As we progressed from separation to divorce, he only got worse. He had grown accustomed to the lifestyle we had, where we both worked and earned fairly equal amounts, but where I used our money for bills, groceries and household needs and he used it to gamble. Since I did not want to admit what was going on in my home, I kept it hidden. I maneuvered our finances to the best of my ability to prevent falling too far behind.
Needless to say, when he moved out, he was in a completely different situation. He no longer had the "unlimited" gambling funds. And, this made him even angrier. His world was spiraling out of control.
He knew that he still had one thing he could use, though, to manipulate me: our children. He told them lies about me and tried to turn them against me. According to him, I was taking drugs and being followed by the police. He told them that I had been cheating on him. He made up stories to prevent the truth from coming out.
In addition, he began telling these same stories to anyone who would listen - my neighbors, people at the Little League field, and anywhere else he could find someone.
As if making the decision to leave him wasn't hard enough, now I had to deal with this. I was doing my best to raise the kids practically on my own. I was juggling my job and my home life and having to listen to all the rumors.
The hardest part was that I was trying to follow the rules and not say anything negative about him in front of the kids. While he was non-stop bad-mouthing me, I was sitting back letting it happen. Even defending myself was hard because in doing so, I would end up telling the kids how big of a liar he was.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you how I learned from all of this.
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