Have you ever felt at a loss after the end of a toxic relationship? Tried to sort out and sift through the details of what happened? Whether you ended the relationship, or were the one broken up with, knowing the relationship was toxic doesn’t preclude you from experiencing some level of grief for the end of things. Sometimes you might be plagued with thoughts, wondering what you could’ve done differently to prevent your partner from behaving in a toxic or abusive manner towards you. If you’ve found yourself in such a precarious situation, I’m going to share with you some of my personal experience that I hope may help you heal or move forward. You don’t necessarily need to do what I did—knowing this is possible may be all you need to tell yourself that you didn’t imagine the hurt and pain you received, to help you let go and move on.
I was diplomatic when I wrote about my divorce a little over four years ago. It was a complicated mess of a situation, but I felt like I needed to be diplomatic because I knew there was a good chance my ex-husband would happen across whatever I wrote publicly. After all, when we first got together, he’d talked about how he’d found his ex-fiancée’s blog and what he’d read on it. Yes, he’d been engaged to someone else before me. A Malaysian woman that I found myself competing with to prove I was better than her and wouldn’t leave him. I remember wanting to reach the milestone of being with him longer than she had.
But here’s a thing you don’t hear much about when it comes to toxic or abusive relationships. When you’ve been in one, you can worry about the people who come after you. This ex-fiancée, J, had been checking up on me on and off for years. Sometime after I published a series of blog posts after my divorce, she read those posts and then accidentally liked one of my Instagram posts. When I looked at her username, I wondered if it might’ve been her, so I decided to send her a message to find out. It turned out, I was correct.
After all those years, I finally had the opportunity to hear her side of the story of what went down in their relationship. I wasn’t weirded out by her stalking me online because I’d been doing the same thing to the woman who had supported my ex-husband through our divorce, worried about how he was treating her and wondering when she’d come to her senses about him.
J and I wrote back and forth a bunch on Instagram but opted against following each other publicly, lest my ex-husband or his family notice. You might be wondering why I’d write about it now then, and that’s primarily because I don’t care what they think any more, because it’s more important for me to live and share my authentic truth. I hope that sharing my own story can help others.
When I flew back to Malaysia for the first time in over 9 years back in 2023, I reached out to J and asked if she’d be interested in meeting in person, as she’d suggested when we messaged earlier. She was, and we made plans to get brunch together. She picked me up from the apartment complex I was staying in and took me to a restaurant in TTDI, where I used to live, to get my favourite Malaysian meal, char kway teow.
We didn’t get together when I returned to Malaysia in January 2024 (I was too busy spending time with the man I was seeing then), but I again reached out to her when I returned in May. I invited her to watch me perform stand-up comedy because I thought it would be a funny way to share the latest news about my ex-husband with her. Let’s face it, a decent amount of my stand-up last year was me making jokes about him to help me cope with the drama he created in my life. She came to support my performance, and then later took me out for afternoon tea on a different day, before dropping me off at a stand-up open mic I wanted to watch.
Meeting J was healing for both of us. I alleviated the guilt she felt about the person he became after they split up, and how he behaved toward me—he was responsible for his behaviour, not her—and she helped me see that he had always been the kind of person he was with me, so I wasn’t responsible either.
This story doesn’t end here, though. In my follow-up blog post after I announced my divorce, I wrote about some of the lessons I’d learned in other relationships, and directly addressed one of my ex-husband’s partners; the one who’d supported him through the divorce, sowing a seed of doubt in her, hoping she’d read it and eventually see the light about him. M had come into the picture of my polyamorous marriage when my relationship with my ex-husband was already rocky, and just before his live-in partner A broke up with him. In those days, my ex-husband used an abuse tactic known as triangulation (whether or not he was aware of what he was doing is besides the point) to pit me against her right from the beginning, because she supported him through that break-up and I wasn’t behaving in the same way. Because she was the new shiny person in his life, she got treated better than everyone else and wasn’t able to yet see the signs of what was actually going on. Given what he told me about her, though, I had a feeling she’d figure it out eventually. All I had to do was be patient and wait for her to put two and two together—after all, she’d been privy to most of the things I wrote in the court documents I filed against him. He could try and manipulate her and tell her I was lying, or put his own spin on things, but eventually it would start eating at her.
