Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters.
Speaker 2: This podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: Money.
Speaker 2: We work hard for it. It can bring so much joy,
Speaker 2: especially when shared with loved ones to create long lasting memories,
Speaker 2: as was the case for.
Speaker 1: Biancha because it was his fortieth birthday. I paid for everything,
Speaker 1: including for his daughter. I spent a lot of money,
Speaker 1: that's for sure, because we wanted to have special dinners
Speaker 1: and lovely nights out and really wanted to treat his
Speaker 1: daughter was really special. It was just a wonderful time together.
Speaker 2: But there's a dark side to money, or more so
Speaker 2: how it can turn acts of kindness into entrapment and
Speaker 2: loved ones into vultures.
Speaker 1: I kept paying for everything and dwindled my saving down
Speaker 1: to practically nothing. I thought, well, if I don't pay
Speaker 1: for things, he's not going to pay for things for
Speaker 1: the kids. And I didn't want them to be stuck
Speaker 1: in the middle and get hurt, so I just kept
Speaker 1: paying for everything.
Speaker 2: I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an eggs.
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 lived them. Meet b
Speaker 2: Anchor charismatic, smart, witty, successful, and at a stage of
Speaker 2: her life where she was ready to settle down.
Speaker 1: Throughout most of my twenties and thirties, they dated and
Speaker 1: had relationships, but really wasn't ready to settle down. I
Speaker 1: was very focused on my career. I traveled extensively, but
Speaker 1: I had a pact with myself to do New Year's
Speaker 1: in a different country every single year, which I did
Speaker 1: and it was amazing. I had a wonderful life. And
Speaker 1: then when I turned forty, I sort of started thinking,
Speaker 1: maybe it's time to settle down. I'm at a place
Speaker 1: where I want to be in my career, in my life, financially,
Speaker 1: everything was going really well. So I thought about it
Speaker 1: for a while, and then I turned forty one. I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's time. So I started playing around with online dating,
Speaker 1: and not long after I turned forty one, I met
Speaker 1: Alex on Plenty of Fish. That was in January twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: He struck a chord with me. So I was forty one.
Speaker 1: He was thirty nine. He'd been a bit over a
Speaker 1: year after a separation of his marriage. He wasn't yet divorced,
Speaker 1: but separated for quite some time. He'd spent that year,
Speaker 1: probably not dating, but certainly having a good time. But
Speaker 1: his profile photo itself wasn't it. He certainly wasn't the
Speaker 1: usual type I would go for throughout my thirties when
Speaker 1: I had days, I'd very much gone for tradees and
Speaker 1: party boys. No one that was serious. And his profile
Speaker 1: was actually quite serious, and he talked about his work
Speaker 1: and how invested he was. But most importantly his profile
Speaker 1: spoke about, you know, how much he loved his children.
Speaker 1: So he had four children, one from essentially a one
Speaker 1: night stand in his early twenties. She was sixteen, I
Speaker 1: think at the time, but then he had three children
Speaker 1: with his ex wife, and he spoke in his profile
Speaker 1: that his children and his family and friends met the
Speaker 1: world to him, and he was ready to meet someone
Speaker 1: and for them to be a part of that extended family.
Speaker 1: And for me, that was really attractive.
Speaker 2: Bianca didn't want children of her own, but she loved them,
Speaker 2: so the idea of a ready made family sounded pretty good.
Speaker 1: I guess I just didn't want them full time, So
Speaker 1: him having a family sort of part time really was
Speaker 1: very attractive. For me and him talking about how invested
Speaker 1: he was in them made him appear very vulnerable and
Speaker 1: very kind, and whilst physically he didn't appeal to me necessarily,
Speaker 1: he seemed to have a very kind nature. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he'd grown up down the coast and I had only recently,
Speaker 1: in fact, the month that we met, I'd bought a
Speaker 1: holiday house down the coast, just one suburb away from
Speaker 1: where he lived. So we had a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about in terms of bonding on the region. And then
Speaker 1: you know, we both lived in the eastern part of Melbourne,
Speaker 1: so we had a lot of similarities. There was a
Speaker 1: lot that we connected over. We chatted for three or
Speaker 1: four weeks. We found it really difficult to make a
Speaker 1: date to actually meet in person. We both had jobs
Speaker 1: that required a fair bit of interstate travel and so
Speaker 1: just aligning our calendars was a bit of a challenge,
Speaker 1: but we did a line and our first date was
Speaker 1: actually in Queensland. We were both in Queensland for work
Speaker 1: at the same time, so it was the sort of
Speaker 1: a last minute date where we hadn't realized we were
Speaker 1: going to be in Queensland at the same time, and
Speaker 1: I remember I had my work clothes which were quite
Speaker 1: formal or I had a skirt and a white singlet
Speaker 1: and a pair of thongs. So I felt a bit
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and I warned him, like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: look flash. I've really only got beach clothes and thongs.
Speaker 1: But happy to meet for a drink. So we met
Speaker 1: for a drink, spoke a lot about his family, We
Speaker 1: spoke about our jobs. I was really excited about the
Speaker 1: beach house that I'd bought, so I was sharing plans
Speaker 1: about that, and it was lovely and one drink turned
Speaker 1: into two, which turned into three. Then I put a
Speaker 1: stop to that. I didn't want to get out of
Speaker 1: control on the first date. But as he was going
Speaker 1: to the bar to order our third drinks, a couple
Speaker 1: from another table in the bar came and tapped me
Speaker 1: on the shoulder and they were giggling, and I said, Hi,
Speaker 1: who are you And they said, hi, u Bianka, we
Speaker 1: saw you having a drink with Alex and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am. They said, oh, we're actually friends of his
Speaker 1: from work and he was really excited about this date.
Speaker 1: And we've been spying on you from the table over there.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's going really well, we can see
Speaker 1: him smiling, would you like to join us for dinner?
Speaker 1: So his friends actually invited me for dinner and not him,
Speaker 1: but I said, oh, okay, well if he wants me
Speaker 1: to sure. He came back to the table and yeah,
Speaker 1: how to laugh, And it all came out that they'd
Speaker 1: been sort of spying on us, and we're really happy.
Speaker 1: So we progressed to dinner and had a lovely night,
Speaker 1: the four of us. They were all there for work,
Speaker 1: so he's work paid as well, which was a bonus.
Speaker 1: So we had a lovely meal. I had a couple
Speaker 1: of chats with the female friend that was there, and
Speaker 1: she was lovely and I thought, gosh, he's just got
Speaker 1: lovely friends, and I've spoken so much much about his family.
Speaker 1: He was there for work. It sounded like he had
Speaker 1: a great job. Sort of ticked a lot of boxes
Speaker 1: really that I was looking for. After dinner, said goodbye
Speaker 1: to the friends, He walked me back to my hotel.
Speaker 1: We kissed and then said goodbye, and then just continued
Speaker 1: chatting on the phone, texting.
Speaker 2: It was a great date, but Bianca wasn't home and
Speaker 2: host immediately she had a couple more dates lined up
Speaker 2: with other guys she'd met online, so it was silly
Speaker 2: not to go on them.
Speaker 1: Nice guys. But I guess those dates to me really
Speaker 1: went oh okay. Actually I really liked Alex in comparison.
Speaker 1: Now that I've met a couple of other people, I
Speaker 1: think I want to see him again. So when we
Speaker 1: were both back in Melbourne, he asked to meet again
Speaker 1: and I said I can. However, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: spending the weekend at my new beach house. I'm painting,
Speaker 1: I'm ripping up floors. It's a bit of a dump.
Speaker 1: I really need to put a bit of work in
Speaker 1: before I can stay there. And he said, that's okay.
Speaker 1: I will drive down the coast and you know, we
Speaker 1: can just have casual fish and chips on the beach,
Speaker 1: just chill, get to know each other better. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: how lovely. Like really went out of his way to
Speaker 1: accommodate the fact that I was really busy and I had,
Speaker 1: you know, all these things going on. So he came
Speaker 1: down that weekend on the Saturday afternoon and surprised me
Speaker 1: by turning up in painting clothes with a paint roller
Speaker 1: and a paint brush and essentially said, look, I'm here
Speaker 1: to help. We painted and chatted for a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: went and had fish and chips on the beach. He
Speaker 1: met my dogs, which they're like my children. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: I never wanted children, but I love animals. So he
Speaker 1: was lovely with my dogs, and that sort of tick
Speaker 1: to box as well, just the turning up with painting
Speaker 1: clothes and a paint brush. He worked out what my
Speaker 1: buttons were, and straight away I was pretty hooked. From
Speaker 1: that point forward, we both took ourselves offline pretty much
Speaker 1: immediately and were exclusive from that point. We were seeing
Speaker 1: each other probably three or four nights a week. We'd
Speaker 1: go out for dinners, drinks, the usual dates that you
Speaker 1: go on. He would stay at my house a couple
Speaker 1: of nights a week. I would stay at his. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was absolutely beautiful to me, and I just felt special.
Speaker 1: I felt loved. I think within three or four weeks
Speaker 1: of getting serious, he said that he was falling in
Speaker 1: love with me. He'd never felt like this, even when
Speaker 1: he'd met his ex wife. He had dated in between,
Speaker 1: but he just felt like the minute he met me,
Speaker 1: I was the one. Almost every time I saw him,
Speaker 1: there'd be flowers. He had long stem red roses delivered
Speaker 1: to my work. He cooked a lot for me, which
Speaker 1: was lovely because I lived on my own and I
Speaker 1: really cooked, so having someone cook for me was a
Speaker 1: beautiful treat and it would always be something that I loved.
