As with anything, there's always more to the story than what you see and hear on the surface.
My divorce was filed and final in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2010 in Utah. No person ever saw a judge. The papers went before the judge and the judge granted the divorce. In his divorce petition, my ex stated that I had abandoned he and them and had no knowledge of my whereabouts. In that divorce decree, my ex was granted full physical and legal custody of our two children. He served papers to my mother's residence in Indiana when I still resided with my husband and daughters in Utah. The fact is that we were in daily communication even when I made two trips to Indiana that spring with what I thought was my husband's full support to go to my the funeral service for my recently deceased grandmother and have some time and space to think about how our marriage may or may not proceed since we were having some troubles in our marriage again. We had been in and out of marital therapy and counseling since he returned from his first deployment after the birth of our first daughter.
Since the divorce, my ex has systematically tried to exclude me from the lives of our daughters. He has lied to the police and lied to the courts and never once been required to show evidence of his accusations. He makes accusations regarding my mental and physical health even after my records have been reviewed by a judge and no fault found.
He is an abuser. He abused me physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and sexually. I never filed any reports because I thought the repercussions would have been worse than the abuse. For most of our marriage he was the sole wage-earner and if he were to lose his job, we would have had even more troubles. I didn't know that I could leave and take the girls with me. We were isolated from all our family. When our first daughter was barely a year old and I was pregnant with our second daughter, he moved the three of us to Nevada saying he had a job there. He didn't. We lived in a weekly/monthly where there were regular raids for about a month before he got us an apartment.
It took me a long time to admit that I had been abused by my husband. I thought that I was just doing what I had to do to keep my marriage. That was true, but it was only after talking to my case worker at the women's shelter in Nevada that I started to realize that it was abuse. She put me in a weekly group counseling session that led to my individual therapy and even then it was more than a year before I could say that I was abused and accept that I did not have a choice. For all the things he wanted that I didn't want, his displeasure was made evident and only when I acquiesced was our home life tolerable.
Some say that it helps to say that you're not a "victim" but a "survivor" of abuse. Honestly, part of me says I'm a survivor because I got out alive, but a bigger part of me says that I'm still a victim. I'm a victim because while I am out of the line of direct abuse, some still continues. If I don't posture appropriately via text or email, I am not allowed to speak to my children.
My divorce was filed and final in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2010 in Utah. No person ever saw a judge. The papers went before the judge and the judge granted the divorce. In his divorce petition, my ex stated that I had abandoned he and them and had no knowledge of my whereabouts. In that divorce decree, my ex was granted full physical and legal custody of our two children. He served papers to my mother's residence in Indiana when I still resided with my husband and daughters in Utah. The fact is that we were in daily communication even when I made two trips to Indiana that spring with what I thought was my husband's full support to go to my the funeral service for my recently deceased grandmother and have some time and space to think about how our marriage may or may not proceed since we were having some troubles in our marriage again. We had been in and out of marital therapy and counseling since he returned from his first deployment after the birth of our first daughter.
Since the divorce, my ex has systematically tried to exclude me from the lives of our daughters. He has lied to the police and lied to the courts and never once been required to show evidence of his accusations. He makes accusations regarding my mental and physical health even after my records have been reviewed by a judge and no fault found.
He is an abuser. He abused me physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and sexually. I never filed any reports because I thought the repercussions would have been worse than the abuse. For most of our marriage he was the sole wage-earner and if he were to lose his job, we would have had even more troubles. I didn't know that I could leave and take the girls with me. We were isolated from all our family. When our first daughter was barely a year old and I was pregnant with our second daughter, he moved the three of us to Nevada saying he had a job there. He didn't. We lived in a weekly/monthly where there were regular raids for about a month before he got us an apartment.
It took me a long time to admit that I had been abused by my husband. I thought that I was just doing what I had to do to keep my marriage. That was true, but it was only after talking to my case worker at the women's shelter in Nevada that I started to realize that it was abuse. She put me in a weekly group counseling session that led to my individual therapy and even then it was more than a year before I could say that I was abused and accept that I did not have a choice. For all the things he wanted that I didn't want, his displeasure was made evident and only when I acquiesced was our home life tolerable.
Some say that it helps to say that you're not a "victim" but a "survivor" of abuse. Honestly, part of me says I'm a survivor because I got out alive, but a bigger part of me says that I'm still a victim. I'm a victim because while I am out of the line of direct abuse, some still continues. If I don't posture appropriately via text or email, I am not allowed to speak to my children.