time he
Speaker 1: hadn't apologized for something that was clearly his fault and
Speaker 1: that he was not taking any ownership for. And I
Speaker 1: was just so confused, But I was so relieved that
Speaker 1: he was there, because now he was going to be
Speaker 1: there for the wedding. So I apologized again for being
Speaker 1: so selfish, being such a selfish person, and begged him
Speaker 1: to marry me, and that I would be a better
Speaker 1: person and that I would be less materialistic and less
Speaker 1: self consumed. And that I understood why he had gone
Speaker 1: to see his ex, because she would understand him better
Speaker 1: than I did, and she would understand him. He said
Speaker 1: he'd gone to talk to her to try to see
Speaker 1: if maybe the problem was him and if he had
Speaker 1: done something wrong. He wanted someone who knew him really
Speaker 1: well and deeply to give him the best idea of
Speaker 1: what he could do to fix this situation, because he
Speaker 1: didn't know how to move ahead with the wedding, and
Speaker 1: he was considering whether he had been premature in asking
Speaker 1: and whether it was a mistake, and that she would
Speaker 1: provide him comfort. And he told me that she did
Speaker 1: provide him comfort and that she was really helpful and
Speaker 1: I should be very grateful to her for the help
Speaker 1: that she provided him so that he could go ahead
Speaker 1: with marrying me. He needed that sort of comfort and
Speaker 1: that he knew I would grow to be that kind
Speaker 1: of support for him too one day, which is why
Speaker 1: he wanted to marry me. It was beautiful and everything
Speaker 1: went off without a hitch. Everything played out perfectly. He
Speaker 1: made such a beautiful speech and made me feel so
Speaker 1: valued and made me feel very embarrassed that I had
Speaker 1: hung our dirty laundry out for everyone to see that day,
Speaker 1: and that I'd made such a big deal out of
Speaker 1: such a silly thing like a watch. That was my fault.
Speaker 1: That's how I felt. That was my fault. He didn't disappear.
Speaker 1: I pushed him away because I was not being rational
Speaker 1: and because I was not being my best self, and
Speaker 1: it was all my fault. So we went on our honeymoon,
Speaker 1: which we'd been planning, which was so exciting. He had
Speaker 1: primarily planned the honeymoon, and I had primarily planned the wedding,
Speaker 1: so I was so excited. As soon as the honeymoon started,
Speaker 1: he started revealing, bit by bit things that he had
Speaker 1: not revealed before that I hadn't even thought of as
Speaker 1: being necessary to reveal reasons behind choices he had made.
Speaker 1: He started revealing how he'd planned our the proposal, and
Speaker 1: how he had talked to the venue beforehand, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, he was revealing all these things about
Speaker 1: how he had read my blog, which I hadn't really
Speaker 1: done anything with for years, and he revealed that the
Speaker 1: reason he knew and understood so much about me was
Speaker 1: because he loved my blog, and I really hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about it. It was just sort of sitting there on
Speaker 1: the internet for so long, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he was just revealing all this information that I didn't know,
Speaker 1: and I really thought i'd known so much about him.
Speaker 1: And he started walking in on me when I was
Speaker 1: in the bathroom, but like when I was on toilet,
Speaker 1: little things like that that were just strange things that
Speaker 1: he knew that I didn't like. And he'd been so
Speaker 1: respectful in the three months leading up to the wedding
Speaker 1: with everything. He just seemed to understand every nuanced feeling
Speaker 1: that I had, even ones that I hadn't expressed to him,
Speaker 1: and it was because, yeah, he had done his research,
Speaker 1: and he was revealing that he had done his research.
Speaker 1: He'd read my blog, and he revealed that he'd gone
Speaker 1: through my Facebook and looked at every status that I
Speaker 1: had had since two thousand and seven, and that he
Speaker 1: loved reading and looking at all the pictures. Except that
Speaker 1: now it just felt creepy. I didn't feel valuable. I
Speaker 1: felt stalked by someone who I had just married.