Speaker 1: So he just made a monumental effort to just make
Speaker 1: me feel really special.
Speaker 2: As well as all of this, she felt empathy for him.
Speaker 2: The breakdown of his marriage hadn't been good and it
Speaker 2: had left him.
Speaker 1: In not such a great situation for someone that had
Speaker 1: a very good job. I obviously never said anything, but
Speaker 1: his tiny, tiny, two bedroom flat was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a surprise. It was a very old, very rundown flat.
Speaker 1: You know, the carpets were stained, it was dirty. All
Speaker 1: of the furniture was sort of secondhand that he'd gotten
Speaker 1: from friends for free as hand me down. His dining
Speaker 1: table was an outdoor table. His eldest daughter, the sixteen
Speaker 1: year old, didn't visit. He didn't really have a relationship
Speaker 1: with her at that point, but the three youngest children,
Speaker 1: which at the time I think were three, four, and six,
Speaker 1: did come to stay every second weekend and a few
Speaker 1: nights in between, and the three of them were in
Speaker 1: secondhand not that there's anything wrong with secondhand, but they
Speaker 1: were in very cramped bunk beds, sharing one bedroom in
Speaker 1: a really small flat with a tiny little bathroom and
Speaker 1: a tiny kitchen. I didn't judge that. He explained that
Speaker 1: his ex wife had cheated on him and kicked him out,
Speaker 1: and that she had stolen all of the money that
Speaker 1: they had in their bank account as a home deposit,
Speaker 1: and that kicked him out with nothing. And he'd explained
Speaker 1: that I've got nothing, she kept everything. I've had to
Speaker 1: stay on a friend's couch for six months to save
Speaker 1: up enough to rent this flat. But I only plan
Speaker 1: on being here for a year while I get back
Speaker 1: on my feet, and then I'll buy or rent something nicer,
Speaker 1: upgrade my furniture. It's only temporary. And that all made sense.
Speaker 1: He was paying a lot of child support, obviously for
Speaker 1: three children, but also the eldest wasn't yet eighteen, so
Speaker 1: he was actually paying child support for four children. So
Speaker 1: I really understood that that would have been really difficult,
Speaker 1: and I guess any judgment I had made immediately went
Speaker 1: out the window. I thought, this is awful that his
Speaker 1: ex wife and the mother of his children has left
Speaker 1: him in this position, and I felt such empathy for him.
Speaker 1: Probably only two months into our relationship, he hadn't met
Speaker 1: my friends and family, or maybe a couple of friends
Speaker 1: at this point, but certainly hadn't met my family. I'd
Speaker 1: mentioned that I was dating someone and I quite liked him,
Speaker 1: so they were happy for me and keen to meet him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to rush things. But about two
Speaker 1: months in my grandmother passed away and I was very
Speaker 1: very close with my grandmother and had been nominated by
Speaker 1: the family as the one to do a eulogy, which
Speaker 1: I was very nervous about, and I guess needed support.
Speaker 1: He offered to come to the funeral, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: it's too much. You haven't met my family. I'll be crying.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to be a really uncomfortable situation.
Speaker 1: Much as I appreciate the offerer support, you don't need
Speaker 1: to come, I also don't want you to see me
Speaker 1: upsair and meet my family when we're upset. But the
Speaker 1: day came and I was up the front of the
Speaker 1: church giving my eulogy, and I saw him sneak in
Speaker 1: the back door and sit in the back row and
Speaker 1: just smile at me with encouragement, which I just thought
Speaker 1: was so beautiful. Like I'd said no, but I guess,
Speaker 1: deep down, you know, I probably did want him there,
Speaker 1: and it was so beautiful that he showed up. He
Speaker 1: met my family very briefly, obviously not time for chit chat,
Speaker 1: paid his respects, and then left. It was absolutely lovely.
Speaker 1: So from there we just got closer and closer. He
Speaker 1: wanted me to meet the rest of his family, and
Speaker 1: I had met his three younger children, and they were
Speaker 1: just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. They were happy, they loved him.
Speaker 1: He really did appear as a wonderful father. We had
Speaker 1: them every second weekend and yeah, the occasional night in between,
Speaker 1: and you know, we just did normal family activities. We
Speaker 1: sort of of course I wasn't their mum, but you know,
Speaker 1: it really felt like a happy little family and we'd
Speaker 1: do activities and bike rides and go to the park
Speaker 1: and you know, all those fun things that families do.
Speaker 1: And so for me, just having this part time family
Speaker 1: was perfect and exactly what I had been looking for.
Speaker 1: So yeah, about three months in one of his sisters
Speaker 1: had a birthday and she lived in Regional Victoria, so
Speaker 1: we went away for the weekend we went out for dinner,
Speaker 1: had tepinyaki, you know, through the eggs, all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1: So it was a great way to meet. Then we
Speaker 1: went out to a bar in that town and things turned.
Speaker 1: And all that happened is I was at the bar
Speaker 1: just ordering a couple of drinks, and a young guy
Speaker 1: probably in his twenties, like half my age, started chatting
Speaker 1: to me at the bar, just while waiting for drinks.
Speaker 1: Literally that was it. Got our beers or whatever, and okay, great,
Speaker 1: have a good night, and he then just started ignoring me.
Speaker 1: Literally for the rest of the night. I would try
Speaker 1: and dance with him on the dance floor and he'd
Speaker 1: turn his back and walk off. He just ignored me
Speaker 1: for the rest of the night. I was left, you know,
Speaker 1: in this bar in a regional town, and the only
Speaker 1: people I knew where his family I'd met two hours before,
Speaker 1: and they said, oh, so sorry, we can see what's happened.
Speaker 1: It's not your fault. And I said, well, what's happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know why he's ignoring me. This is really awkward.
Speaker 1: We think he saw you talking to that guy at
Speaker 1: the bar. I said, yeah, we were ordering drinks, just
Speaker 1: standing next to each other, and they said, Oh, he
Speaker 1: gets really jealous and can get a bit funny because
Speaker 1: his ex wife cheated on him. So you just kind
Speaker 1: of need to know that about him, that you basically
Speaker 1: can't talk to another guy in front of him because
Speaker 1: he's afraid that you're going to cheat on him. And
Speaker 1: much as it was horrible and I felt very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and he pretty much ruined the weekend again, I guess
Speaker 1: I understood. I thought, well, wow, if an ex had
Speaker 1: cheated on me and left me, and I get that,
Speaker 1: there's this jealousy streak. By the end of the night,
Speaker 1: I guess he had a couple more drinks and came
Speaker 1: around and he was sincerely apologetic. He said the same
Speaker 1: as his family, I'm so sorry my ex cheated on me.
Speaker 1: I have a fear that that's going to happen again.
Speaker 1: Just seeing you talking to someone else just caught me
Speaker 1: off guard and I shouldn't have reacted like that or
Speaker 1: will never happen again. I'm so sorry, And we moved
Speaker 1: on and got over it.
Speaker 2: So Bianca and Alex's life together continued on and kept progressing.
Speaker 2: The more time they spent together, the better it got,
Speaker 2: and the more Bianca found herself fooling for him.
Speaker 1: He'd introduced me to a female friend, the one he'd
Speaker 1: been staying on the couch with for six months, and
Speaker 1: when I met her, she pulled me aside and said,
Speaker 1: Alex has been telling me so much about you. He
Speaker 1: absolutely adores you. He just thinks you're kind, you're wonderful.
Speaker 1: He loves that you work so hard and you're so ambitious,
Speaker 1: and you've done so well for yourself, which I valued
Speaker 1: that because there had been a few instances in my
Speaker 1: thirties where I had started to date people, and I'm
Speaker 1: by no means overly successful. I'm middle of the road
Speaker 1: corporate job. But a number of men that I had
Speaker 1: met were somewhat intimidated by that and a bit threatened,
Speaker 1: Whereas he seemed to really be proud of that and
Speaker 1: value that I was a strong, independent female. So I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this really works. We're both got great jobs, we're both strong,
Speaker 1: we're both kind. And then his children were just this
Speaker 1: added level of I guess beauty that he brought to
Speaker 1: the relationship. I loved watching him with them. We all
Speaker 1: cuddled on the couch and watched Disney movies. I felt
Speaker 1: content and What had also happened in that sort of
Speaker 1: first eight months is I mentioned he didn't have a
Speaker 1: great relationship or almost no relationship with the sixteen year old,
Speaker 1: and he had explained to me that he'd always wanted one,
Speaker 1: but he'd never been with the mother. It was a
Speaker 1: very short fling, early twenties, and he actually didn't even
Speaker 1: know she was pregnant until essentially the daughter was born,
Speaker 1: and he said he'd wanted a relationship with her, but
Speaker 1: that he's ex wife wouldn't allow it. She wouldn't allow
Speaker 1: a child that wasn't hers into their family, And he
Speaker 1: blamed his ex wife on the fact that he really
Speaker 1: hadn't seen his daughter for many years and had no relationship.
Speaker 1: Now that I was around, they'd started talking on the
Speaker 1: phone and just connecting, and she'd started coming around a
Speaker 1: few times and having dinner, and they'd started forming a relationship.
Speaker 1: And he credited that to me, which just made me
Speaker 1: feel wonderful that I had helped bring this father and
Speaker 1: daughter together. So when his fortieth birthday came around that year,
Speaker 1: we decided to go on a holiday to Bali together
Speaker 1: and invite the sixteen year old along so that he
Speaker 1: could spend time with her without the other three children there,
Speaker 1: and she was old enough to come along. Because it
Speaker 1: was his fortieth birthday, I paid for everything, including for
Speaker 1: his daughter, so that was obviously see a decent amount
Speaker 1: of money. We mostly had a wonderful time. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of money, that's for sure, because we wanted
Speaker 1: to have special dinners and just lovely nights out, and
Speaker 1: really wanted to treat his daughter. And again it was
Speaker 1: his fortieth so it was really special. We didn't fight,
Speaker 1: we didn't anything. It was just a wonderful time together.