They eventually broke up in January 2022, which I learned about from stalking her on Twitter. Stalking her on Twitter meant I’d also seen her getting abused by strangers when they’d been together, and I held him responsible for that abuse, because I doubted she ever would’ve put herself into a situation where she would say the things that caused people to lash out at her if not for him asking her to support and defend him. I’m not sure if she ever realised that was a part of his abuse, a way to keep her tied to him because he could pretend to be the person who cared when all these other people were being mean to her. Once they were no longer together, some of the things she posted showed me she was acknowledging that she’d suffered abuse from him too, but I couldn’t tell if that meant she finally realised I’d been right about him all along, or if she thought she was different. So I never bothered to reach out to her.
But the universe has a funny way of connecting you with the people you need to connect with.
One of the more ridiculous things my ex-husband included in our divorce settlement agreement was that he wanted to maintain access to the shed he built in my backyard until I paid him back half of what I owed him for our house. I figured it was just so he’d have a long-term way to continue to try and annoy me but it wasn’t worth fighting him on. I put in parameters so it wasn’t unlimited access whenever he wanted—he had to give me at least a week’s notice. I hadn’t been aware that M had been storing things in there too.
A little over halfway through my January 2024 trip to Malaysia, my ex-husband’s mother contacted me to inform me that he would be staying in Australia for the foreseeable future, and that it was likely going to impact child support. On the one hand, it was nice to not have to worry about dealing with him directly for a while, but on the other, it turned my expectations about the upcoming year entirely upside down. How was I going to be able to continue seeing the Malaysian man I was dating under those circumstances? A likely reduction of income and a loss of a caregiver for the children, preventing me from travelling? Why did my ex-husband have to continue to disrupt my life like that? I don’t know if my relationship with that Malaysian man would’ve survived without that disruption, but it absolutely had a direct impact on how I behaved with him while I was spending time with him in January, and is at least partly responsible for how I acted at the airport with him that led to him disappearing on me. Just when I thought I’d escaped the trauma of my marriage and could start to try and have a healthy romantic relationship, it reared its ugly head again.
Since my ex-husband would not be returning to the US, and he was unable to communicate with very many people directly himself (long story that isn’t relevant here), his mother reached out to both M and myself to let us know he needed her to remove her belongings from that darned shed. Then there would be more room for his current partner to put more of his things in there for storage.
When I finally received a text from M, it read very much like she was speaking from a place of trauma and concerned about how her presence on my property could impact me. Knowing that she had been able to identify her experience with him by then, I figured this would be a good opportunity to finally clear the air between us. I could be to her who J had been to me. So, when M was finally on my property, I could’ve just let her handle things on her own, but I decided to go outside and ask if she needed a hand with anything. I believe in second chances when people can express remorse for what they’ve done. I mean, Zuko’s redemption arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the reasons he’s my favourite character in that show. I’ve made mistakes and appreciate being granted understanding, so I try to operate in the same way.
M was open to talking, and we did. She apologised for the way she had been with me, and I let her know that I didn’t blame her for anything she had done because I knew how influential and manipulative my ex-husband could be. I knew she had a kind heart, and it was only under his influence, lies, and half-truths that she behaved as she did. Just before M left that day, she offered to give me a hand with anything if I needed it, and suggested we get together for coffee sometime. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that, but I told her I’d let her know.
About a month later, I’d been trying to figure out a way to fly back to Malaysia again, in search of answers when my Malaysian partner refused to communicate with me. The biggest hurdle was finding people to look after my kids for the amount of time I wanted to be gone for. When the second person I wanted to help told me he wouldn’t be able to do so, I thought back to M’s offer to help me out. I felt guilty to ask her, but at least my kids knew and liked her, and she probably missed them. So, I reached out to M and invited her to brunch, which I paid for because I knew I was asking for a lot. Given that she also had childcare experience and that we weren’t exactly friends, I offered to pay her for her time if she was able to help out. She declined and said she owed me after everything I went through with my ex-husband. I couldn’t believe it—it was like the universe was looking out for me to help give me the opportunity to get the answers I was looking for. For the majority of that brunch, though, we compared notes on each other’s sides of the story, from the things my ex-husband either lied to us about or said but didn’t share with the other. I was getting another kind of closure I never expected to get, and it was healing for both of us. It was the beginning of a new friendship.