Speaker 2: If Jesse had thought things had begun to unravel before
Speaker 2: the wedding, now it was just them for weeks, with
Speaker 2: no money and no friends or family to support her,
Speaker 2: and suddenly things started to get much worse.
Speaker 1: He forgot things that were important, like passports. My things
Speaker 1: went missing, important things like my key card, so that
Speaker 1: I became financially dependent on him, even though that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really valued, that I
Speaker 1: was a successful middle class person who had played my
Speaker 1: cards right, and all of a sudden I didn't have
Speaker 1: access to my money because my belongings we went missing
Speaker 1: from the hotel. Before we were married, he wanted me
Speaker 1: to do something that he breast he really enjoyed in
Speaker 1: the bedroom, and I wasn't wanting to partake, and he
Speaker 1: was very respectful of that. But from the night that
Speaker 1: we got married, most nights, while I was asleep, he
Speaker 1: would put lube on me and anally rape me, and
Speaker 1: then in the night when it was happening instantly, I
Speaker 1: would wake up and he would tell me that I
Speaker 1: was having a nightmare, and he would comfort me so
Speaker 1: it would only last for a second, but it was terrifying,
Speaker 1: and then he somehow in all of this managed to
Speaker 1: convince me that I was probably wanting it and feeling
Speaker 1: guilty and ashamed of myself because I didn't want that.
Speaker 1: Before we'd got married, and maybe we should do it
Speaker 1: so that I could stop dreaming about it, stop having
Speaker 1: nightmares about it. So we did have anal sex, and
Speaker 1: I did not enjoy it, But then in doing it,
Speaker 1: I had sort of paved the way for when it
Speaker 1: would happen. Often in the night he would say things
Speaker 1: like that I had initiated it, or that sometimes it
Speaker 1: was just that I had hallucinated it. And in doing
Speaker 1: all of that, he then revealed that my being so
Speaker 1: prudish about it is actually what led him to see
Speaker 1: a prostitute before we were married. And I was so confused,
Speaker 1: what was he talking about? And he said that he
Speaker 1: had felt such an urge, that it was so important
Speaker 1: to him, and that he'd been seeing a prostitute, and
Speaker 1: that that's one of the reasons that he'd been late
Speaker 1: to events, because he was seeing a prostitute. And as
Speaker 1: it turned out, he hadn't seen his ex the day
Speaker 1: of our wedding, when he'd gone a war that had
Speaker 1: actually gone to a prostitute. There were just so many
Speaker 1: disturbing experiences, and as the weeks rolled on, I became
Speaker 1: convinced that he was trying to kill me. He doing reading,
Speaker 1: he was always doing reading, and he was reading about
Speaker 1: a woman who had been killed by her husband on
Speaker 1: their honeymoon while scuba diving, and that had happened, I
Speaker 1: think in recent years at the time, and he was
Speaker 1: expressing how disappointing and how terrible that would have been.
Speaker 1: But it was really planning seeds in my head. And
Speaker 1: then there are all these things. He would cross roads
Speaker 1: and be holding my hand, and then he would trip
Speaker 1: over because he was such a clumsy person, and accidentally
Speaker 1: push me into traffic on busy roads where we were,
Speaker 1: and when we would get out of taxis, he would
Speaker 1: accidentally trip and accidentally slam doors which would accidentally hit me.
Speaker 1: And there were just lots of little things. There was
Speaker 1: food that he would give me that just tasted wrong.
