260: What if your husband claimed you were dead?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. It's more scary to think, I'm sleeping in bed with someone who is blatantly lying about their entire life to me, than to say, that's not true. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 260, What If Your Husband Claimed You Were Dead?

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My father was given up for adoption in the early 60s by two teen parents, and he was adopted into a very loving family that loved him very much and treated him just like their other children. However, it was a volatile household because his adoptive mother suffered with mental health issues, so he saw her go in and out of mental health facilities. He certainly was afflicted by these issues, and it affected him well into his adult life.

When my father was 16, he met my mother and she was about 14 years old. My mother was born a twin and her twin sadly died at birth. She was not aware that she'd had a twin that had died, but she always felt as though she had a missing piece. When she was a child, she would be making lunch and she'd make two sandwiches and say, why did I make two?

Things like that would happen throughout her life where she just always felt like there was a missing piece. So that had a profound effect on her. And that coupled with her being the second youngest of 11 siblings, nine of them surviving past birth. So she was raised in poverty with nine siblings.

Her father died of alcoholism when she was eight years old. So my grandmother was left to raise nine children on her own with very little income. And I would say that all of the nine siblings were all in survival mode. Several of those siblings battled drug addiction and bipolar disorder. And then her older sisters would have babies and there was teen pregnancies. So she was exposed to a lot growing up.

My father met my mother when he was 16 and she was 14. And both of my parents, I believe, suffered birth trauma, mum losing her twin and dad being adopted from his birth mother. And having been born in the 60s and raised in the 60s and 70s, they didn't work on any of that. They didn't heal any of that.

My parents really did the very best they could in providing and loving for us, but they hadn't healed their wounds and their individual pain and their trauma. So their marriage was explosive. Neither of them had any capacity to self-regulate. And I was their firstborn child. So I felt it was my responsibility to fix it.

I didn't see that my needs were deserving of support at all. I saw myself as responsible to caretake my mother. I was my mother's keeper. My brother was my father's keeper. And we really wore a lot of the emotional burden and I would try to fix it. And I couldn't. I carried a lot of guilt all the time that I couldn't fix it. And I had a deep sense of unworthiness.

When my sister was born, when I was seven years old, I actually attended the birth. My mum just wasn't in a good place in her life. I think that she was already overwhelmed with being a mother of two. She passed on the responsibility of my sister over to me and my dad. She wanted to go and work and start her life again.

My sister was my responsibility and I did absolutely everything I could for her. Every morning in the morning at seven years old, I would wake up, I would get change her nappy, I would get her dressed, I would take her down. And then I remember being a teenager and still obsessing over her and loving her and taking her with me everywhere and doing everything for her. That was my role in the world. My role was to caretake. That's what I did. And that's where I felt more comfortable because then I didn't have to look inward about what was really going on with me and how I felt. It's easier for me to deflect and just look after everybody else.

I was always the mature one, but it still wasn't enough to heal this broken part of our family. Even though now I know it's not my responsibility as a child, but when I was a child, I thought that was my job. And I've always been riddled with guilt because there was always turmoil and I couldn't fix it.

And this addiction to healing people had such a foundational impact on who I became. And it held me completely emotionally hostage to the needs of manipulative people in the world. I just wasn't a carefree kid. I wasn't a carefree teen. So I probably came across as really weird. And so I did not fit in.

I worked from the time I was 14. I just was such a loser. I had nobody. All I ever had was my mom. So not having good female friendships was also a deep wound for me because I never understood why. I was just an outcast. When I turned 18, I had finished high school and I was very eager to leave childhood behind.

I was going to go to do a year-long college course in journalism. I was excited. I had a boyfriend that I just very nice to me, but I just wanted to start my life. I broke up with my boyfriend. And at the same time, just when I was about to have this exciting new adventure, my parents divorced.

My family completely breaking down and my mother needed a lot of my support at that time. So I was pulled right back into caretake. My mom and my sister and being completely engrossed in that again. It was a very tumultuous time in our family. Everybody was in pain. It is awful, especially for someone like me that wanted to try and do everything I could to fix something that was completely broken.

