This began I suppose about five years ago. I was married, happily married I would say, for thirteen years. I had never experienced any violence ( apart from one isolated incident where she abused me in public two years into our relationship we married after another two years ) up to that point in time, not in my family, and neither did my wife. Neither of the two of us drank, we didn’t smoke, so I felt that I was incredibly unique because virtually everything I have ever heard told me that violence comes from drink, or it comes because it was begotten of other violence. I didn’t experience any of this. My wife certainly didn’t experience any of this.

However, what did come to pass was that I came back home, I had been away for a few days. I walked through the door and my wife announced to me that she wanted a separation and she wanted me to leave the house. I had six weeks, this is what she gave me, six weeks to leave the house and to leave my two children. And she wouldn’t give me a reason for this. She just said, "I don’t love you anymore, you’ve got to go". And I begged her to give me a reason, but she wouldn’t give it to me.

Eventually I was forced into taking legal counsel because of the amount of letters that were hitting me every day, threatening me with exclusion, being thrown out of the house, etc. So I did go and I spoke to a number of solicitors and they asked me about my life. I explained to them my circumstances and they said, "You have a problem, it’s your best friend". I couldn’t believe this. I had been going to this best friend of mine with all my troubles. And eventually anyway, it did come out that my wife was having an affair with my best friend.

I was further devastated by this revelation as I had known him before I was married. I was going downhill fast at this stage. Up to that point in time there was no violence at all apart from the isolated public incident where she grabbed me by the hair, flung me to the floor and kicked me in the testicles. The trouble really began when I said to her, "You’re having an affair with my best friend, you know this is crazy, we can solve this". That very night she started to taunt me, she taunted me about the fact that he was better in bed than I was. All sorts of things like that -nasty horrible things. I would be pushed in the hallway, trying to provoke me to hit her back. I wouldn’t do it, I knew better. At that point in time, I knew the reason was that if my control in any way broke, she was going to have me put out of the house. I just knew that was the game. The taunting continued. She moved out of our bed. She moved into one of the other rooms in the house. It is very difficult for me to write about this.

One night my wife said to me, she was quite friendly, she said to me, "Do you want a cup of tea". She hadn’t spoken to me in something like three weeks at this stage. I said, "Yes, thank you". She came into the room with the cup of tea and she threw it in my face. That was how she gave me the cup of tea, and she laughed at me. I was working at this point in time, working long hours as well, trying to keep the house together. She then started a war of attrition against me, she would play the radio all night long, she would try to keep me awake, she would knock on the door, she would taunt me. She then started to accuse me of the most horrendous things and said that she would use this against me, that I had to get out of the house, otherwise I would never see my children again.

I tried everything to talk to her. I said she could have the house, the car, anything. Just allow me to still see my children. She said she didn’t need to negotiate with me. She was going to get it all anyway. Why did she need to negotiate with me? And the truth was, I went to my legal counsel and I asked them, "What would I get out of this, what are my chances of being able to see my children?" And they said, "No chance, you’d be lucky to get a few hours a month". I was really, really, really down at this stage.