Speaker 1: I was worried that he was giving me drugs. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to eat. I didn't want to drink anything
Speaker 1: that wasn't given direct to me by a waiter. And
Speaker 1: even when it was, I was suspicious that he had
Speaker 1: somehow construed for there to be something in it. He
Speaker 1: started just blatantly telling me lies he had made about
Speaker 1: his ex, about his job, about his financial status, about
Speaker 1: his life, his family. Just seemed to be opening Pandora's box,
Speaker 1: and nothing was eliciting it. He just really wanted to
Speaker 1: tell me all these things. He just unraveled in telling
Speaker 1: me all these things, like we're married now, so I
Speaker 1: can tell you the truth. It felt very orchestrated that
Speaker 1: he was in no way trying to make me feel
Speaker 1: good anymore. He was actively trying to make me feel
Speaker 1: unsettled and scared. And he would then fall asleep while
Speaker 1: I was still talking, sometimes or at least pretending to
Speaker 1: fall asleep. I felt very set up. It all felt
Speaker 1: very contrived and very overt, telling me that things that
Speaker 1: I had definitely experienced didn't happen, telling me that times
Speaker 1: when he had done or said things like not fed
Speaker 1: my cat for multiple days on a row, even though
Speaker 1: he'd been telling me that that didn't happen. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he was telling me things. Just everything that
Speaker 1: came out of his mouth was just stuff to confuse
Speaker 1: and derail and scare me. And I was just in
Speaker 1: a heightened state, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, was scared that
Speaker 1: he was poisoning me. I felt like everything was a
Speaker 1: trap and a setup, and was I going to get somewhere?
Speaker 1: And he had arranged for something bad to happen to me.
Speaker 1: Was he trying to just hurt me or scare me?
Speaker 1: I locked myself in a hungry jack's bathroom and wouldn't
Speaker 1: come out about midway through the honeymoon and called my
Speaker 1: best friend and told her everything, and she was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so just come home. And I was like, and so
Speaker 1: can I come home now and just tell everyone this?
Speaker 1: And she's like, I think this is pretty good cause
Speaker 1: to just come home. And I said, okay, we go
Speaker 1: organize that. And what I decided to do in consultation
Speaker 1: with her is download an app on my phone so
Speaker 1: that I could have notes that had a password on it,
Speaker 1: because one of the things he revealed was that he'd
Speaker 1: gone through my phone and that he had read everything,
Speaker 1: and that he was doing it because he wanted to
Speaker 1: know me and he wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 1: wasn't hiding anything. So I made a list of all
Speaker 1: the things that I could on my phone and I
Speaker 1: told my best friend on the phone the password, but
Speaker 1: I told it to her in code because I was convinced.
Speaker 1: Now I was just so paranoid. I was convinced somehow
Speaker 1: he had put some sort of recording device on my phone.
Speaker 1: I was now just going crazy, but I had to
Speaker 1: play along to get home, and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: he was going to do with my passport. I had
Speaker 1: no money. It was the worst few weeks of my life.
Speaker 1: I was just scared, so scared.
Speaker 2: Somehow Jess made it to the end of the honeymoon.
Speaker 2: She was so terrified of this man, she thought herself
Speaker 2: safe as to play along, to not upset him or
Speaker 2: give him any reason to take things further than they'd
Speaker 2: already got. If that was possible. She held on just
Speaker 2: so she could get home.
Speaker 1: When I got back to Australia, I instantly went to
Speaker 1: a police station and reported what had happened. But I
Speaker 1: was crying, hysterical crying, and the quite young police officer
Speaker 1: told me that I had to collect myself and I
Speaker 1: asked if I could go into a private room, and
Speaker 1: I said, I was so scared. I remember looking behind
Speaker 1: me like I was being chased, even though I wasn't,
Speaker 1: and saying like, I'm so scared, I'm scared for my life.
Speaker 1: I need help. I just wanted to be protected, rescued
Speaker 1: by the police. I wanted them to take it seriously,
Speaker 1: and I thought, what has my life become? The police
Speaker 1: came to my apartment while he wasn't there. They were
Speaker 1: really good. They actually sent like special police who were
Speaker 1: trained to be I think, domestic valanced police, and I
Speaker 1: explained everything to them. They called my husband. This is
Speaker 1: all like in the day we got back. They called
Speaker 1: my husband. They told him he wasn't to come to
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 2: So he didn't. He didn't fight it, he didn't contact her.