Speaker 1: Came home and thought, wow, that was great. We might
Speaker 1: actually go to Bali every year. From that point on,
Speaker 1: we had so many weekends away. We went to Nelson
Speaker 1: Bay and went hiking. We did a trip around Tasmania.
Speaker 1: We both still traveled a lot for work, probably at
Speaker 1: least one week a month, if not too We actually
Speaker 1: like juggled our work schedules so that we were interstate
Speaker 1: at the same time, in the same cities. It was
Speaker 1: like we were on perpetual holiday. We had the best
Speaker 1: of both worlds. Family, sometimes couples sometimes. By this point
Speaker 1: he'd met all my friends. They all thought he was wonderful.
Speaker 1: I love going to concerts and gigs, and he joined
Speaker 1: into that crowd and came out with all my concert friends,
Speaker 1: and I think my friends actually really started to adore
Speaker 1: him when we decided to go to Pete Murray, which
Speaker 1: is not everyone's cup of tea, and he didn't like
Speaker 1: Pete Murray at all, but he said, no, no, you
Speaker 1: really like Oh come, And it was essentially all my
Speaker 1: girlfriends and him, like no one else's partner or husband
Speaker 1: had come, just him, and they were like, God, Alex
Speaker 1: is so nice. I can't believe you got him to
Speaker 1: come to Pete Murray. We just had a wonderful time
Speaker 1: and I think my favorite date. And I can't remember
Speaker 1: how far in this is, but there's a band I love,
Speaker 1: a UK band called Star Sailor. Hardly anyone knows them,
Speaker 1: but I absolutely love them. They came to Melbourne and
Speaker 1: did an acoustic concert in Saint Kilda, and he surprised
Speaker 1: me with I think he must have copied over my
Speaker 1: iTunes account or something, because he learned all all of
Speaker 1: their songs, like five albums worth of songs. Surprised me,
Speaker 1: took me to the concert. Honestly, it was the best
Speaker 1: concert I've ever been to just because I love them,
Speaker 1: and it was acoustic and it was intimate, and because
Speaker 1: he'd learned all the words, and we sung them and
Speaker 1: practiced on the way in in the car, and he
Speaker 1: just did so many thoughtful things. And again there was
Speaker 1: always flowers and cards. And I've never had someone tell
Speaker 1: me I love you like daily daily, just he was beautiful.
Speaker 2: They went on like this for about nine months, when
Speaker 2: Alex stayed true to his word, and after twelve months
Speaker 2: there moved out of the tiny bayside flat.
Speaker 1: Moving in together wasn't even on the cards, but he
Speaker 1: did move from being about forty minutes away to about
Speaker 1: five minutes away, to a much nicer place, a bigger
Speaker 1: place where the kids weren't squashed into one room. I
Speaker 1: bought him some new furniture to help him make this
Speaker 1: new house a home. I bought all new linen and
Speaker 1: towel so he could get rid of all the the
Speaker 1: sort of hand me downs that he'd been using. So
Speaker 1: I basically kitted out his new house for him and
Speaker 1: wanted to make it really welcoming for the kids. By
Speaker 1: this point, we'd been together about a year and a
Speaker 1: half and we were ready to move in together. I
Speaker 1: lived in a two bedroom unit, which was obviously not
Speaker 1: big enough. We decided that I would sell my unit.
Speaker 1: I guess my view was I currently own something, well,
Speaker 1: the bank owns it, but I don't want to go
Speaker 1: back to renting. So we discussed that I would sell
Speaker 1: my unit and that we would choose a house together
Speaker 1: that was suitable for us as a family when the
Speaker 1: kids were there. He had no money to deposit, and
Speaker 1: the background there which had come out more and more
Speaker 1: over the last year and a half, as he said
Speaker 1: his wife cheated, she left him with nothing. What came
Speaker 1: out over that first eighteen months, bit by bit, was
Speaker 1: that she'd not only left him with nothing, but that
Speaker 1: she had a business and he, as her husband, was
Speaker 1: on paper director of the business. He told me that
Speaker 1: she sold the business, pocketed the profit, but the rent
Speaker 1: on the business lease and all of the equipment and
Speaker 1: I guess everything, all the expenses that go with running
Speaker 1: for a business because he was director on paper. He
Speaker 1: said that he'd been getting legal bills and letters and
Speaker 1: threats that he owed over one hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: debt for his ex wife's business, and that's why he
Speaker 1: didn't have any money for a deposit, and I believed him.
Speaker 1: He would constantly show me text messages from his ex
Speaker 1: wife asking for money for very legitimate things. My geno.
Speaker 1: One of the kids has an extra school fees or
Speaker 1: a school camp or school excursion, and all these things
Speaker 1: that he would show me, No, I have to give
Speaker 1: my ex wife an extra thousand dollars this month. And
Speaker 1: I would hear them constantly arguing on the phone or
Speaker 1: see him having text arguments with her about the kids
Speaker 1: and access and money. And it was horrible and frankly,
Speaker 1: the way he spoke to her, he was condescending, he swore,
Speaker 1: and was quite obscene in the way he spoke to her.
Speaker 1: He threatened her a lot, and it was quite revolting.
Speaker 1: But again I just thought, well, the way she's treated him,
Speaker 1: I understand it. She's a horrible person, and I actually
Speaker 1: sort of took his side. We agreed that I would
Speaker 1: buy the house on my own. It would be in
Speaker 1: my name, and for that reason, we agreed to do
Speaker 1: a prenup that said the house was mine, and if
Speaker 1: one day we ever broke up, if he had contributed
Speaker 1: to the mortgage, he would get that back and a
Speaker 1: percent that the house had gone up, but he was
Speaker 1: never going to be in a position to contribute to
Speaker 1: the mortgage, so I felt pretty secure. So I sold
Speaker 1: my house. The house that I bought Eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Speaker 1: It's a huge family house, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two loundrooms,
Speaker 1: like perfect for a family. We made sure there was
Speaker 1: a room for each of the three smaller kids. They
Speaker 1: got to choose the paint color and the decorations, and we,
Speaker 1: being I, bought new things and new furniture for them.
Speaker 1: We bought five bedrooms so that there was also a
Speaker 1: spare room. Now that he was getting closer with the
Speaker 1: eldest daughter, who by this point was probably eighteen, so
Speaker 1: we made sure she had a room. And obviously that
Speaker 1: house costs a lot more than my two bedroom unit.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to have a huge mortgage. I actually
Speaker 1: also had an apartment in inner City Melbourne that I
Speaker 1: had once lived in, and that was sort of my
Speaker 1: financial security that I was going to keep forever. I
Speaker 1: was renting it out and it was partying for itself.
Speaker 1: But to make sure I didn't have a really big mortgage,
Speaker 1: I sold that. So I sold my home. I sold
Speaker 1: my investment property to buy a house with a small mortgage,
Speaker 1: really for him and his family, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: the first six to nine months of living together was bliss.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We built her home together, We refurnished it, We did
Speaker 1: up the kids' rooms. The kids loved coming around. They
Speaker 1: had their own lounge room with the PlayStation, and we
Speaker 1: had bikes there for them. And we lived near a trail,
Speaker 1: so we'd go for weekend bike rides and mini golf
Speaker 1: and all those fun things. Apart from me sort of
Speaker 1: on the sideline, observing his relationship with his ex wife deteriorate,
Speaker 1: he told me that that's because she was jealous. We'd
Speaker 1: bought a huge house that they'd never been able to
Speaker 1: do together. I think she probably thought he was contributing
Speaker 1: money to it, and they're not giving her money. She
Speaker 1: wouldn't have known that I had paid for everything and
Speaker 1: was actually paying for everything. Fighting about money because she
Speaker 1: was always asking him for more money again legitimately, and
Speaker 1: he would say, I can't afford it, and she thought
Speaker 1: it was coming to me. I'd given up my financial security,
Speaker 1: I'd invested in a house like I was in it.
Speaker 1: But it was worth it.
Speaker 2: They were so happy and the relationship was amazing. Alex
Speaker 2: was amazing until he wasn't.
Speaker 1: So we'd been together two or so years at this
Speaker 1: point and had been living together for probably seven or
Speaker 1: eight months, So at this point we were good. Things
Speaker 1: were great. And he was having a weekend away at
Speaker 1: my beach house with his brother and another mate, and
Speaker 1: they said it was a golf weekend, so great, have fun.
Speaker 1: I'll have a girl's weekend. And it was wonderful. So
Speaker 1: he went down on the Friday, and we texted and
Speaker 1: chatted throughout the weekend, said he was playing golf and
Speaker 1: having a great time. On the Sunday afternoon, his car
Speaker 1: screeched into the driveway, screeched in abruptly, and the front
Speaker 1: door sort of burst open, and he staggered into the
Speaker 1: house and he was holding his chest, and honestly, his
Speaker 1: face was like lopsided and he was drooling out of
Speaker 1: one corner of his mouth, and he couldn't speak. He
Speaker 1: basically sort of staggered into the house and collapsed onto
Speaker 1: the lounge, grabbing his chest, and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do. I was like, what's going on, what's happened?
Speaker 1: And he sort of managed a couple of words like ambulance, ambulance.