And so it was kind of like the perfect storm of me needing somewhere else to go. And I was primed to be picked up by a narcissist. One afternoon, my mother and I were sitting having a glass of wine on the balcony and she said, let's go out, let's go to the pub. And I said, oh, no, I don't know. Thank you. I really didn't want to go. And she was like, come on, come on. She was starting her life again, too. And so I said, oh, OK, fine.

And so we went to this local bar that's on the beach and it's really nice. And then these two guys come up and just sit at our table. My mom loved the attention that someone had come up and sat with us.

We were talking to them and they were both in the army. They were very proud to say all the heroic things they had done. And I had no idea anything about the army. I wasn't impressed by it. I didn't get it. But this man sat right next to me and he was very interested in talking to me. He told me how old he was, that he was raised...

on a one and a half million acre farm in Queensland and that he had his own Clydesdale and that he would sleep under the Clydesdale at night. My mom just said, let's go out for dinner. I'll pay.

After the dinner, I was ready to go home. Mom was like, no, no, you stay. You stay out. You stay out. Don't have fun. So I went, okay, I'll stay. And we were in one bar and he ordered me a drink and he came up and gave it to me and came in for a kiss. And I felt really, really didn't want to do it. So I sort of leant back, but he went in forward and then put a piece of ice that he had in his mouth into my mouth.

And I just remember in that moment feeling like, oh, God, this is so uncomfortable. But my people pleasing, I'm like, oh, you know, aren't you cheeky? You know, in my head I'm thinking I cannot wait to go home. But I can't just say I'm leaving. Like I had to stay the entire time just because they wanted me to.

Went and sat, talked on the beach for a little bit. He comes in for the kiss. I think, okay, fine, I'll give him a kiss, you know, and then I can go. So I give him a kiss, whatever, and then I go, okay, I've really got to go. It's really late. And so I get out of there. And I remember walking away feeling like, oh, thank God, that's over. Then he calls me. I'd given him my phone number. I wish I hadn't, but I had because I'm nice, and he asked for it. He called me and he said, oh, you know, the trains have stopped running. We can't get home. They lived on the army barracks in Holdsworthy. Can we come and stay with you?

And I just couldn't believe like the audacity to ask a young 18-year-old girl if two 26-year-old men could come and stay in my two-bedroom apartment with my mum and my sister. I just said, no, thank you. No, I don't think so. Bye. But he continued to call me and call and call and call. So over the following weeks, I would just get all of these phone calls from him.

And I was dating other people. I was going on nice dates with people and having fun and whatever. But he was insistent. And I felt bad because he liked me so much and I didn't want to be mean.

I remember I was on a date with this one guy. I don't know if he knew I was on the date or I have no idea, but he was calling me and I felt so overwhelmed. And I said to this nice guy, look, I've got to go. I'm really sorry. And I left the date and I just thought he won. And so I agreed to go on a date with him. The first date, he really wanted to impress me. And I'm going to sound really stupid now because I believe things that are so ridiculous and

I didn't know people lied. My dad has integrity. My mom's not a liar. I didn't know people lie. He told me he owned two houses in another state. He told me that he had done security work for Princess Diana, which is absurd conversation.

He says, you know, I'm an elite sniper in the special forces, but you mustn't tell anybody, which meant I couldn't talk to anybody about it because it was a secret. So I kept everything to myself. I just fell right into it. And then between the day I met him to three months later, I was living with him and there was too much to question. And when I questioned things, he'd get offended. So I stopped questioning things. And then the lies got more and more and more ridiculous.