Speaker 2: He just didn't come back. The police said he'd been receptive,
Speaker 2: had told them he knew she was going through something
Speaker 2: and that he'd respect that. But of course, after everything
Speaker 2: he'd put her through, this was only the start of
Speaker 2: the next horrible chapter for Jess.
Speaker 1: The following weeks and months were just awful. I moved
Speaker 1: out of the apartment quite swiftly, and he never tried
Speaker 1: to come back to the apartment. He never tried to
Speaker 1: come physically see me. I quit my job. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do with myself, couldn't function, moved out
Speaker 1: of my apartment, couldn't afford the mortgage, had to sell it,
Speaker 1: couldn't work, went to my mum's house. Everything unraveled, and
Speaker 1: he sent comforting messages to my friends and family for
Speaker 1: the whole time of I hope she's okay, And you know,
Speaker 1: she really struggled with being overseas and being in your
Speaker 1: environments and really did his best to make sure that
Speaker 1: my family thought that the problem was that I'd had
Speaker 1: a break down and that had nothing to do with him,
Speaker 1: and so that everything that I was saying was just
Speaker 1: as a result of that. Yeah, my whole life unraveled.
Speaker 1: Someone at my work contacted me to say, are you okay,
Speaker 1: and something like if I say something, you don't have
Speaker 1: to respond to it. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: women in the world who are being abused, and I
Speaker 1: wish I could help them, and I think people need
Speaker 1: to know that abuse is really common, and so I
Speaker 1: just wanted you to know. And she was just the
Speaker 1: first person who ventured that, you know, to ask who
Speaker 1: the first person I didn't. We weren't even that close,
Speaker 1: but she was the first person to objectively go, maybe
Speaker 1: Jess isn't the problem. I had an epiphan in a
Speaker 1: moment of all this fog. I had a moment where
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, I wonder if I can contact his ex,
Speaker 1: the one who'd sent the letter, And she immediately was
Speaker 1: just incredibly helpful and told me that everything that was
Speaker 1: happening to me is what in some ways had happened
Speaker 1: to her. And then her letter made sense because she
Speaker 1: had talked about physical violence, but about him actively breaking
Speaker 1: her things and actively hurting her, whereas he had morphed
Speaker 1: that for me into it being clumsiness. So he'd clumsily
Speaker 1: broken all of my things. He had never yelled at me.
Speaker 1: He was like a disease that had morphed. You know
Speaker 1: that diseases in order to self perpetuate, they don't stay
Speaker 1: the same. With her, he had yelled, he had sworn.
Speaker 1: With me. He never yelled, He never swore. So that's
Speaker 1: why her letter didn't correlate to me. It didn't make sense,
Speaker 1: didn't that up. It's like a different person. But he
Speaker 1: did break all of my things, and he'd broke all
Speaker 1: of her things too, But they were in a rage.
Speaker 1: She was terrified of him because of his rages. He
Speaker 1: never raged with me. With me, it was psychological abuse confusion,
Speaker 1: so he had morphed in order to get his next victim. Me.
Speaker 1: Talking to her, it all was really clear, and actually
Speaker 1: she was able to identify it. She said that he
Speaker 1: had applied to be in the military, and that he
Speaker 1: had been denied because he had been diagnosed as having
Speaker 1: a personality disorder, and that they had encouraged him to
Speaker 1: seek guidance and assistance for that, and she had gone
Speaker 1: with him to the counseling sessions and tried to help him,
Speaker 1: and that she'd gone along with it for so long
Speaker 1: because her personality was to be helpful, and that she
Speaker 1: had supported him through it for years, and in the
Speaker 1: end it was him who discarded her, not the other
Speaker 1: way around. So she felt abandoned by him, which is
Speaker 1: why she had sent the letter. She was scared, but
Speaker 1: she said even then there was still just this lingering
Speaker 1: sense of not having resolved it. She hadn't put it
Speaker 1: behind her. She was worried for the next person, and
Speaker 1: she still felt immeshed, and he was still contacting her,
Speaker 1: dragging her along through it, reminding her of things. Things
Speaker 1: started becoming clear. I felt very validated. But the problem
Speaker 1: was that as I came out of the fog, and
Speaker 1: as I knew what was happening, and as I started
Speaker 1: going to a psychologist and getting assistants, I had a
Speaker 1: brief moment. And when I say brief, moment weeks where
Speaker 1: I thought I can fix him, she wasn't able to
Speaker 1: fix him. I can fix him. So even when I'm
Speaker 1: in the depths of despair, as I started to come
Speaker 1: out of the fog instead of getting as far away
Speaker 1: as possible, I felt like, oh, poor guy, he has
Speaker 1: a personality disorder. I can help him with that. And
Speaker 1: then I started obsessively researching it. I tried to talk
Speaker 1: to him about it, and if you can just admit
Speaker 1: that you have this, wee can work through this together.