Speaker 1: Heart attack, heart attack, and one side of his body
Speaker 1: was like not moving, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he's actually having a stroke. And at this point he
Speaker 1: was probably forty one. So I immediately called an ambulance
Speaker 1: and I said, I think my partner's having a stroke.
Speaker 1: I explained what was happening, and they said, okay, we're
Speaker 1: on our way. Can you tell us has he had
Speaker 1: any illicit substances? I said, I don't know. He just
Speaker 1: came home and like, I don't know, and they said,
Speaker 1: can you find out? I said I can't. He can't
Speaker 1: don't speak. He literally can't speak. He's dribbling. I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I said, hang on, I'll quickly call his brother, Scott.
Speaker 1: I called Scott and I said the ambulance has asked
Speaker 1: if he's had anything. And he went silent for a
Speaker 1: moment and I thought, oh my god. And he goes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: he has see Okay, well tell me more. I'm on
Speaker 1: the phone to the ambulance on the other line. You
Speaker 1: need to tell me what's going on. He said he
Speaker 1: had some coke. I went, mate, we've all been out
Speaker 1: on big nights. I know what people on coke look like,
Speaker 1: this is not coke and he goes, oh, no, he
Speaker 1: had a lot, and I go okay, but again, mate,
Speaker 1: the ambulance is coming. Tell me how much coke did
Speaker 1: he have? And he goes, look, I don't know how much,
Speaker 1: but more than he's ever had in his life. And
Speaker 1: I went, what, so he does this a lot? Oh? Oh?
Speaker 1: He just didn't answer, and I just went, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to go. Ambulance is here. So the ambulance
Speaker 1: turned up and I said to them, I don't know
Speaker 1: how much, but I can confirm that apparently he's had
Speaker 1: a lot of cocaine. And they looked at him and
Speaker 1: they said, he's not having a stroke. He's had so
Speaker 1: much cocaine that he's coming down so hard that his
Speaker 1: body can't cope and he needs to go to hospital.
Speaker 2: The anchor was mortified and angry. Alex had told her
Speaker 2: he didn't do drugs ever, yet here he was having
Speaker 2: done so much on an apparent golf weekend he had
Speaker 2: to be hospitalized. It made something inside her shift.
Speaker 1: I just looked at him and thought, you are revolting.
Speaker 1: He still couldn't speak. He was in hospital overnight. I
Speaker 1: stayed with him and had to hold a wei bottle
Speaker 1: for him because it couldn't even function. And at that point,
Speaker 1: I just thought, you are a mess. I just got
Speaker 1: the ick in that moment. And look, I'm not adverse
Speaker 1: to people going out and partying and doing what they
Speaker 1: want to do, but someone who would take that much
Speaker 1: that they would put themselves in hospital crossed a line
Speaker 1: that I'd never wanted to see anyone cross. He took
Speaker 1: an entire week off work to basically come down and recover,
Speaker 1: and he told work, friends, family, everyone, and got me
Speaker 1: to say the same that he was stressed at work
Speaker 1: and that he'd had a panic attack. I'd seen him drunk,
Speaker 1: and he'd certainly had big nights out drinking, but I'd
Speaker 1: never seen anything like this, so I didn't think this
Speaker 1: has been a problem. That moment, I went, this is revolting.
Speaker 1: You are not, as of right now, the person I
Speaker 1: want to be with. But I was stuck. I had
Speaker 1: invested my house, I'd given up so much, probably without
Speaker 1: realizing that I think happens to all of us when
Speaker 1: we fall in love. You know, I probably had pulled
Speaker 1: away from some of my friends a little bit. I
Speaker 1: still saw them a lot, but not as much as
Speaker 1: I had been, and I felt trapped. I just and
Speaker 1: I thought, I can fix you. I can make this work.
Speaker 1: This was a one off. It's not going to happen again.
Speaker 1: I've just got to work with him on making sure
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen again.
Speaker 2: But it didn't get any better from there.
Speaker 1: From that point, he started increasingly going out, and again
Speaker 1: I was never invited, but actually I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go because his brother was a bad influence. He agreed
Speaker 1: with me that his brother was a bad influence. Like
Speaker 1: if they were going to go out and hopefully the
Speaker 1: drug incident was a one off, but the amount they drank.
Speaker 1: I love a drink or three, like everyone, but they
Speaker 1: would obliterate themselves till four am quite regularly and drive home.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is someone who I thought was a
Speaker 1: wonderful father, and I just thought, you're just gross, disgusting.
Speaker 1: It kept happening. At least once a week he would
Speaker 1: go out, and I don't even mean on a Saturday
Speaker 1: night like sometimes Midek. He'd go out until four am.
Speaker 1: I really don't know how he was even getting up
Speaker 1: and functioning, because he was getting up and going to
Speaker 1: work after coming home at four am, and the next day.
Speaker 1: It was very up and down. Sometimes he would be
Speaker 1: in an awful mood. He would not speak to me
Speaker 1: for days on end and say, my anxiety is playing up,
Speaker 1: and I just think, I mean, you just hung over.
Speaker 1: But whatever, I'll stay out of you.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'd be angry. He'd be really verbally and emotionally
Speaker 1: abusive to me. He'd gasp at me and say, well,
Speaker 1: I went out drinking because if I come home and
Speaker 1: talk to you about a bad day at work, you
Speaker 1: don't listen, you don't empathize, you don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1: So you forced me to go out drinking. I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe he's having coke to stay awake, you know, that's
Speaker 1: I don't know how else you'd stay awake till four
Speaker 1: am and then function the next day. But then I thought, no,
Speaker 1: that's impossible. He has no money. Coke is really expensive.
Speaker 1: There's no way he's doing that. I actually knew a
Speaker 1: lot of the time that he was drinking at our
Speaker 1: local pub. And I don't want to sound like a stalker,
Speaker 1: because I'm not. But sometimes i'd be worried because he'd
Speaker 1: text me at six pm I'm just having a quick
Speaker 1: drink after work, I'll be home by eight. I'd text
Speaker 1: him at eight, Hey are you on the way home?
Speaker 1: Dinner's ready. He wouldn't reply by ten or eleven. I'd
Speaker 1: be really worried, and I'd literally just drive up to
Speaker 1: the local pub and there's his car in the car park. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just a local suburban pub. That's not the
Speaker 1: kind of place you'd be doing coke. I was very
Speaker 1: confident he wasn't doing that, and that he was just
Speaker 1: had a real problem with alcohol. Whilst sometimes he'd have
Speaker 1: a big night and be horrible to me, sometimes he
Speaker 1: would get up first thing in the morning, two chores
Speaker 1: around the house, walk the dogs. He'd go out and
Speaker 1: buy me flowers and come back with a beautiful card
Speaker 1: and say, I'm so sorry. I don't know what came
Speaker 1: over me. I had a bad day at work. I
Speaker 1: should have come home and spoken to you, or the
Speaker 1: love of my life. I won't do it again. And
Speaker 1: then we'd have a wonderful period of time. There was
Speaker 1: good with the bad. So I guess I was just
Speaker 1: putting up with the bad and thinking does the good
Speaker 1: makeup for it? I don't know, maybe it was sort
Speaker 1: of a balance. I certainly wasn't happy, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: miserable enough to sell the house and completely go through
Speaker 1: a whole life upheaval again, because there were still good
Speaker 1: times in there.
Speaker 2: But then something odd happened. Alex's eleven year old daughter,
Speaker 2: his eldest child with his ex wife, stopped visiting.
Speaker 1: He told me that his ex wife has turned the
Speaker 1: eldest against us. She hates me, she hates you, she
Speaker 1: thinks you're the wicked witch step mother. She never wants
Speaker 1: to come to our house again, and that was basically it.
Speaker 1: Never saw her again. I didn't understand it because I
Speaker 1: had tried the best I could be to be wonderful
Speaker 1: to all three of the children and the eldest one
Speaker 1: for years now, and I didn't understand it, but I
Speaker 1: guess I believed him in that he said his ex
Speaker 1: wife that she hated me, she hated the kids having
Speaker 1: a relationship with me, and the eldest was old enough
Speaker 1: to be influenced by her. So he blamed his ex wife,
Speaker 1: me and the ex wife. So I guess I just
Speaker 1: accepted that, and I thought, Okay, maybe she does hate me,
Speaker 1: but it's probably not anything I've done. I'm not a
Speaker 1: bad person. Never saw her again. We continued to have
Speaker 1: weekends away just the two of us and still kept
Speaker 1: seeing the other two children. He borrowed money a lot,
Speaker 1: and it increased. Before we lived together, never borrowed money,
Speaker 1: but once we started living together, and he was constantly
Speaker 1: showing me all these texts from his ex. You know,
Speaker 1: I need to pay five hundred bucks for this and that.