He told me his ex-girlfriend stole a million dollars. He told me that he lived in the US and played college baseball. He once told me, well, you know, I get my period too because when a man is really healthy, he will bleed out of his penis. He was testing me to see if I'm stupid and I was. And it's embarrassing to me now when I tell people these stories of the things I believed. Once I realized things weren't true, it's too late. I just thought, well,

I made my bed and I was only a few months in. I could have just walked away. I didn't know you could walk away. I didn't know you could stand up for yourself. I didn't know you could say that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. How have you played college baseball? When did you do that? He would never tell me. I'd say, okay, so you're a Tyler. So when you started your apprenticeship, when did you go to the US? And he would just always deflect and I could never get a clear answer. And then he'd get angry at me and then I would learn. Okay, don't ask any questions. So I get in trouble if I ask questions.

He had told me he was born in 1982, which would have made him six years older than me. One time, he'd had his driver's license out, and I looked at it, and I said, this says you were born in 1981, but you told me you were born in 1982. And instead of him saying to me, yeah, I know, it's really embarrassing, but I lied because you were so young, and I thought you'd think I was too old for you. So he could have said that, right? No, he needs to go to the extreme. So he says to me,

When I was 16, the special forces sought me out and they really wanted me to join. So they changed my birth certificate to be a year older so that I could get into the special forces a year earlier. I remember I used to love doing puzzles. I loved doing Sudoku. And I was doing it and he went, what are you doing? And I said, oh, it's just, it's a puzzle. It's Sudoku, I'll show you. And I'm trying to explain to him the rules and we hadn't even started the grid at all. And he looked at it and he went, yeah, I get it. I got it.

And I said, oh, no, no, you've got to work it out. Like, it's not a sum. There's no, like, you've got to literally, no, I understand. And I've got the solution. I can see it. His ego is too big that he couldn't even go, oh, show me. Okay, you put nine there. All right. Okay. No, he had to pretend that he was mathematically so genius that he could look at it and see the solution and you can put it away now.

So many things like that. And I remember sitting there thinking, he doesn't have it. That's weird. Why couldn't you just say, oh, I don't get it? Or he just always had to be the best of the best. He wasn't just a soldier. He was a special quarters fighting expert. He would brag, I've killed people with my bare hands. It had to be always to the extreme. Everything from a Sudoku all the way through to being a special services parasniper.

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I knew some things were inconsistent, but it was too scary to think he's completely lying to me. That was the scariest thing in the world. It's more scary to think I'm sleeping in bed with someone who is blatantly lying about their entire life to me than to say, that's not true. So I just chose to believe that he meant well and he's broken and he's had a sad upbringing and

And that I could look after him. And sometimes if I would say, well, you said you met Lady Di. He'd say, no, I didn't. You're crazy. You're making that up. I never thought maybe I'm crazy. Maybe he didn't say. I always knew he'd said it. And it taught me very early on, don't question anything ever. Just love him and accept him.

So I would go through stages where I would do that. But he was a volatile man. He would get very angry. He was on steroids. He was very jacked up. He had these ridiculously big muscles. And I was so sexually inexperienced when I met him. And I was not treated with care and consideration. It was like I went from being sexually inexperienced to being with a roided up psycho that just treated my body like a piece of meat.

So I was just trying to pretend to enjoy it. It was horrible when I just thought, I'm 18, I'm an adult. This is what I got to do. This is what sex is. And it was awful. So when I would be abused and reflect in that moment, you're like, there is something seriously wrong with him. But then he apologizes and I'll put that all away again.

I worked a good job. I worked for one of the top TV stations in Australia. So I had a really good job and he had a lot of free time being that he was in the army. And so we traveled a lot. So we certainly did spend a lot of our time traveling through Asia and going to Europe. And they were good times because whenever things are really good, he's great and he can be really great.

We moved to London for two years and we traveled Europe several times and we really got to see the world. Ride through a rice field on a moped together and meet people in different cultures and really did have a really wonderful time traveling. And we would talk about the life that we're going to have and the children that we're going to have. He always made it seem as though there's an opportunity right around the corner.

He always made it feel like he's just around the corner of being stable. It was always exciting because it's like, even if it's hard now, everything's going to be great. And so we would really live in this dream world of we're going to have these kids and we're going to call them this and we're going to live here and everything's going to be wonderful. And we did definitely have fun together.