Speaker 1: I applied for a job, a new job. I told
Speaker 1: him about the job. I said, you know, we can
Speaker 1: buy the picket fence now together because I've sold my
Speaker 1: apartment because of that breakdown I had. And he was
Speaker 1: all on board with it, and he was like, yeah, no, cool,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. I didn't want it to be at
Speaker 1: the end. I wanted to redeem myself and redeem the relationship.
Speaker 1: And then there was a waiting period for the new
Speaker 1: job where they didn't get back to me, even though
Speaker 1: it seemed like I was going to get the job,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't confirmed it. And then one day they
Speaker 1: called me. Maybe it had been two weeks. They called
Speaker 1: me and They left a voicemail saying, just letting you know, respectfully,
Speaker 1: that your husband called to check how the progress of
Speaker 1: your job application was, which is a little unusual for us.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to let you know that there's
Speaker 1: been some complications, but that we're not offering you the job,
Speaker 1: and we just wanted to let you know that your
Speaker 1: husband called. And fortunately that's what snapped me out of it.
Speaker 1: That was the moment where I was like, what is
Speaker 1: happening when he'd inadvertently drawn outside people into it. This
Speaker 1: person had left me this strange voicemail that I then
Speaker 1: replayed a hundred times, and I was able to go, yep, no,
Speaker 1: that's right, Okay, this is not redeemable. Even if he
Speaker 1: is redeemable, it's beyond my scope. I am not a psychologist,
Speaker 1: and I'm done, cut it and run. You have to
Speaker 1: do mandatory counseling to end a marriage, and so I
Speaker 1: told him that and he agreed to turn up. He
Speaker 1: attended I think maybe three counseling sessions was what we
Speaker 1: had to do. And he listened to me say everything,
Speaker 1: and he listened so respectfully, he nodded, he expressed empathy
Speaker 1: for me, and anyways, after maybe three sessions, the psychologist
Speaker 1: who had been seeing us leant over and looked me
Speaker 1: straight in the eyes. And it was the most startling
Speaker 1: thing that I think has ever happened, because I know
Speaker 1: that it's not what he was supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: he said, Matt is dangerous and you need to end this.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do this anymore. And so I'm
Speaker 1: telling you that you need to just look at him
Speaker 1: and say I want a divorce and I'm done, and
Speaker 1: then he's going to leave the room and he will
Speaker 1: never contact you again. And I was so shocked by it.
Speaker 1: I did exactly what the psychologist said. I turned to him,
Speaker 1: I said those words. He was out of the room
Speaker 1: before I had even finished them. I feel like he
Speaker 1: saw that the outside world had caught him and that
Speaker 1: there was no going back there, that he may as
Speaker 1: well just move on. And Yeah, that was it, normal messages,
Speaker 1: nom my calls, nothing, It was done. I developed pneumonia,
Speaker 1: I had to go to hospital. I wanted to die.
Speaker 1: I lost all my money, went back to scratch, didn't
Speaker 1: want to be a mother anymore. He was just waiting
Speaker 1: for a bus. Yeah, that's it was just the absolute
Speaker 1: depths of despair. I didn't want to come back from it.