Speaker 1: He constantly asked that, not insignificant, but not large amounts
Speaker 1: of money. Oh, I've had to give my ex five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks for whatever? Can I borrow three hundred bucks
Speaker 1: until payday?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever's three hundred bucks, Okay, fine. It would never
Speaker 1: get paid back. We called it borrow, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: And it actually got to the point where I think
Speaker 1: each month I would have loaned him somewhere between five
Speaker 1: hundred and one thousand dollars. In early twenty twenty, he
Speaker 1: had a great aunt that passed away who didn't have children,
Speaker 1: and he and his four siblings were all expecting an
Speaker 1: inheritance of about eighty thousand dollars. And he said, because
Speaker 1: we know it's going to come in, I've still got
Speaker 1: all these debts from my ex wife's business. He told
Speaker 1: me that he also got a thirty thousand dollar bill
Speaker 1: from a private school that she had enrolled the kids in,
Speaker 1: and I knew they went to this school, of course,
Speaker 1: I'd picked them up from there. And he said that
Speaker 1: he'd never agreed for them to go to the private
Speaker 1: school and pay their fees. That was her choice, but
Speaker 1: that she had forged his signature on the school enrollment
Speaker 1: and now the school was chasing him for thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars as well as all the other debts he was
Speaker 1: still paying off. And he asked me, you know, I
Speaker 1: know you've got some secret savings, which I didn't, but
Speaker 1: he was confident I had some secret savings that I
Speaker 1: was hiding from him, which I don't know how that's
Speaker 1: possible when I sold everything to buy this house, and
Speaker 1: could he borrow eighty thousand dollars knowing that he'd pay
Speaker 1: me back when the inheritance came in. I said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't. I don't have it, and also if I did,
Speaker 1: I would pay it off the mortgage. I don't have
Speaker 1: money to loan you. So we had a huge fight
Speaker 1: out over that. It was probably the biggest fight we'd
Speaker 1: had because he thought I had this money and I
Speaker 1: was holding out. But you know, eventually, after probably not
Speaker 1: speaking to me for a week or so, he calmed down.
Speaker 1: He apologized. He said, you know, I should never have asked,
Speaker 1: and you've done a lot for me already. I just
Speaker 1: shouldn't have asked, and I'm so sorry, and I love
Speaker 1: you all the rest of it and etc. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of that year, the inheritance actually came in and
Speaker 1: he got a bit over eighty thousand dollars. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was so happy for him. He didn't use it
Speaker 1: to repay me anything I had loaned him. I should
Speaker 1: say he did put some money into my savings account
Speaker 1: every month to contribute to bills, groceries, etc. But I
Speaker 1: mean it wasn't even half of anything. It probably covered
Speaker 1: the groceries and maybe health insurance like that's it. So
Speaker 1: he didn't pay me back for anything. He told me
Speaker 1: he paid off the school fees and some of the debt,
Speaker 1: but that he was still in debt. It still didn't
Speaker 1: touch the edges, and I believed him. You know, the
Speaker 1: good times and the bad times continued, but the bad
Speaker 1: times started increasing. He just did nothing. He really did nothing,
Speaker 1: really didn't contribute much, but every now and then still
Speaker 1: had moments of kindness and love. At this point, the
Speaker 1: good probably wasn't outweighing the bad, but I was mid
Speaker 1: forties stuck. I thought, I don't want to be alone,
Speaker 1: and I just don't want to give up. And I
Speaker 1: still think I can fix him. I just need him
Speaker 1: to get help for his alcohol problem. He said he'd
Speaker 1: try and rein it in, and I think there are
Speaker 1: periods where he did try. He actually just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: He genuinely was addicted to just going out and drinking,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't do it. One Sunday night, he came
Speaker 1: home again, probably four am, and in the morning he
Speaker 1: didn't get out of bed. He had to go to work,
Speaker 1: And at about nine AM. I woke him up and said, hey, babe,
Speaker 1: it's nine am. I think you should be at work.
Speaker 1: Are you going to work? Do you want me to
Speaker 1: call them? Are you sick? And he said, NA, can't
Speaker 1: get out of bed, not going to work. I'll text
Speaker 1: my boss. I said, okay. Well, he didn't get out
Speaker 1: of bed for six seven weeks. He told me, he
Speaker 1: told everyone work, etc. That he was having a serious
Speaker 1: bout of anxiety. He thought he was clinically depressed and
Speaker 1: he just couldn't get out of bed. I didn't speak
Speaker 1: to his work, but he told me his work was
Speaker 1: supportive and they said, well, okay, that's fine, go and
Speaker 1: get some help. And I was so pleased with that
Speaker 1: because I'd been asking him to see someone about his
Speaker 1: drinking problem and he did agree, and he went and
Speaker 1: saw a counselor a handful of times, and it didn't
Speaker 1: really improve things. It got him back to work, but
Speaker 1: it didn't improve things. He's drinking and going out continued,
Speaker 1: and after a handful of sessions, he came home really
Speaker 1: angry and said, I'm never going back to that counselor.
Speaker 1: You know, she's an idiot. She doesn't know what she's
Speaker 1: talking about. She said, I'm an alcoholic. I don't believe her.
Speaker 1: She's wrong, she doesn't know what she's talking about. I'm
Speaker 1: never going back. Said, well, you know I'm here to
Speaker 1: support you. I've stuck it out for this long. I
Speaker 1: can help you if you want to get help, because Alex,
Speaker 1: she's right, like, you're an alcoholic, and let's work on
Speaker 1: this together. Now. I'm not I'm never going back. My
Speaker 1: life's fine. I don't have a problem, and that was it.
Speaker 2: The heavy drinking continued, the night's out continued. Now he
Speaker 2: was even choosing to stay at his brother's new apartment
Speaker 2: in the city because Bianker put her foot down and said,
Speaker 2: don't come home at all if it's that late. So
Speaker 2: he didn't, and if things could get any worse, they did.
Speaker 1: Late twenty twenty two, I got made redundant. It'll take
Speaker 1: me a couple of months to land the right job.
Speaker 1: I'm actually happy to take six months off and wait
Speaker 1: for the right job. But I've got no income for
Speaker 1: the next six months. You need to step up, a
Speaker 1: you need to start contributing to bills, because you're not
Speaker 1: even paying half. I can keep paying the mortgage with
Speaker 1: savings enough to pay six months are worth the mortgage,
Speaker 1: But like then I have to get a job. But like,
Speaker 1: you've got to step up, and you need to stop
Speaker 1: spending money going out on alcohol, and like I need
Speaker 1: you to pay for the groceries, and he didn't. In fact,
Speaker 1: I kept paying for everything and dwindled my savings down
Speaker 1: to practically nothing. He actually that year even had to
Speaker 1: have an operation for something, and he said, oh, it's
Speaker 1: not covered by medicare. I'm like, hey, we've got private
Speaker 1: health because I pay for it. I know we do
Speaker 1: now I've checked. It's not covered. So even though I
Speaker 1: had no job, I paid three thousand dollars for an
Speaker 1: operation because you needed it. Still, there was just more
Speaker 1: money loaning me, paying for everything, just dipping into my
Speaker 1: savings because he just kept say I'm paying my ex
Speaker 1: wife all this money constantly, and there was valid reasons,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't want
Speaker 1: the kids to miss out on him giving the money.
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, if I don't pay for things,
Speaker 1: he's not going to pay for things for the kids.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want them to be stuck in the
Speaker 1: middle and get hurt. So I just kept paying for everything.
Speaker 1: About the same time as all this, I got up
Speaker 1: one day and walked to the dogs. His jacket was nearby.
Speaker 1: I threw his jacket on, and I found a tab
Speaker 1: ticket in his jacket. I'd never found one before. There'd
Speaker 1: never been any signs of gambling, So I mean, whatever,
Speaker 1: one tab ticket for fifty bucks whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time, I'd asked him to stop spending money.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a job. When I got home, I
Speaker 1: said Hey, what's this tab ticket? Like, I know it's
Speaker 1: only fifty bucks, but are you gambling? And he went
Speaker 1: crazy at me, how dare you? It's one ticket, it's
Speaker 1: fifty bucks. I would never gamble. I can't believe you'd
Speaker 1: accuse I'm like, I'm just asking I found a ticket.
Speaker 1: He accused me of several affairs and this and that,
Speaker 1: and just deflected the gambling question and just absolutely made
Speaker 1: me the villain. I just thought, I cannot do this anymore.
Speaker 1: But I thought, let's give it one honestly, one more
Speaker 1: red hot crack. And I said to him, Okay, we
Speaker 1: know we're not in a good place. Your going out
Speaker 1: is out of control. You've been told you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I need you to do something about it, or I
Speaker 1: can't put up with anymore. You're going to have to
Speaker 1: move out. I said, let's go on a really nice
Speaker 1: holiday together. We will use the absolute last of my
Speaker 1: savings to go on a holiday, and then when we
Speaker 1: get back, I'll find a good job and we'll be
Speaker 1: good again. So reset, I spent my last like twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for us to go and do three weeks
Speaker 1: in Cambodia. In Vietnam, and it was lovely and we
Speaker 1: had a wonderful time. We really did reset. We had
Speaker 1: a packed that part of resetting is maybe overshare, but
Speaker 1: we were like, right, we have to have sex every
Speaker 1: single day at least once, because we never had a
Speaker 1: problem there. We did. We reseted, we bonded, we had
Speaker 1: a beautiful time, came back and honestly, within two days
Speaker 1: of returning, it's just like he switched. The going out
Speaker 1: just started immediately within two days of coming home, and
Speaker 1: it again was four or five nights a week.
Speaker 2: Alex said he just couldn't stop. So with Bianca trying
Speaker 2: to be supportive and understand, she got him to agree
Speaker 2: for them both to see counselor together.
Speaker 1: I think three sessions at a counselor, and he sat
Speaker 1: there and professed his love and that he wanted to
Speaker 1: make it work and I was the best thing that
Speaker 1: had ever happened to him, and I was loving and supportive.
Speaker 1: But he did have anxiety problems again, even in front
Speaker 1: of the councilor. Blamed me for exacerbating them because I
Speaker 1: didn't show enough empathy and I didn't listen to him.
Speaker 1: And the counselor kind of quashed that, which he didn't like.
Speaker 1: He didn't like what he was hearing from this councilor either.
