Category: Uncategorized

Like many men, my ex husband had a very strange relationship with his mother. She was not much older than him, as she had got married at a young age, and they would both proudly tell stories about being mistaken for husband and wife. They were incredibly close – worryingly so – but he was simultaneously terrified of her.

I first realised there was something peculiar about my in-laws the day after my wedding, when my father in law ran around the house, drunk out of his mind, waving a knife about at his wife. I watched from the banisters on the stairs and in that moment, it dawned on me that I had somehow managed to marry into a home which was far more dysfunctional than the one I had tried to escape – no mean feat. In fact, I would go as far as to say, it made my house look fairly normal. I was told by my ex husband that they were only pretending to stay together and had conspired to present a united front until their son was married when they had, in fact, separated long ago. My father in law had even remarried a couple of times. Two days later, my father in law moved abroad and was never heard from again.

After his exit, my mother in law took charge of the house and this meant she now controlled all aspects of her home, including her grown up children’s lives…including mine too. And her technique to get her own way was fascinating. When she was upset, particularly if anything happened against her wishes, she used to lock herself in a room and pretend she was killing herself. I now understand that my ex husband’s habit of pathologically lying, even about the most mundane things, stemmed from this deranged mothering. He was so afraid of upsetting her that he learnt to lie about anything and everything to please her. Both children had become immune to this behaviour and hardly reacted to these episodes, but had learnt not to rock the boat to avoid any of ‘mamma’s meltdowns’. 

I have tried to erase most of the traumatic things she did to me from my memory (like the time she sneaked into my husband’s bed and made me get out – but I will save that story for another day); but one of my earliest memories that still scars me to this day is when my mother in law did not let me go to the airport to say goodbye to my parents who were returning to England after my wedding. She didn’t have anything against them per se; it was all about narcissistic control. My ex husband did not want to cause her distress by asking her and begged me to just say goodbye on the phone. I realised almost immediately that I had made a tragic mistake but kept thinking that when I would get back to England, back to home, things would work out. I just had to survive this brief blip. I also felt sorry for him and told myself I was only in this house for a short period of time. But it was a difficult compromise to make, particularly when I heard the disappointment in my mother’s voice – almost accusatory at her daughter’s pathetic helplessness and submission.  

“So, you’re not coming?” she asked.

“I can’t,” I cried.

I don’t think I have ever forgiven myself for not standing up to my mother in law that day.

My father is a complex man. On one hand, he expects conformity to traditional values from others, but on the other hand, he is extremely badly behaved himself. He doesn’t follow the rules he expects from his children – and unlike in Western families, this was never challenged by his children. He is also a loose cannon: on one hand, he will write to David Cameron to complain about how severely he has suffered from the evils of structural racism, but on the other, he will surprise you with his ardent love for Brexit or Trump. The man is a mystery. But living with him is infuriating.

I do believe that one reason I married so young (22) and got engaged so young (18) was the promise of escape from the claustrophobic confinement my home had become due to my father. I did not have an arranged marriage (for another time) but I did desperately try to find the first suitable boy who could take me away from the toxic home environment that I felt trapped in.

My father was and is the single reason and perpetrator of this toxicity.

A quick google of my brain results in many entries, and we will together, slowly, go through them one by one. But I will start with the gambling addiction.

Gambling is a devastating addiction and one endorsed by the government in order to exploit people’s weaknesses and profit from creating domestic hell. I once went to see a hypnotherapist about my vaginismus, and she told me, ‘I treat all addictions, except gambling. Gamblers are, mostly, beyond help.’

My memories range from sitting in a banger, on a stifling hot day, outside a bookie in a car for hours on end, whilst my father tried to double his money, to scuttling behind the sofas, looking for 50p coins, as my father had gambled away all the rent money. These are memories of the hell experienced by real families across the country.

With gambling comes lies, deceit, false promises, a lack of boundaries; I would describe it as when there is nothing left to lose, when you have lost it all, when you have fallen beyond the lowest pit, it becomes a mental illness – a delusion of grandeur and a desperate attempt to live an illusion, rather than the awful reality that you have fucked your family’s life, and your own, and have failed as a person – and as a father.

Due to gambling away the rent, we ended up moving 14 houses in 14 years, which resulted in 14 different schools for me. I was really academic and could have become something great, I truly believe this. However, the physical and emotional upheaval affected my outcomes greatly. This is something I also believe to be true.

I ended up taking the sole responsibility of paying the rent cheque for my parents each month, so that my younger sister did not suffer in the same way, and we spent 15 stable years in one home. I used my university student loan to do this when I was 18 and got a part time job on the side, and continue to do this today, 20 years later. This means I work on average 84 hours per week to make ends meet.

My parents need a roof over their head and my mum cannot be packing cardboard boxes at her age anymore. This is a choice I made and continue to make but is a direct consequence of my father’s inability to provide for the family he was and is blessed with.

Marrying an ogre isn’t easy for anyone really, but when you are of a very petite height, the difference between 45 kilos and 180 kilos is not really ideal at all.

This is not something a girl thinks about when getting married; she just waltzes into a relationship thinking we can live on ‘bananas and fresh air’, words my father used to repeat as I was growing up. Note, you can’t. But it was on my wedding night that the reality dawned on me about consummating this marriage. I don’t know if you have actually ever been to an Asian wedding and stayed to see how excited the wedding guests (usually inclusive of the local newsagent owner who may be offended at not being invited) are of the possible chance of the bride and groom’s potential jigginess that night. They make lots of embarrassing sex innuendoes and drop you to your hotel room, congratulating the groom for getting laid in the next hour or so. It’s like they live their suppressed sexual fantasies in a voyeruristic way by inappropriately getting involved in other people’s sex lives.

Now, both of us were inexperienced virgins, so it wasn’t a deliberate act of malice, or anything like that, but when two people of hugely opposing proportions, are doing something quite complex for the first time, with very little idea of how to actually do it, there is a high chance that things could go wrong. And it did spectacularly.

I had thought about this moment for a long time and had imagined with excitement and nervousness how romantic it will be for the first time. Imagine then, to my utmost horror, that my memory of that night is of a huge man bouncing on me, repeatedly, and in response, me gritting my teeth, squeezing my eyes, and praying for this ordeal to be over. Nothing went in that night.

To my horror and shame, the morning after that hideous trauma, I heard my husband telling his mother that I was ‘defective.’ Immediately, she plunged into Indian mother-in-law ‘helpful’ mode by booking numerous doctor appointments, where well-meaning but misinformed doctors told me to put on lots of lubricant and hope for the best.

Nothing happened the next night either. Or the next, and next. And after that, it was impossible.