everyone has an ex they really, really regret
I think I was just a bit ahead of the game with it being my first real boyfriend. Physical violence, mental, verbal and sexual abuse, a total psychopath. My teenage self didn't have the mental toolkit to deal with it. Eventually, I managed to break it off with him, although it cost me a lot including having to drop out of my A levels (when we'd taken our sixth form options, he'd changed his to match mine so he could 'keep an eye on me'. Everyone thought this was 'sweet').

Anyway, after breaking it off, I'd managed to get into a parallel class for one of my A levels, and in that class I made some new friends. He wasn't having this. He cut his own class in order to hang around at the school where my new class was and wait for me, and started following me from place to place.

I'd told my new friends he was my ex and I didn't want to speak to him, but I was too embarassed to tell them the full story. I don't know if he'd guessed that or not, but when he realised I wouldn't give him a hearing, he started being really nice to my new friends, with the result that more than one of them told me I should go out with him again, give him another chance.

The real fear came when he turned up at the flat where my new mates and I would get together outside school (one of our number was family-less and in a council flat which is exciting when you're 17). Someone let him in and he sat there chatting to everybody... I was terrified. Eventually he left and I finally told everyone the full story. We closed ranks and I thought that was an end of it.

A few days later he must have realised something was amiss because that's when the letters started. The first one, we didn't realise was from him until I'd read it. The next one, I had a suspicion it was from him but read it anyway, which was a stupid thing to do. After that, my Mum suggested to me that there was no point me reading the letters, as they served no purpose but to upset me. We agreed that I would no longer pick up any post from the doormat and that if a letter from him arrived, I didn't even have to know.

He eventually somehow realised that I wasn't reading his letters, and either guessed or found out that (unknown to me) my mother was reading them. So he started writing letters addressed to me but for my mother's benefit, in which he described various nefarious activities that he knew would worry her and make her suspicious of my mates (eg "I'm really worried about you hanging around with [name]. I was watching the two of you taking drugs while you were waiting outside the probation office for [another name] and I think you're getting in over your head..."). Happily my mother trusted me enough, and was getting to know my friends well enough, to realise this was utter bollocks.

You know what's really pathetic? The way it stopped. Given the level of violence I had known him to be capable of, I was terrified of getting the police involved in case he followed through on previous threats of what he'd do to me if I told anyone. I looked at him and saw a strong, scary and unpredictable nutter.

My Mum, on the other hand, looked at him and saw an overgrown little boy trying to act big by pushing other people around, including her precious daughter. So she acted in an incredibly parent-y way.

She phoned his dad.

His dad was both bigger and stronger than he was. It worked.
( Batsgirl, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 22:12, 6 replies)

Jeez!
Must have been terrible! Good on your mum tho, that'll learn him! Some of these posts are downright scary!
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 22:59, closed)

I have to admit
these stories really do get a bit out of hand, i just sit here telling myself it's not real ;)

Maybe i've just led a sheltered life, of i'm so unsociable that people don't want to stalk me.

Is this a good thing? :(

(Btw, good on your mother! It's exactly what my mother would do.)
( Axai is in Montréal, Canada O.o, Sun 3 Feb 2008, 23:22, closed)

Yay for mums!
Exactly the sort of thing I'd do for my kids ... and if that didn't work, BigDaddyWitch would beat seven shades of sh1t out of them!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 4 Feb 2008, 14:43, closed)

aw
I love parents.
(entry_level_adultette, Mon 4 Feb 2008, 18:58, closed)

yes
my Mum is many flavours of ACE.
( Batsgirl, Mon 4 Feb 2008, 20:47, closed)

Aww, I wish I had your mum
When something similar happened to me, my dad just hid upstairs, away from it all.
(missc, Wed 6 Feb 2008, 18:40, closed)