We were living in a unit in the beach and we're going to the beach and we're making cocktails. We're going on holiday and we're buying everything that we've ever wanted. It was superficial, but it was great. It was a great distraction from the heaviness of everything else that was happening in my life. He was coming and going on deployment all the time.

He was in the army and he would go and probably on training or whatever, but he would tell me, I'm getting dropped from a helicopter into Papua New Guinea in the middle of the night. And so you'd miss him and you'd worry about him. And he would call you from a satellite phone in the middle of the jungle. And then he'd come home and he'd be so relieved.

He'd be home, so you'd have fun and great times and sort of fit in all the great things all at once, you know, and then he would go and then you'd miss each other and it'd be sad and you'd be writing each other letters and ba-dee-ba. And so it was a high intensity fun and then longing. And it's enticing.

And I felt really special because I guess I've never felt like I fit in. So it made sense to me that the guy who doesn't fit in understands me. And he's just trying to tell me everything I've ever wanted to hear. And obviously, I was looking to be loved. And my parents, my family was falling apart. So I wanted somebody to protect me and to support me. And he was giving me all of that.

Certainly was nice to be so adored. Like I was special because he wanted me. I guess I'd been searching my whole life for someone to think I'm special. And so all of a sudden, I mean, so deep that there's just no coming out of it.

I still always had very underlying trust issues with him. I didn't really believe anything he told me. So sometimes we'd be out and we'd be having fun. And I think he could see my face. He could see that register of me going, I wonder if that's true. And instantly he would be set off. So if ever there was an inclination that I didn't believe something that he was saying, nothing triggered that man more than being accused of being a liar.

So we would be having fun and then he would just go off and he would scream and not let me speak and he'd just be absolutely belligerent and irate.

If something had started an argument, no matter what the topic, he would always turn it into a fight with me about how I had just spoken to him. So he actually taught me to be very intentional with what I say, to never provoke. So I started to record our fights, any argument we would have. It was so hard to listen to because I knew I hadn't said that. I knew I didn't do that.

He's just trying to break me and to hurt me and to make me stop ever questioning anything or asking for anything ever. It was teaching me just to shut up. And it worked. Two years after I met him, I was 20 years old, and he had asked me to marry him. It was a beautiful ceremony at my dad's house. And what was strange was none of his friends came, not one.

I invited his very best friend. I offered to fly his best friend. It was only an hour flight, not far. He refused. All of his army mates, or whom I'd met all of them, nobody came and nobody showed up. It was only his mum, his dad and his brother and his brother's wife that came. All of this cycle carried on for the next eight years. So we were married and then for the next eight years of marriage, we had two daughters. I had my first daughter five years into our marriage and

She was just such a blessing in my life and gave me so much purpose. The birth of our first child was hard for him because I had only him to look after. Then I had my baby and everything changed, of course. You know, it was so overwhelming. I had absolutely no support from him.

Soon as our first child was born, he would start taking up hobbies. He's joined a sports team that needs to do two hours of training and then three hours of playing. So he's never there on the weekend. I was doing it on my own and I felt so unsupported and he really let me down.

I was a neurotic new mother. I was so focused on not ruining this baby's life that I had absolutely no time to focus on his needs beyond what's practical. He was not my priority anymore and he did not like that. We had been living in a little two-bedroom place, but we couldn't afford to live there anymore. So we moved in with my mum, who was an incredible support financially and with the kids.

And it was hard living with my mum and him because he didn't want to be a part of this family. So he would refuse to eat meals with us. So I had to make separate meals for him, freeze them in the freezer and get a microwave for the downstairs garage. And so he would come home, microwave the frozen home-cooked meal that I would cook for him and eat it in the garage while we all ate dinner upstairs.

When I was pregnant with my second, I did not want to have another baby with him because I just didn't want him to let me down again like that. But ultimately, the birth of my second daughter is what helped me escape. And so she actually saved me. She's such a blessing.

Both of my daughters are such a blessing, and he gave me them, and they're my biggest gift, and I thank him for that. And everything I went through for 10 years of hell was so worth it because they're just the best. They are incredible young women.

