And the story continues ...

In an attempt to consolidate as much of the past 8 years as possible, I wanted to give you a brief description of the types of behaviors that my EX would employ.  Once I moved out, he began following me and driving by my home regularly; he seemed to know where I was, the times I arrived and left and whom I was with.  I would get nasty emails, multiple times a day which were accusatory and degrading.  While I didn’t date for the first year and 3 months after I’d left, the EX thought I shouldn’t have a life outside of taking care of my child.  Mind you, our son went to his dad’s 3 nights a week so I had time to cultivate a social life when I wasn’t take care of him. 

 What also began to increase was the voicemails that my EX would leave on my phone at home and my cell phone.  Sometimes there would be 5-6 messages day, telling me how much of a bad mother I was, how selfish I was for leaving and taking our child out of his “home” and how he was going to take my son away from me because I didn’t “deserve” to have him.  He also convinced himself that I was “pscyho” and had a mental illness which was funny to me because I was never diagnosed with anything and had/have no issues functioning.   He began contacting anyone in my life he could think of:  my parents, my sibling and his spouse, my friends, even going as far as contacting my clients.  (I was working as a nanny for many families at the time to support myself and keep my son with me 24/7.)  He also sent many of my friends a key stroke detector virus in emails which would attach itself on their computer when they opened the email.  This afforded him my new email address(es) as I changed them over and over to get him to stop the constant harassment.  Each new email I created, he would find it and start emailing me there. 

 My lawyer at the time began sending my EX’s lawyer multiple letters demanding that his client stop the harassment and stalking behavior but to no avail.  The EX amped it up:  he began seeking out my old boyfriends to see if he could get anyone to “agree” with him that I was a crazy bit**.  Luckily, my friends and family contacted me to let me know what was going on but it caused me so much stress. 

I felt humiliated and embarrassed that he would stoop that low to harass my friends, family and everyone else who was in my life.  I was constantly looking around when I came home and when I left, trying to see if I saw him (which I did on occasion).  I began screening my calls and dreading to hear that beep-beep-beep that indicated I had a voicemail message.  I truthfully spent a lot of that first year crying and researching the web to see if there was any help for me … I desperately wanted it to stop but couldn’t find anyone or anything to help me.  The best my lawyer could offer me was advice to “ignore” him.  I began to worry if we would ever have a life of peace and would I ever find someone I could spend my life with?  I mean, seriously, who would want to date someone with a crazy EX??  I used to joke with my friends that even I wouldn’t date me.  Sigh.