Speaker 1: Whilst there were some things he said that were frowned upon,
Speaker 1: I think for the most part he said the right things.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to make it work. And we
Speaker 1: will go home and do the exercises you've given us
Speaker 1: and talk about things we've never spoken about in detail,
Speaker 1: and talk about horrible things that may have happened in
Speaker 1: our lives or childhood, or wonderful things. And we did
Speaker 1: all that, and we do it. But then on the
Speaker 1: days we weren't focusing on it, the partying continued. We
Speaker 1: had our six year anniversary and he surprised me with
Speaker 1: a night in a hotel in the city and we
Speaker 1: went to a five star restaurant. Of course, when the
Speaker 1: time to pay for the bill, he waited for me
Speaker 1: to get my credit card out, even though it was
Speaker 1: his surprise. But you know, dinner was about five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars on my credit card with no job. But anyway,
Speaker 1: but then after dinner, we couldn't find a bar, you know,
Speaker 1: we wanted to go for a drink, and honestly it
Speaker 1: was cold. Anyway, we ended up just going back to
Speaker 1: the hotel and he was really angry because we hadn't
Speaker 1: been able to find a place to go out drinking
Speaker 1: and anniversary night, he literally just turned his back on
Speaker 1: me and went to sleep again. Ups and downs. Next
Speaker 1: few months, the partying just continued, continued, continued. In May
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, he went out one night, texted me
Speaker 1: at four am, I'm still out. I'm like, yeah, no kidding,
Speaker 1: Please state your brothers. I don't want you to come home.
Speaker 1: He came home about lunchtime the next day. I said, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we need to talk and he went, yep, I'm moving out.
Speaker 1: I went, okay, no, we need to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yes because no, no, no decisions made. I'm moving out, no
Speaker 1: discussion required. And I'm like, hang on, We've just professed
Speaker 1: our love in front of the counselor. We said we
Speaker 1: want to make it work. We've had a holiday this year.
Speaker 1: We had a wonderful type No we didn't, he says, no,
Speaker 1: we didn't. That was the shittest holiday of my life.
Speaker 1: I hated every moment of it, Like what really? You
Speaker 1: posted photos of us and professed your undying love for
Speaker 1: me every single day of our holiday on social for
Speaker 1: the world to see as you've done for the past
Speaker 1: six and a half years. Every weekend we've gone away,
Speaker 1: every holiday we've had. You've been our social media editor.
Speaker 1: You're the one that's presented to the world how I'm
Speaker 1: the love of your life. And now you've just said
Speaker 1: you're moving out with no discussion. And he's like, yep,
Speaker 1: and literally didn't speak to me for the rest of
Speaker 1: the night. I didn't hear from him for three or
Speaker 1: four days. I drove to the local pub at four am.
Speaker 1: His car was there. I looked in the window of
Speaker 1: the Pokey's. He was at a Pokey's machine with about
Speaker 1: six beers lined up by himself. It was very clear
Speaker 1: he had moved out. I didn't hear from him. He
Speaker 1: hadn't come home. He was gone, and I thought, you
Speaker 1: know what, I wanted you to move out anyway. I
Speaker 1: was no longer happy, I mean, unfortunate the way it
Speaker 1: happened that he just made the decision without discussion, but
Speaker 1: I was glad it had happened, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you've moved out. You no longer have the right to
Speaker 1: walk in and out of my house. So I got
Speaker 1: the locks changed so as I was literally heading out
Speaker 1: the door to go and stay at a girlfriend's house
Speaker 1: for the night. He showed up and he tried to
Speaker 1: open the door. Obviously he couldn't get in. He knocked
Speaker 1: and I opened the door, and he's like, what's going on.
Speaker 1: I said, well, you've moved out. I haven't heard from
Speaker 1: you in five days. You said you were moving out,
Speaker 1: and you've clearly moved out, so you can't come and
Speaker 1: go as you please in my house. So I've changed locks.
Speaker 1: I've packed all your belongings. They're all in suitcases. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I even bothered packing them for you,
Speaker 1: because I've paid for literally every piece of clothing in
Speaker 1: your wardrobe that you've accumulated over the last six and
Speaker 1: a half years. I should have kept it all, but
Speaker 1: you know I'm a nice person, so I've packed it
Speaker 1: all up for you. Here you go, I'll help you
Speaker 1: put it in the car. He pushed the door open
Speaker 1: grab you know, had his house keys in his hand,
Speaker 1: so he threw them up my face. He pushed me
Speaker 1: out the way and he said, well, the TV's mine.
Speaker 1: You gave it to me as a birthday present. So
Speaker 1: he tried to rip the TV off the wall. I
Speaker 1: tried to stop him. He pushed me again. He didn't
Speaker 1: continue the physical after that, but I backed away and said,
Speaker 1: you know, get out. I think he realized he'd crossed
Speaker 1: the line. Obviously, he had become physically violent. So he
Speaker 1: started picking up his suitcases I'd packed and putting them
Speaker 1: in the car. I tried to help. He did then
Speaker 1: push me again, don't you dare touch my things? And
Speaker 1: so I just backed away and just sat in the
Speaker 1: lounge room and let him put his things in the car.
Speaker 1: He came back screaming, where am I going to live? Said,
Speaker 1: I don't know where have you been living for the
Speaker 1: last five days? Go live there. Over the years, I
Speaker 1: just fell less and less in love with him. His
Speaker 1: relationship with his children deteriorated. He said he loved his children,
Speaker 1: but I never knew why he wouldn't fight for his
Speaker 1: children when his ex wife was sort of reducing his
Speaker 1: access to them. I thought, you are just not the
Speaker 1: man I thought you were, the man I fell in
Speaker 1: love with. He was not that man. He was a
Speaker 1: completely different person. So I felt really mixed emotions. A
Speaker 1: I had wanted him to move out. I had threatened
Speaker 1: it many times, and I meant it, but at the
Speaker 1: same time. I mean they were kind of empty threats.
Speaker 1: They were threats of saying, sort yourself out or move out,
Speaker 1: And deep down I hoped he'd sort himself out and
Speaker 1: get back to the person that I'd met, and that
Speaker 1: we would have a fresh start. So I think a
Speaker 1: little bit in me was still in love with the
Speaker 1: person i'd met, but I certainly wasn't in love with
Speaker 1: this person. I was angry at myself. I hadn't been
Speaker 1: brave enough to pull that cord a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I was angry he made the decision without discussion. I
Speaker 1: was angry we'd been to counseling and he'd lied. I
Speaker 1: was also just so devastated. He was silent for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and then a couple of weeks later
Speaker 1: he contacted me and said, I've made a mistake. I've
Speaker 1: been living on my brother's couch and also a friend
Speaker 1: from work's couch, and all my clothes are in my car,
Speaker 1: and I've had time to think, and I've made a mistake,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I'm ready to move back in.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about it, and can we at least
Speaker 1: go for a coffee and walk the dog? And I
Speaker 1: missed the dog, and so we did and we went
Speaker 1: for a coffee and a brunch and we walked the
Speaker 1: dog and we talked about things and it was lovely,
Speaker 1: and we kissed and we held hands for the whole time,
Speaker 1: and it was lovely. And he was like, I think
Speaker 1: I've made a mistake, but I just need time to
Speaker 1: clear my head. I need to see if I can
Speaker 1: sort myself out. I sort of gave him his space.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks later, he said, let's go out
Speaker 1: for dinner, and we did. We went out for a
Speaker 1: romantic dinner and had a bottle of wine and he
Speaker 1: didn't overdrink and he actually paid for dinner, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, a first, and we had a lovely time.
Speaker 1: And it was a bit awkward because I didn't really
Speaker 1: even know what to talk about. But he let me
Speaker 1: know he'd finally decided to leave his job. He realized
Speaker 1: that that was part of his causing him to be
Speaker 1: anxious and to drink and was stressing him out, and
Speaker 1: he said he'd applied for another job. He explained that
Speaker 1: it was actually quite a significant emotion and a pay cut,
Speaker 1: which I found really odd. I didn't understand it but
Speaker 1: he said, look, I just need to move on. My
Speaker 1: workplace is just no longer good for my mental health.
Speaker 1: Willing to take a demotion, It's okay, good on you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I literally didn't hear from him for weeks,
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks and weeks. Yet I'd see photos on
Speaker 1: social media if him out drinking with his brother constantly,
Speaker 1: in Sydney, in Adelaide, in Melbourne, all over the place.
Speaker 2: That was it. Bianca was officially done. She was worried
Speaker 2: about him, but she couldn't let him be her problem anymore.
Speaker 2: She'd given too much.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, I got a text from him, know,
Speaker 1: how are you? Can we see you again? Or just
Speaker 1: a can I see the dog? And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess that's your way of saying nail in the coffin?
Speaker 1: And I said, no, you can't. The dog's mine. You
Speaker 1: can't see her now or ever again. So he replies, fine,
Speaker 1: where's my money? I said, I what money? You owe
Speaker 1: me half of everything that's been paid off the mortgage
Speaker 1: And we had this text battle. I said, no, please
Speaker 1: check our prenup. I only owe you half if you contributed.
Speaker 1: You didn't. I've got all the mortgage statements, I've got
Speaker 1: all the bank statements. You're not owed anything. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I've loaned you tens of thousands of dollars and I've
Speaker 1: paid for everything. You probably owe me a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't ask we're done, just walk away. You don't
Speaker 1: even have to pay me back. Just walk away, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't. And then he sent me a foul email,
Speaker 1: firstly accusing me of cheating again, and I want my money,
Speaker 1: I demand this much, excell And I just thought, I
Speaker 1: want none of this. And I just forwarded it to
Speaker 1: the lawyer that had actually written the prenup in the
Speaker 1: first place, and I said, I'm engaging your services. I'm
Speaker 1: not even responding. I don't want to deal with this.