When I was pregnant with my second, I was in labor and I was doing it on my own. And I said to my husband, it's time, like, let's go. And he said, you'll be right. You'll be fine. Just ask your mom to take you or something. So she was born and I called him and I said, okay, she's here. And he said, okay, I'll come over. And he brought my other daughter. And I thought, I'm just going to see if he asks me how I went.

And of course he didn't ask me. He didn't say, how are you? He didn't say, how did you go? He didn't say, I'm proud of you. He didn't say, are you feeling okay? Are you any sort of pain? No, nothing. He didn't care.

It was after our second daughter that things started to get really, really bad. He was very angry with me. I could not do anything right. He would scream an inch close to my face and point his finger in my face. It was just terrifying and I just wanted to protect my daughters from it. So I really tried to placate him wherever I could.

There was also a lot of financial abuse. When our first daughter was born, he was running a tiling business and I was just so preoccupied with our daughter that I didn't help him very much with his business. And then when the business failed, he blamed me. It was my fault because I didn't do any of the bookkeeping and I didn't help him with administration and I didn't do anything. And I felt very guilty about that. So after our second baby was born and he started up that business again,

I tried to do that for him, but he wanted me to do the bookkeeping without being able to look at the bank. I wasn't allowed. And then I would be screamed at and yelled at because I wasn't doing my job properly as the bookkeeper. So you're never going to win. There's no winning. There's only me disappointing him. And I'm starting to really resent my place in this world.

By that time, I wasn't naive anymore. And I started to think, I can't do this anymore. I need to get out. But I have no money, no job, a newborn baby and a two and a half year old. I don't know how to do that. I would go between, I have to leave. I don't know how. And I felt very guilty. I didn't want to ruin his life.

I remember one day my mom had heard the way he was speaking to me and she came up to me. She said, what are you doing? You don't even sound like yourself when you speak to him. You have to leave. You can't live like this. And I said to her, I know, mom, but what can I do? I didn't know how you can do that. And I couldn't just sit him down and say, I'm not happy. I need to end our relationship and you need to move out.

I needed something tangible. I needed a golden ticket. And I knew if I looked through his phone, I'll find it. I had no doubt that he would be up to all sorts of things in his life that I had no idea about. I just knew him. And I knew he was secretive and I knew he was a liar. One day, 8th of December, 2016, we had been invited to a wedding.

And then I'm at the wedding and then they're doing the speeches and the bride's father made a very beautiful speech about his future son-in-law. And I remember looking at this father-in-law speaking about his son-in-law and thinking, my girls will never have that. And it's so funny because I'd been hurt for 10 years. That didn't matter. It doesn't matter about my pain. It doesn't matter about my abuse. But when I started to think about the future that my daughters have with their father, it just hurt me.

We drove home from the wedding and my girlfriends were having a Christmas dinner that night at a local restaurant and I really wanted to just say hello. And I was there for about an hour and then I drove home. I drove up the driveway and I could hear my six-month-old baby screaming.

And I walked into the house and she was screaming so loud next to him. And he is completely passed out, squashed right up against my baby. And then I didn't care if I was going to invade his privacy because you've just left my baby to scream and you could have rolled onto her and she would be dead. So I was angry and I thought, I've got to look, I've got to look.

I'm going to try once. And if the universe wants me to see what's in this phone, I'll get in. So I snuck into the room and I grabbed his phone and I went to the garage and I looked at his army uniform and it had his army number. So I tried that and I got in first time. And I thought, well, that's my sign. I went into messages.

whatever was at the top. And I started reading. And I was familiar with this person, this colleague that he'd been talking to. His colleague had a wife who was dying of cancer. And so I'm reading the text messages. My wife has died a few months ago and I'm living with my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law because they're helping me with the girls and I'm doing everything that I can

He's talking about how his wife's passed away and he's raising his daughters on his own and that he's lonely and he needs company. And I'm just going, oh God, it's so sad. You know, this guy's wife, I didn't even know his wife died. I thought she was only sick. And I'm looking at the messages and I realized all of the messages detailing his wife's death are in blue. And this was my husband telling the story about himself. I can't even compute what I'm reading.

