Revenge - deliciously cold

When things go pear shaped for us, quite often we tend to fall into the classic knee jerk reaction. I can honestly say that one of the greatest lessons in life I've learned is to sit back and wait. All good things come to those who wait.

Well I was really the model ex wife. That is until I discovered that my ex mother in law was attempting to or rather should I say succeeding at covertly (and sometimes not so covertly) destroying my attempts at doing business within the Glasgow Jewish community.

Another important lesson that I've learnt in life, and in fact it complements the first one mentioned above quite well, is that half the truth is not the truth at all.

So really getting through tough times is not just about standing back and regrouping, but also assessing your situation for what it really is. I sometimes have to tell myself off for being such an idiot blinding myself by emotional clutter.

When my ex informed my XMIL that we were getting a divorce, she instructed him to "retrieve" my rings. Of course he being the dutiful son did as he was told. Considerable amounts of conflict arose around that ring, but his scheming mother also waited till I was out of town, and she turned up with his "lawyer" and intimidated the woman that was looking after my children as a result of my ex husband having been bailed to his mothers house for assaulting my son. She was rude and aggressive, but then so was the "lawyer" they had hired to muscle them through the door.

Thinking she was achieving something, the vile woman started to take an inventory of things that were in the house and their so called "lawyer" did not see anything wrong with waking up the children and disrupting them in their bedrooms. Breach of the peace or what? They then selected several items and removed them from the house, without my agreement or consent. That was the moment that they changed the rules.

Well I lost my sanity realising the trap they had created, knowing I was 300 miles away and unable to put an immediate stop to this. It really showed how little my mother in law had ever actually cared about my kids. Note; that they remembered her birthday, she has conveniently forgotten theirs during this last year.

I promptly emailed my mother in law the pictures of my ex husband giving head to his male lover that he had met on the internet (I have the emails and wonder whether I might make some money publishing the whole sordid story) as well as the pictures of him engaging in intimate relations with a woman that he and his male lover were paying for sex.

Naturally I involved my solicitor. Everything went quiet. I got my simplified divorce. He insisted on coming around and splitting the spoils of the marriage. He went to town. He wanted the fabulous dinner service and the expensive food processor. I wanted out of the relationship with minimum conflict and conceded.

I got to keep a few nice things and all the rubbish but he did well out of the chattells. But not without a twist.

I was rather annoyed that not only did he take the nicest things, right down to the digital camera, but he had no shame in being so greedy.

I had my first Christmas last year, and the treatment that I received from the Jewish community generally resulted me in turning to my new partner for comfort and I turned my back on Hannukah. We had a great time and decided that a festive occasion deserved all the pomp and ceremony. We started off with prawn cocktail, followed by smoked gammon roast and of course a dairy based ice cream. Yes you guessed it - on the (now very non) kosher dinner service that he coveted and took.

I cannot wait til I bump into his mother at M&S again, just so that Jaye can tell her how fabulous our Christmas dinner looked on the plates she thought she would eat off, may already have done so and certainly wont ever again once she knows what's been on them. That's the closest anyone gets to blatantly serving suckling pig at a Jewish Wedding!

I still however have a heart and since my ex was childless, I did not stop him from having contact with my children. This resulted in us being rather civil to each other and of course me harbouring my little secret about the dinner service.

He then started to make me feel bad about money. Lets clarify a few things here. He was receiving a student allowance of nearly £400 a month and for nearly two years he spent it on himself, while I used our income to pay the bills, feed him and keep a roof over his head. When we parted ways there were several outstanding bills from the marriage. While he enjoyed a comfortable pocket money, I struggled to pay the bills and then he still came back to me asking me to pay for things that he had squandered the allocated money for in the first place, it has subsequently become evident on paying for sex for three in a bed romps that definitely did not include me!

I still helped him out in some situations. But the straw that broke the camels back was when I realised that only half the truth and assumptions from the half truth were resulting in major damage to my business and professional relationships with other people in the Glasgow Jewish community. My XMIL has become adept and passing vague and not so vague comments that naturally develop as they get whispered down the proverbial Chinese telegraph.

Lets get a few things straight.

1. I did not bankrupt him, he was £30000.00 in debt when I met him and he just could never control his spending.
2. He has not lost out on possessions, he actually got the pick of our chattels, particularly our wedding gifts.
3. I was not unfaithful to him, he slept around behind my back for at least four years before the marriage collapsed, using the services of whores and online frustrated housewives on the side too.
4. I did not leave him for another woman. The divorce was happening before Jaye and I became involved.
5. I spent months working on his appeal to get him unexpelled from University for cheating in an exam that I discovered last September he HAD cheated in because I discovered the stolen original exam paper when moving house.
6. He repeatedly lied to his mother because she would criticise everything we did down to the brand of bread we bought.
7. His mother would ask him to help fix a computer problem that "shouldn't have taken more than half an hour" and he landed up spending five hours there on a Sunday afternoon, repeatedly destroying plans for family time together.
8. I didn't make him homeless. He did. He assaulted my son, he argues in self defence, but was nevertheless arrested and told not to return to the house. I placed a trustworthy person to care for them. He could have moved into the house, I would have moved the kids to England if he had only asked but....... he couldn't afford to pay for a big house on his own.
9. I'm still paying for debts that he should share responsibility for, never did and never will.

After self funding my divorce, he now expects me to pay for the religious procedure too. No way Jose'. We're divorced and not financially connected at the hip. I paid for the civil divorce. I don't need a religious divorce. In case anyone hasn't noticed my taste for men has been drained. HE needs the religious divorce and for once in his life he can do something to get what he wants rather than expecting everyone around him to provide it for him. He can pay for it.

But it gets more interesting. You see it turns out that when a Jewish man proposes, the ring has to be his. He has to own it outright. Although it is permissible that ownership can be implied e.g. when using an heirloom, it is accepted that the ring is "owned temporarily" by him and then returned after the ceremony or as agreed by all parties.

My ring was his grandmothers and his grandfather gave it to us.He GAVE it to us. Allegedly. When his mother took the ring, she denied theft stating that it was never mine, and by taking possession of it also made it clear it WAS NEVER his to give away. This means that no exchange of property took place at the ceremony and I would therefore argue that my marriage was null and void! Through all this crap it may well turn out that we never in fact were married!

I can honestly say that I cannot recall my XMIL saying anything particularly nice about anyone, and I have no doubt that the people she talks about, share in her gossip about me. Well fortunately I learned about it all sooner rather than later and they all deserve each other.

The 26th of November is the next big day of my life. I say goodbye to Glasgow's Jewish Community and I start my life anew.

Standing back, telling it like it is and revealing the money grubbing scumbags that liken their rabbis to the Taliban, is revenge enough for me, but I am rewarded with one extra little piece of Shadenfreude, watching my XMIL squirm when the JT and the JC report on a woman's challenge to the actual validity of her marriage and why she is challenging it. There are many ways to skin a cat. And thieves suffer consequences too. Revenge , deliciously cold.