M became one of my main confidantes whenever my ex-husband had more ridiculousness to add to my life. He fought to get child support reduced, as predicted, and didn’t get the outcome he wanted when we went to court for it. As a result, he’s still fighting the judge’s decision by appealing the case—he won’t win, so he’s just being a nuisance, and causing me to spend money that would be better spent on our children so I can get legal advice on how to handle him. It’s not worth spending all of the child support I get from him on a lawyer to handle the appeal, but I still couldn’t do it entirely on my own. Meanwhile, I was laid off from my job of three years on the same day the judge issued our current child support order, DCSS is already working on a new calculation, and our daughter is almost 18 so child support will be reduced to covering only one child next month anyway. Updating M on the developments along the way has been one of my life savers.
If you have to remain in communication with your toxic ex due to co-parenting issues, and you’re able to have some kind of contract like a divorce settlement agreement, here’s the statement I had written into mine that significantly reduced the frequency of mine lashing out at me: “All communication between the parties must be respectful (i.e. no threats, accusations, demands, curse words, name calling, blaming, bringing up past hurts, comparing to other people, etc.). Communication must be limited to the terms of this agreement unless otherwise agreed upon in writing.” (And our communication is limited to discussing our children and resolving anything in our settlement agreement, such as the money I owe him for the house and his access to the shed. So he can’t talk to me about anything I say about him on my blog or in stand-up, etc). He hasn’t always followed this agreement, but whenever he ignores it, I generally ignore him and don’t reply because he violated the agreement. Now, I can also share his messages with M so we can laugh about his efforts to get attention. His threats no longer hold any weight for me and I understand that he’s just trying to create drama when I’d rather be left alone and to leave him alone. The way to cut someone off who wants attention is to not give them that attention. Then you’ll have more peace.
But my friendship with M hasn’t been one-sided help. I’ve been there for M in her times of need, too, even sometimes when she insisted she didn’t need my help. Like when I helped her move when she needed to move in a rush. After everything she’d done for me, I was only too happy to return the favour.
My ex-husband wound up returning to the US last month. While he had the kids to celebrate our daughter’s upcoming 18th birthday, I got together with M to mark the anniversary of the date my ex-husband got himself into a situation that brought M and I together.
We’d been keeping our friendship a secret from him, but since I started my new livestream podcast series, Real Talk with a Vulnerable Angel and Friends, I’ve been trying to live more vulnerably and authentically. I’ve been talking about all kinds of things from my real life, and this is an incredible story that I wanted to feel like I had the freedom to talk about on that show. So I asked if M was ready for us to go public with our friendship. When she said yes, I also asked J if she was fine with me blogging about me meeting her, and she also agreed.
The stress of this ongoing legal battle over a small amount of child support has disrupted the amount of time I’m able to look for work, on top of the emotional labour it’s cost me, and it’s not over yet. I’m expecting him to disagree with whatever calculation DCSS comes up with next, and we’re likely to return to court.
So, given my current unemployment status, and the fact that my employment benefits will run out at the beginning of March, if you’ve appreciated this story and would like to donate a little something towards my legal costs, please consider doing so! You can donate to me directly on PayPal or Venmo. Any amount is appreciated! (My one hour consultation with an appellate family law attorney cost me $500 alone).
Do it for my kids, who don’t deserve to have such a petty father who’d rather fight me than be financially responsible for them.
So there you have it—one of the best ways to heal from a toxic relationship is to befriend one or more of their other exes. That way, you have evidence that you’re not alone, it wasn’t just you who they treated terribly, which means it wasn’t your fault they behaved that way. It is who they are, and they’ll likely never change. Even if it looks like they have changed for a future partner, sooner or later, unless they’ve undergone significant self-reflection and become self-aware of how their actions have harmed others, their dark side will return, and that partner will get hurt too. Unfortunately, there’s rarely anything you can do to save their future partners so it’s usually not worth trying to warn them directly. But you can be a safe place for them to land when they finally figure it out for themselves.
Fin.