I'm falling through these different levels of horror. I can't even grasp what I'm reading. It makes no sense. I read them over and over and over again just to make sure that what I was seeing was true. And I realized the dead wife that I was reading about was me. I was his dead wife.

He was saying to this guy, I'm really lonely. Can you put in a good word for me with the receptionist? Because, you know, a man has needs and it's been really hard. And so I did go and look at her messages just to see. It was so obvious that he was the creepy guy creeping on the pretty young girl. And I thought, well, that's enough. There's my golden ticket.

I put the phone back and I went back into the lounge room and I started screaming. The pain was screaming out of my body in a state of complete shock. I knew I would find something, but that was just beyond what anything I could even comprehend. But once I got that primal scream of horror out of my body, I went into practical mode. I went, okay, here's your ticket out.

So I decided, okay, I'm going to go up and tell mum. And once I tell mum, it's over. So we were up all night in this roller coaster of going from horror to

crying to joy and elation and relief we would be laughing about all of the lies and all of the things that we were led to believe and then we would go into just shock and not knowing what to do next and scared really scared because i had boys been told that he is an elite assassin and that he has unspeakable violence in his nature and we planned all night we didn't sleep a wink

I called a 24-hour hotline for domestic abuse victims and asked them, what should I do? He's asleep downstairs and I need to get out and my daughters are downstairs. What do I do? I got some advice from them and we ended up calling my dad at about five o'clock in the morning and told him he needs to come over and help us.

So I walked me and my baby downstairs. I crept into the room where he was still passed out and was sleeping. And I just didn't even know who this person was that was in my bed. He woke up and he said, where are you going? And I said, I'm just going for a walk. And I scooped up my two and a half year old and I put them in the car and I left.

I went to a park and I'm sitting in this cold playground with my babies, not even knowing where am I going to go, what I'm going to do. And my dad came before he went to the house and he sat with me and I just showed him the text messages because they speak for themselves. And this is one of the reasons why I kept them was because it was worse than how I could describe it. And he went into such detail over a period of weeks about my death and what he was doing with the girls and raising them and how he's such an amazing single father.

It's scary. And I felt worried that he had a death wish for me and that he was going to do something about that. What I also found in those text messages was that he was participating in a lot of drug use and I had never taken any drugs and I did not know he took drugs and he was doing a lot of drugs. And so that's why he was passed out was because he had taken something. And what's worse is that we were struggling so badly financially. Where was he getting all the money?

And so I sat with my dad and he read the text messages and he said, okay. And so he went to the house. After he left, my girlfriend called me back and I drove to her house and I told her what had happened. And as I was there telling her what was going on, my dad calls me and he says, he's not leaving. You're going to have to come and talk to him.

I went back to the house. I spoke to my mom and I said, well, what's happened? And she said, my dad woke him up and said to him, we love you. You're our son, but you have a problem and we need to ask you to leave. He was just completely brushing it off like it was nothing. So once I get there, walk up to him and he gives me a kiss and a slap on the bum. And I just was like, oh,

I walked into the house and I sat with him on the lounge and I said to him, I looked through your phone and you know what I saw. Let's just split up. We're both not happy. And I promise you, I don't need any answers. I don't need any questions. Don't worry about it. I'll never take your girls off you. He said to me, well, you have gained a lot of weight and I had just had a baby.

I didn't say to him, fuck you, you said this, you're a psycho, you lied about this, you lied about that. I didn't care to be validated or vindicated by him. I'd been with this man for 10 years. I knew there was no point to me saying, just tell me the truth. I wouldn't get it. It's a waste of time and it angers him. And I didn't want him to be angry. I wanted him to leave.

I was just being very practical because that was my coping mechanism from the shock and the horror of what I just found. And he went. He did leave. In the days afterwards, I did completely fall apart. I had never realized that an emotional response could affect you physically. My muscles were weak. My body was sick. The weight of my body standing up hurt.