Speaker 1: I was just furious at this point, and I thought,
Speaker 1: are you kidding? We both know, as does everyone quite frankly,
Speaker 1: I pay for everything. You contribute practically nothing, not even
Speaker 1: half of the bills. Like why would you do this
Speaker 1: to me after everything I've done for you? Like why
Speaker 1: turn nasty? Just end it, just walk away. I was hurt,
Speaker 1: but I was more angry, like why would you do
Speaker 1: this to me? I've been nothing but kind, generous, thoughtful.
Speaker 1: I've been wonderful to your children. I've given you a home,
Speaker 1: you've moved out. I've let you take half my stuff.
Speaker 1: I've let you moved out with support. Now you want
Speaker 1: my money. So I just engage a lawyer and let
Speaker 1: them deal with it, and backwards and forwards between the lawyers.
Speaker 1: Over the next three to four weeks, quite a lot
Speaker 1: more came out in him trying to claim money. His
Speaker 1: lawyer provided his bank statements for the last five years
Speaker 1: that we've been living in my house, and he did
Speaker 1: that to demonstrate that Alex had been putting some money
Speaker 1: in my account. But what also came out in those
Speaker 1: bank statements was the lawyer didn't redact anything. I now
Speaker 1: had every single transaction he'd made for five years, and
Speaker 1: what I found was a quarter of a million dollars
Speaker 1: of gambling. I thought he had anxiety. He didn't. That
Speaker 1: was the result of a big gambling loss. The night
Speaker 1: before when he took seven weeks off work. It correlated
Speaker 1: with a big gambling loss. The nights when I thought
Speaker 1: he was drinking would correlate to one thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: a pokey machine. The nights when he was staying at
Speaker 1: his brother's house in the city correlated to three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars at Crown Casino, and so a quarter of a
Speaker 1: million dollars gone. And it was a my money, but
Speaker 1: you know what it was because I'd paid for everything,
Speaker 1: because he said his money was going to his kids,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't going to his kids. During COVID when
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to go to the Pokeyes, there was
Speaker 1: usually three to four hundred dollars a day of betting
Speaker 1: on online betting sites. So when I thought we were
Speaker 1: enjoying time together in lockdown, watching Netflix, bonding on the
Speaker 1: couch and of course chatting to friends on text and
Speaker 1: social media and WhatsApp, I was doing that, he was
Speaker 1: sitting next to me gambling, throwing hundreds of dollars away
Speaker 1: on online betting sites, all the meanwhile asking me for money.
Speaker 1: The loans that he said he was paying off the
Speaker 1: debts from his ex wife didn't exist. There was no debts,
Speaker 1: there was no loans, There was just gambling. The school
Speaker 1: fees didn't exist, The payments to his ex wife didn't exist.
Speaker 1: What did exist was the inheritance. He was gambled away.
Speaker 1: Within a couple of months it was horrendous to sit
Speaker 1: there and discover I knew he was an alcoholic. I
Speaker 1: did not know, And in hindsight, I know I should
Speaker 1: have known that if you're staying at a local pub
Speaker 1: to four am, the only part of the pub that's
Speaker 1: open is the pokies. And I just didn't connect. I
Speaker 1: just thought he was drinking beers with his brother, but
Speaker 1: the two of them were just gambling. And this is
Speaker 1: why his brother couldn't hold down a job. This is
Speaker 1: why his brother was being kicked out of houses and
Speaker 1: living on couches, and this is why Alex never had money,
Speaker 1: because he's a serious gambling at it. At that point,
Speaker 1: I realized, Wow, everything he said about his ex wife
Speaker 1: is probably not true. I knew she didn't leave him
Speaker 1: in debt. I wondered if everything he had said about
Speaker 1: her was untrue. So I rang her. Obviously I had
Speaker 1: her number as the mother of the children, and I
Speaker 1: rang her and I said, you know, hey, it's Bianca,
Speaker 1: and you would have heard that Alex and I have
Speaker 1: broken up, she said, Yet I said, look, I don't
Speaker 1: want anything from you, and I'm ringing to sincerely apologize
Speaker 1: for having been really unpleasant to you. For all these years.
Speaker 1: Alex had said a lot of things to me about you,
Speaker 1: and that you cheated on him and you left him
Speaker 1: in all this debt and all of the things about
Speaker 1: non access to the children. And she was so lovely.
Speaker 1: She said, do you know what I completely understand. I
Speaker 1: knew he would have been lying to you, and I
Speaker 1: knew that's why you essentially didn't like me. I could
Speaker 1: never tell you the truth because a I was scared
Speaker 1: if I told you the truth, he would come after
Speaker 1: me and the children. I think he's really dangerous. And
Speaker 1: she said, I also didn't tell you because you wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe me if I told you the truth. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you're right, but I'll believe you. Now. What's the truth?
Speaker 1: And she said, the truth is I didn't cheat. He
Speaker 1: did more than once. The truth is I didn't kick
Speaker 1: him out with no money. He stole all the money
Speaker 1: we had saved from my business. He gambled it all away.
Speaker 1: He left me broke and with nothing, and I had
Speaker 1: to borrow money for baby formula. He left me with
Speaker 1: two toddlers and a baby, broke. And she said, he's
Speaker 1: been gambling for years, Bianca. He did it to the
Speaker 1: girlfriend before me. I found out later. She's like, you're
Speaker 1: not his first victor, you're his third, if not more.
Speaker 1: He's been a gambling addict since he was about seventeen.
Speaker 1: He's just learned to hide it and manipulate it, and
Speaker 1: he just uses women for money and has learned to
Speaker 1: charm them and find the right buttons for them to
Speaker 1: fall in love with him until he gets what he wants.
Speaker 1: She said, don't worry, he's going to do it to
Speaker 1: the next one. And I said, well, hopefully no one
Speaker 1: else will fall for it. And she said he's already
Speaker 1: got a next one. What And she said, oh. He
Speaker 1: started bringing his new girlfriend to the kids' sports activities
Speaker 1: in June. The finances and the gambling, etc. Made me angry,
Speaker 1: But then to find out he'd moved on, Well, essentially
Speaker 1: had been cheating because I thought we were still dating.
Speaker 1: I thought we were trying to make it work, when
Speaker 1: in fact he wasn't. He was trying to keep me
Speaker 1: sweet to get money. He actually had another girlfriend. I
Speaker 1: kept going through his bank statements. I'd found the quarter
Speaker 1: of a million gambling, but I guess that's all I'd
Speaker 1: really been looking for, So I went back through his
Speaker 1: bank statements. Yeah, he'd been cheating, and not only cheating
Speaker 1: physically and emotionally, but he'd been giving her money. So
Speaker 1: I'd been paying for everything. I was out of a job,
Speaker 1: I was funding our holidays where we were still having
Speaker 1: sex daily, and he'd been sleeping with her on nights.
Speaker 1: He said he was at his brother's and he'd been
Speaker 1: giving her money. On our anniversary weekend, he transferred seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to her with the message just cause Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: I think I got flowers and she got like one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And then and I found these bank transfers.
Speaker 1: I started putting two and two together, like when it
Speaker 1: He started staying at his brothers and I scrolled through
Speaker 1: social media, and whilst they hadn't tagged each other, I
Speaker 1: worked out that there were functions that they were at together.
Speaker 1: So I pieced it together and he started cheating. When
Speaker 1: I lost my job, I was no longer useful to him.
Speaker 1: He moved on and found his next victim. So I
Speaker 1: had to go to the doctor, get tests, etc. Everything
Speaker 1: was all clear, thankfully, but emotionally at this point to
Speaker 1: find out I had just been used for money and
Speaker 1: had been cheated on and lied to and manipulated and
Speaker 1: gas lighted and accused of cheating when the opposite was happening,
Speaker 1: and put up with being ignored in my own home
Speaker 1: for days, and treading on eggshells for days, wondering if
Speaker 1: he'd be in a good mood or a bad mood,
Speaker 1: and just to have been through so that it wasn't
Speaker 1: that he left because I didn't love him. It was
Speaker 1: recognizing I'd just been played a fool for over six
Speaker 1: years of someone who just wanted money. I just broke
Speaker 1: down at the doctors. You know, I was there for
Speaker 1: physical tests, but they ended up referring me to a
Speaker 1: trauma counselor. I got diagnosed with depression, like basically post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress. I had to see a councilor quite a
Speaker 1: number of times. I got put on antidepressants. All the while,
Speaker 1: the lawyers are still battling things out, and he's still
Speaker 1: trying to get money. My lawyer was also looking through
Speaker 1: his bank statements and found things that I hadn't found.
Speaker 1: And my lawyer and I got together and found that
Speaker 1: not only was he gambling, drinking, giving money to a girlfriend, etc.
Speaker 1: Blew his inheritance, blew a lot of money of mine,
Speaker 1: borrowed money off me, all evident in the bank statements.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but he was getting cash deposits of
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand dollars a month at a time
Speaker 1: prior to telling me he was leaving his job, which
Speaker 1: now makes sense. He was had a very senior role
Speaker 1: at a commercial sort of kitchen equipment company. And what
Speaker 1: we pieced together is that he had been stealing equipment
Speaker 1: twenty thirty thousand dollar equipment from his work. They wouldn't notice.
Speaker 1: They sell millions and millions of dollars a month, so
Speaker 1: they wouldn't notice a thirty thousand dollar piece of equipment
Speaker 1: missing from the warehouse. And he managed the infantry in
Speaker 1: the stock take. He was stealing from his work and
Speaker 1: selling for cash. He was getting up to ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a month cash, basically trading in stolen goods. February
Speaker 1: twenty two four, just this year, it all came to
Speaker 1: a head with the lawyers. He wouldn't walk away. We
Speaker 1: ended up in a barrister session in separate rooms. I
Speaker 1: had to have a security guard because over the last
Speaker 1: few months, both myself and my neighbors had had to
Speaker 1: make several reports to the police of my house being stalked.