Speaker 1: It was the first time in my life there had
Speaker 1: been something so incredibly traumatic that I had been complicit
Speaker 1: in that. I was humiliated by that. I felt like
Speaker 1: I couldn't trust myself, couldn't trust myself to have another relationship,
Speaker 1: couldn't trust myself to be a mother, couldn't trust myself
Speaker 1: to do my job. I just wanted to die so much.
Speaker 1: And I was very lucky that my mom just I
Speaker 1: just felt like I couldn't go through with anything like
Speaker 1: that because it would leave her. So yeah, I was very,
Speaker 1: very lucky that she didn't really leave me alone. Whenever
Speaker 1: she thought I was in the absolute pits of despair,
Speaker 1: she would fall over and hurt herself or things like
Speaker 1: that and then cry and be like, just come help me,
Speaker 1: I need help. And I'm like, you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to stay in bed when she was yelling things
Speaker 1: like that out And she really played me in a
Speaker 1: good way. And yeah, I lived with her for a while.
Speaker 1: And then the police contacted me to say that there
Speaker 1: was another victim and asked if I was prepared to
Speaker 1: talk to that person because I had expressed to them
Speaker 1: in doing a debriefing that I'd expressed to them that
Speaker 1: I would be prepared to be like the person who'd
Speaker 1: helped me. So I helped that person, and that was
Speaker 1: actually really cathartic for me to help the next victim
Speaker 1: who had a similar experience. Hers was worse. I would say.
Speaker 1: She didn't marry him, but the experience was worse because
Speaker 1: he was able to make it more intense. She was
Speaker 1: a psychologist, and it destroyed her career, and she didn't
Speaker 1: trust herself to have that career. And it was validating
Speaker 1: for me to hear that someone smarter than me, who
Speaker 1: should have picked it, could have picked it. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know that she didn't pick it either. That was comforting.
Speaker 1: I then asked the police not to contact me again
Speaker 1: and said that I was done, and I felt really
Speaker 1: bad for any future victims, but that I couldn't do
Speaker 1: that again. And even though I'd been the one to
Speaker 1: initiate and say please, I would like to help someone,
Speaker 1: I didn't want that to be my life. And I'd
Speaker 1: had enough therapy that I felt like I wanted to
Speaker 1: live again, and everything reminded me of it in the
Speaker 1: city where we lived, so I moved cities and started
Speaker 1: a new life and didn't tell people about it, and
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things we don't talk about now.
Speaker 2: Jess was terrified for a long time that Matt would
Speaker 2: get back in touch or turn back up, but he
Speaker 2: never did. A decade has now passed. It was far
Speaker 2: from the flick of a switch for Jess to move on,
Speaker 2: but with support from her loved ones and therapy, she's
Speaker 2: made it through to the other side.
Speaker 1: It was a year before I wanted to start a
Speaker 1: new life. It was a very long time like it
Speaker 1: was not sadness, It wasn't like a usual breakup. It
Speaker 1: was just the worst, and I'd given up any kind
Speaker 1: of interest in having a family, having a relationship. None
Speaker 1: of it appealed to me. A psychologist said to me
Speaker 1: that when you're in a state like that, when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a forest and it's dark and
Speaker 1: everything around you feel scary, just know that forests aren't
Speaker 1: the whole world, and that if you just keep walking,
Speaker 1: even if it's slowly, even if you're crawling, you'll eventually
Speaker 1: get out of the forest. And the only time you
Speaker 1: won't get out of the forest is if you just
Speaker 1: give up. And so I just kept crawling. The moving
Speaker 1: was good. It gave me something to do. And I
Speaker 1: met a girl at my new job who was a
Speaker 1: solo mum by choice, and I didn't know that was
Speaker 1: a big thing. I would have done that when I
Speaker 1: was thirty if i'd known it was a thing, because
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be a mom. I didn't really
Speaker 1: want a relationship. I just wanted to be a mom.