I would cry like a guttural scream cry. It was just 10 years of everything coming up all at once, really hard and really fast, releasing it out of my body because it was all held. I hadn't ever put myself first.

And I went through a whole host of emotions. You know, the shock mixed with the relief and just the heartbreak. I felt heartbroken. And I did really struggle with a lot of guilt as well about what I had just done to him. I had taken his family off him. I was riddled with guilt and remorse. And I would count the days. I survived a day.

And then I would count the weeks and I'd go, okay, it's been a week. And it started to lift. The shock and the pain would lift. I just had to realize that even though I felt guilty, it's a small price to pay for my freedom. And so I pushed through that and just tried to be as peaceful as I could with him in order to get that freedom that I desperately wanted. I started to remember who I was.

You don't realize you've completely lost yourself until you find it again.

I was a shell of myself and I didn't know who or what I was. And as those days turned into weeks, it was like a tangible thing. I could feel myself come back into my body. I remembered parts of myself that were gone and it felt so good. And the more that you just hold on to those feelings of remembering the essence of who you are,

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I just so didn't care. My brother took him in for quite a few months, which was really bad for my brother's mental health. My brother came to our house scared to death one day, shaking. My brother is a six foot four big guy. And he was shaking, scared to death that he was going to wake up with a knife in his back. And my brother ended up kicking him out.

He came to talk to me one day and basically put all of the blame of the entire relationship breaking down on me. And then he also told me in that conversation that he has cancer, which wasn't true. And then this girl that he was seeing, she started to message me. I guess he had cheated on her and she started calling everyone to drag him through the mud and say, your friend is a piece of shit cheating. And I spoke to him. I said, I don't want people calling me. I don't care what you're doing.

I never, ever made him feel as though that I was going to take the children off him, even though I was very scared for their safety because I knew that if I had started that battle, then he'll get his guard up and then he will fight back. And then once that tone is set, then you've got years of heartache ahead of you of fighting this battle. And after a few weeks of him coming and visiting them once or twice a week, he kind of dropped off for quite a while.

I used to send him photos and I'd send him pictures. I would send him what I would have thought that I'd want to see if I was a parent and hadn't seen my kids in a while. And then eventually I just stopped for a while. And then that was two months until I heard from him. And then when he called after two months, I gave him the phone because I had my freedom. And I knew that as long as he never felt that I was going to take them off him, we could have a peaceful co-parenting relationship.

I probably didn't pick the best father in the world for them, but that's their father. So he does have a relationship with them and they recognize that he can be inconsistent. They recognize that he is a different individual to most others.

So a few weeks after we had separated, I needed to borrow the car to go to an appointment. So he had come to spend some time with the kids and I had borrowed his car to go to my appointment. And I don't know if this was intentionally placed for me to see, but on the passenger side seat was a journal.

He had been telling me, I'm seeing a counsellor, I'm seeing a counsellor. And in this diary, he has written these journal entries to himself from the perspective of the counsellor. The first letter is written to himself. So I'll read you that. This is very rare for me, and I've not been compelled to write to a patient for a long time.

When I was presented your case file to study before our first session, I must say that I was horrified to read the situations you had endured. I had created an image of you in my mind of a wild-looking man, loud and with disregard for life. On our first meeting, I was shocked to see a handsome, softly-spoken man who was well-mannered, but your eyes told a different story, one of loss and pain.

eyes that had seen things that could never be unseen. You have an extremely complex character, but your outlook on life is simple. You are a man of strong will and determination. When you enter a room, you command respect, yet you have a gentle soul, a man that is caring and kind and keeps all those he lets in his life safe.

You are calm and calculated in the face of adversity with a mind that can solve complex problems with ease, yet able to impart unspeakable violence of which is unfathomable to me. There is a term that is used loosely and often undeservedly these days. It gets used for sports people, celebrities and even fitness groups.