Speaker 1: So there'd been a number of instances where I guess
Speaker 1: unknown weird cars with unknown men were either in my
Speaker 1: driveway or parked out the front of my house taking photos.
Speaker 1: So I was at the point where I was a
Speaker 1: bit scared. He wasn't owed money, that was legally clear,
Speaker 1: but I knew if I just didn't settle, I was
Speaker 1: in danger. So we went to a barrister session in
Speaker 1: separate rooms. I had someone there looking after me. He
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to leave the room that he was in
Speaker 1: so that we didn't cross paths. The barrister recognized that
Speaker 1: I was afraid. The barrister, I guess as they do,
Speaker 1: sort of moved in between the two rooms and facilitated.
Speaker 1: We both had lawyers there. The barrister was a female
Speaker 1: and essentially came back into my room after at least
Speaker 1: an hour with him and I'd been sitting there, and
Speaker 1: she said, Bianca, legally he's owed nothing. It's clear as day.
Speaker 1: You have a prenup. The bank statements verify that he's
Speaker 1: owed nothing, but he's had to declare, as had I
Speaker 1: your financial positions as of today, which by this point
Speaker 1: was nine or ten months since we'd split up. But
Speaker 1: in that same nine months he had accrued over one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars of debt, so he had obviously gone
Speaker 1: and gotten personal loans or whatever to fund his gambling addiction.
Speaker 1: And the barrister said to me, he literally has nothing
Speaker 1: to lose. He is unofficially bankrupt. He's in a six
Speaker 1: figure debt. He owns nothing, he doesn't even own a car.
Speaker 1: He has a lawyer that you don't pay up front,
Speaker 1: so he now has legal bills. He will not walk
Speaker 1: away unless you pay. And I've just spent over an
Speaker 1: hour with him. He is unstable. He will go to
Speaker 1: any length to get money. I think, for the sake
Speaker 1: of what is in ten years time you look back
Speaker 1: at not a great deal of money to you. Forego
Speaker 1: your principles, forego the prenup. Pay him out, because I
Speaker 1: actually think if you don't, you are in physical danger.
Speaker 1: And I went. It pains me, it angers me. It's unfair,
Speaker 1: it's un just, it's not right. Fine, I will just
Speaker 1: pay him to go away, and I did. He was
Speaker 1: now spending up to twenty thousand dollars a month gambling,
Speaker 1: so his life I mean, if it could get any worse,
Speaker 1: it had spiraled. It taken a lesser job with lesser money.
Speaker 1: He was presenting to the world like he was happy
Speaker 1: to be without me, and he was partying and life
Speaker 1: was great with his new girlfriend. But the reality is
Speaker 1: it's not. It's terrible. He's just actually spiraled and he's
Speaker 1: a loser. Even the counselor that had met him said, wow,
Speaker 1: now that you've explained all of this, I have really
Speaker 1: a professional opinion. I was like, okay, what And she said,
Speaker 1: his textbook sociopath, he had a terrible childhood. According to him,
Speaker 1: he was abuse. She said, what that can lead to,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like it has leaded to is an
Speaker 1: adult that has no morals often turns to crime. Sociopaths
Speaker 1: very regularly turn to addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever.
Speaker 1: And she said, they actually just yet have no moral code.
Speaker 1: They lie, manipulate, use people to get whatever they want,
Speaker 1: and then once they can't get what they want anymore,
Speaker 1: they discard them. And she said, sociopaths genuinely don't feel love.
Speaker 1: They learn to mimic people, They learn to work out
Speaker 1: how to give people what they need and everyone will
Speaker 1: think they are kind and charming, but actually they feel
Speaker 1: nothing about anyone, and that's pretty much where we're at.
Speaker 1: I feel like it actually just gives me validation that
Speaker 1: this was never me, and I look back and think,
Speaker 1: we're they're red flags, and you know what, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: there's always red flags. And as I talk to you
Speaker 1: today and read out these stories of him ghosting me
Speaker 1: and abusing me and accusing me of cheating and disrespecting me,
Speaker 1: they should have been red flags at the time. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But honestly, I look back and I think, well, now
Speaker 1: that it's clear he is legitimately a sociopath, he was
Speaker 1: so clever at being charming and giving me what I
Speaker 1: needed when I needed it, and so manipulative that he'd
Speaker 1: just become really good at hiding the red flags. And
Speaker 1: in reality, I wasn't the first person he did this too,
Speaker 1: so he's had now thirty years to practice hiding the
Speaker 1: person that he is. So you know, initially when I
Speaker 1: found all of this out, I felt hurt and cheated
Speaker 1: and a fool, and now I just think, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not a fool. He's just very, very good at manipulating
Speaker 1: people and hiding what he's really like from everyone, even
Speaker 1: those closest to him. I honestly think the only person
Speaker 1: in the world that probably knows the truth about him
Speaker 1: is his brother. The rest of his family think his
Speaker 1: ex wife was the problem. They would now think I
Speaker 1: was the problem. Everyone believes him because he's had thirty
Speaker 1: years of practicing hiding what is really like. And I
Speaker 1: look back and I now realize, and his ex wife
Speaker 1: has told me the reason the eleven year old stopped
Speaker 1: seeing him is I don't know. She just got to
Speaker 1: the age where she started being through him and hearing
Speaker 1: the way he spoke to her mum, and then she
Speaker 1: started to realize he was lying well before I did,
Speaker 1: because she heard both sides, and so she turned on
Speaker 1: him because she realized what he was like. Since we've
Speaker 1: broken up the youngest daughter who is now eleven, so
Speaker 1: then our sixteen thirteen eleven, the other daughter, has also
Speaker 1: worked him out. He doesn't want help, and he is
Speaker 1: choosing to lie to everyone about it. So I've felt
Speaker 1: empathy and now I feel nothing. I have been through
Speaker 1: periods where I think, wow, addiction is a medical problem,
Speaker 1: and I have felt empathy and thought, you know, he
Speaker 1: couldn't help her addiction was and still is, you know,
Speaker 1: driving every decision he makes, and it's out of his control.
Speaker 1: So I have felt moments of that, and then I
Speaker 1: guess that's my heart and then my head clicks in
Speaker 1: and says, well, hang on. He was offered help for
Speaker 1: his addiction, he turned it away. Addiction might have controlled
Speaker 1: some of his decisions around money, but addiction didn't make
Speaker 1: him lie, manipulate, cheat, abuse me, yell at me, ghost me,
Speaker 1: disrespect me. And I guess once I thought about it
Speaker 1: in a more considered fashion and took my heart out
Speaker 1: of it, the empathy disappeared, and I just thought, no,
Speaker 1: everything you have done is a choice. And I know
Speaker 1: that's not the case with everyone that suffers addiction, and
Speaker 1: for many people addiction it's not a choice. It's a problem.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people want help and
Speaker 1: they can't get it. He doesn't want help, and he
Speaker 1: is choosing to lie to everyone about it. So I've
Speaker 1: felt empathy and now I feel nothing. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a lesson, like he's taught me lessons that I would
Speaker 1: never have learned otherwise, and I've probably come out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was always really independent and I've just
Speaker 1: come out of it more confident and more independent than
Speaker 1: I ever was. Since he's left me, and I haven't
Speaker 1: been sitting at home waiting for him and miserable. I
Speaker 1: do know that someone has tipped off the police to
Speaker 1: his stolen goods activity, and I know that because they
Speaker 1: contacted me and asked me if I had knew of it,
Speaker 1: and I said no, I knew nothing about it. It
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with me. I've heard that he
Speaker 1: may have been audited by the ATO and they have
Speaker 1: found some extra income that wasn't declared. So I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that it's going to have some repercussions for him, both
Speaker 1: financially and possibly criminally. I don't know the details. I
Speaker 1: don't know the outcome. I don't know what will happen,
Speaker 1: and I really don't care. He's made his bed and yeah,
Speaker 1: he can lie in it. I've joined a running club,
Speaker 1: I've upped my forty five game. I've just been overseas
Speaker 1: and done a CrossFit camp. I'm fitter than I've ever been.
Speaker 1: I'm financially independent again. I'm doing really well in my career.
Speaker 1: I've reconnected with friends that I probably had neglected, and
Speaker 1: that's been really wonderful. I've reconnected with friends I actually
Speaker 1: hadn't even seen for ten years and just bonded over
Speaker 1: others that have been through similar So whilst it was
Speaker 1: horrible and regretful, I just take lessons out of it
Speaker 1: and have come out a lot stronger and a lot
Speaker 1: happier than I've ever been. And at this point, I
Speaker 1: just want to stay that way. I want to be single,
Speaker 1: I want to be independent. I'm not looking to meet anyone,
Speaker 1: and not because I don't want to go through it again.
Speaker 1: I just am happy on my own. There's no burden,
Speaker 1: there's no ill will, there's just nothingness. There's just me.
Speaker 1: That's really all I care about. Me, my friends, my family,
Speaker 1: and just nothing to do with him.
Speaker 2: Everyone has an X is a Minti Media production and
Speaker 2: proudly you're part of the Mum of MEA Network is
Speaker 2: written and narrated by me Georgia Love and produced by
Speaker 2: Linda Scott.
Speaker 1: If you have a story you'd like to share.
Speaker 2: Email podcast at momamea dot com dot au. You can
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Speaker 2: for the next episode.