Speaker 1: She told me that that was a thing, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have any money anymore, so I used my superannuation
Speaker 1: and that gave me another reason to live, and I
Speaker 1: got pregnant, I had a baby. It's given me out
Speaker 1: whole nother life that, yeah, I'm really grateful for. I
Speaker 1: would do all of it all over again to get
Speaker 1: the life I have now. But I hope that other
Speaker 1: people listen to this and if they know like I did,
Speaker 1: that they didn't really want a relationship. They just wanted
Speaker 1: to be a mom. I hope that they know that
Speaker 1: you can and you can just do it on your own.
Speaker 1: Relationships can happen later if you want them and never
Speaker 1: want a relationship again. I know that I could spend
Speaker 1: a lot of money on therapy maybe and change my mind,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to. I'm actively I'm so happy
Speaker 1: from the moment I got pregnant, No, I felt like
Speaker 1: I was a new person for me. That death and
Speaker 1: being reborn as a mum was just so wonderful because
Speaker 1: it was whole new life and a whole new reason
Speaker 1: to live and changed my life. I wish I could,
Speaker 1: of course, skip the whole part in the middle, you know,
Speaker 1: age twenty five to thirty, all the bad relationships, because
Speaker 1: I'm just not good in them. I don't like them,
Speaker 1: I don't like being in relationships. They hard work for
Speaker 1: me and I don't feel the value in them. And
Speaker 1: I knew that, but I thought that the only way
Speaker 1: to be a mum was to have them. So that's
Speaker 1: why I was looking for this elusive prince charming and
Speaker 1: at thirty, retrospectively, I was just so desperate to get
Speaker 1: on with it. You know, maybe the gut feelings that
Speaker 1: I had that it was wrong, I ignored them because I
Speaker 1: just wanted a baby daddy so much, didn't want a relationship,
Speaker 1: wanted a baby daddy. Didn't know what a good relationship
Speaker 1: would feel like, so at least that was a different
Speaker 1: feeling to all the other ones. I've never been happier
Speaker 1: than I am now since the day I was pregnant.
Speaker 1: Like I don't have any medication, I stopped medication to
Speaker 1: do IVF. But from the day I got pregnant, I
Speaker 1: haven't had a bad day. There have been bad moments,
Speaker 1: bad things have happened. It've literally not woken up feeling
Speaker 1: bad and gone to bed feeling bad. I can't even
Speaker 1: imagine what that feels like, and I hope to never
Speaker 1: feel like that again. But it never. No matter what
Speaker 1: terrible things my daughter has done, how many tantrums she's thrown,
Speaker 1: I feel nothing but just joy to be alive. I
Speaker 1: now use my experience to help other people, and so
Speaker 1: maybe you know that was my place in the world.
Speaker 1: I don't think that these sorts of things have to happen,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I hope that it's happening less
Speaker 1: and less. That women are becoming more the more podcasts
Speaker 1: they listen to, the more articles they read, they become
Speaker 1: more aware of it. And I think society is evolving
Speaker 1: so that you can just say I feel like my
Speaker 1: gut is off and this is wrong and I'm going
Speaker 1: to end it. And we've become better at accepting that
Speaker 1: as the excuse to cancel weddings or to not go
Speaker 1: on dates. And so I guess I'm part of shaping
Speaker 1: that narrative, a new narrative for women to empower them more,
Speaker 1: and that's nice.
Speaker 2: If you or anyone you know is a victim of
Speaker 2: domestic violence, you can visit one eight hundred Respect dot
Speaker 2: org dot Au or call one eight hundred Respect, a
Speaker 2: confidential information, counseling and support service for people impacted by domestic,
Speaker 2: family or sexual violence. Everyone Has an X is a
Speaker 2: Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mum of
Speaker 2: MEA network. Is written and narrated by Me You Love
Speaker 2: and produced by Linda Scott. If you have a story
Speaker 2: you'd like to share, email podcast at momamea dot com
Speaker 2: dot au. You can support us by following the show
Speaker 2: in your favorite podcast app and leaving a five star review.
Speaker 2: We'll see you for the next episode.