The term is hero, a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements and noble qualities. I know that you are far too modest to admit these qualities, but these traits are embodied wholly by you. There is something about you that radiates to all those you hold dear. He literally wrote that about himself. It's so embarrassing. There's another one.

So this was written by himself, but from the perspective of a wife of a fallen soldier that he worked with. I was contacted by Alice a few weeks ago to inform me of the coming to an end of your counselling. I wanted to take this opportunity to write to you and to give you insight into a time in my life that would ultimately be cut short. I had been with Phil since I was 17. We were high school sweethearts, a kind and caring man who'd always wanted to join the army together.

This day finally came when he turned 20. Once enlisted, Phil was unsure of his choice and was apprehensive to continue. We spoke about his options and he was all but convinced he would leave. A week later, he came home from work one evening and said to me, I'm staying in. I want to be a sniper.

He said he'd never been awestruck before, but today at the range there was this guy, and when he walked in, everybody watched him. The other guys would whisper, that's him. He used to say of you that you were the most calm yet frightening man he'd ever seen. It was after this encounter that he had found a newfound drive as a soldier.

He had found out what unit you were from and signed up for selection. Training as hard as he could, even without meeting you, you were his drive in life. You had begun your impact on him before you even knew who he was. I remember the first day he finally met you, about 18 months after that moment. He would tell me of the times you would run training with everybody nearly collapsing and you still smiling and barely out of breath. When he finally got to work with you, he felt like he had made it. He was with the elite, he said.

You were his idol. You gave him confidence I'd never seen before. He would say with you around that he was capable of anything. He looked at you as being immortal. I remember him coming back from Iraq and he said he couldn't have done it without you. He said you were in a firefight and he was shitting himself and he would look to you and see a calm face. He said you would give him a smile and tell him, we'll be right, mate, and he would feel invincible.

Although he came to his untimely death in Timor, and I know I blamed you for it for a long time, I want to thank you. Thank you for molding him into the man I got to call my husband. He tried to embody all of your values, and this made him an amazing man. Thank you for everything you did. Without your impact, he would never have achieved the greatness he desired, and I wouldn't have the warm memories of a loving man I hold dearest. With the utmost respect, Kate."

So this is a completely made up letter that had stemmed from his imagination of events that never even happened, written from the perspective of a counsellor and a woman who has lost her husband that never existed. I could have been vengeful and I could have been angry, but I didn't want to make him define me because I had been defined by him for 10 years.

If I defined myself as divorced victim of him, he is still my identity. So I didn't want him to be my identity at all. I wanted to just be myself. I didn't want to feel sorry for myself because then he still has power over me. Because then I'm not myself. I'm his ex-wife. All I wanted was to relinquish any power he had over me. I had grieved this relationship for years before.

I had grieved it, mourned it before I ever left him. And now everything opened up for me. Self-victimization thoughts and things like that would come up. I would feel it in the moment, but I wouldn't stay in it.

and using it to propel your growth and becoming an even better version of yourself because of the hardship. Because without hardship, without adversity, we can't grow and learn and be in our best potential. If we have the hardship and we have the adversity and we victimize ourselves and we tell ourselves, poor me, that's easy. I could have done that. That's easy. What's hard is

is saying, that does not define me. I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to use it as a tool to make my life better than it could ever have been. He is my greatest teacher and he's my greatest gift giver. I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't be able to help the people that I help in my life. I work for an incredible organization that helps people like me to leave unhealthy relationships. And we help people like him

I talk to the perpetrators and I talk to the victims and I give them both the love and respect that they deserve because it's not my job to place a judgment on anybody. He made me who I am. I have an incredible life with incredible children and a great job and an amazing partner. I have everything anybody would ever want. And he, in a roundabout way, gave it all to me.

I lost the very essence of who I was and I didn't even realize she was gone. But once you land back into your body, back into yourself, the possibilities are limitless. Today's guest requested to remain anonymous. But if you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at journeyforward808 at gmail.com.

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I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me and Sarah Marinelli, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once a facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

acts. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.