“Das alte nicht mehr, das neue noch nicht. Ein ende gibt es nicht, alles hat bereits begonnen… the old is no more, the new is not yet. There is no end, everything has already begun.”

…a friend.

My ‘soon-to-be-ex-wife’ (STBEW) has never believed she was ever abusive to anyone. Even after all the lawyers and Children’s Services, and even the Government told her she was an abuser, even though she could only have supervised visitations with her children, even though she sat down with the children’s advocate who told her point blank what she had been doing to all of us was abusive, she has never accepted the findings, she has never accepted or come to grips with the fact she abused her kids… and me, for years.

It’s pretty simple, you can’t stop being an abuser if you can’t see that your behaviours are abusive. Yelling, or screaming at your children and partner is abusive. Constantly finding fault in their behaviour is abusive. Rage attacks are abusive. Pulling your kids hair until they comply is abusive. Pushing your kid, and especially hitting them, is obviously abusive. But, despite all the evidence she has been shown to date, she refuses to acknowledge her role in everything and anything that has happened.

…it can be incredibly hard to admit, even harder when it comes to breaking an abusive family cycle, but it all comes down to accepting the fact, when everyone who looks deeply into your life comes out believing, knowing, what you’ve done is abuse… maybe you really are the fucking problem. And STBEW is an abuser, and it has been proven.

I started making videos of the abuse before the social workers and lawyers and Government officials got involved in our lives. Altogether, I made thirteen recordings of STBEW’s abuse over a period of a few months. None of them are longer than a minute, because it was all I could do before I had to stop recording and get involved… of course, every time I intervened, I would become the target of the yelling, and the rage, and the abuse.

Originally I started making the videos with the idea of confronting STBEW with the evidence of her abuse. But, when I had put the videos together, I realized that any confrontation with the added audio-visual evidence would have been an insane move on my part. I was on my own, living in her house and, after looking at all of the videos together, I believed doing such a presentation would result in me never seeing my sons again.

So I put the videos into the archives. When the Government and social workers finally got involved — ironically, at STBEW’s request* — I finally saw my chance to get help, for me, for the kids, and even for STBEW, so I shared the videos with the workers. I hoped they would show the videos to STBEW, to confront her with the truth of her abuse, something that might actually wake her up to the possibility of changing, but I don’t think they ever did… because the abuse continued even all the way through the investigation.

…I can still remember, it was eleven-years ago when STBEW and I sat down with the Government appointed social workers, and they tried to lay out all the findings and conclusions they had come to regarding the abuses. Of course STBEW resisted, and wouldn’t listen, but I did. I actually recorded the whole thing. And I was actually so relieved that someone finally saw what the kids and I had been through, that I openly agreed to everything they said.

When the meeting was over, and we were approaching our little mini-van, I was so… jubilant. Someone was actually giving us a plan and help so we could fix the whole thing, and actually be a family. Everything, in my head anyway, was going to improve and we could all have a life together.

Holy f^ck was I naïve. As I approached the van, jabbering on about what a positive outcome could come from this meeting, STBEW was slowing down. I looked back, and it was pretty f^cking clear nothing had changed. She wasn’t quite yelling, but she was pretty close. That’s when I finally gave up. Nothing would ever change her behaviour, even being confronted with evidence from multiple outside sources. Only when she accepted that she had abused could things change and in that moment, and for the next months and years, I have doubted that could ever happen.

The recording of the meeting still sits in my little archive as well. It’s impossible for me to overstate how audibly happy I am in the recording that someone finally saw what I saw, and that solutions were available. Outside, standing beside the van, I was so f^cking crushed by STBEW’s refusal to look at her own behaviours, knowing our little family wouldn’t ever be fixed.

…anyway, the video below is very difficult for me to watch / listen to, because it’s what I experienced firsthand for close to five years. So I’ll probably take it down soon. Probably when I wake up tomorrow afternoon.

TRIGGER WARNING: …this video contains an audio recording of actual abuse…

*…STBEW used used to call social services pretty much every time her oldest would come home from visiting his father. When the visits — which were pretty inconsistent and infrequent, were over, her son would have a complaint about something or anything. STBEW would overreact, and make the call. Social services would open a file, investigate, and report back that there was no abusive behaviour. Neglect, they said, is not abuse. It got to the point where it happened so often, social services decided to look into the entire family. STBEW included. And that’s how we came to understand where the abuse was really coming from.

All of which has been proven over and over again.