CONTENT WARNING: Abusive Parenting (Hidden cameras in children’s bedrooms)

I am the writer of this story. My mother decided to tell me some more instances that led to her divorce.

When my parents were first married, my dad would have “three days a month” to focus on romantic evenings at home, such as making my mother dinner or watching one of her favorite movies. She quite enjoyed this, but I’ll explain the real reason later.

I arrived three years into the marriage, and my brother arrived another three years later. My dad’s obsession with looking in people’s bags started soon after this. He’d look through my mother’s bag, as well as both of my grandmothers’, his dad’s, and any visitors’.

However, this is what my mother heard from friends after she told everyone about the incident with my tampons.

My dad would honk his horn at any attractive young woman who passed by him on the street. The only exceptions were women who were with men or had children with them. His friends all thought this was a “rubbernecking” joke.

The only good thing my dad had was that he was big on security. He’d check all of the cupboards and shelves for cameras whenever we’d been on vacation. I always found it slightly odd, but at that age, you always believe that your parents are right, so I didn’t tell him.

This conversation occurred after I had been let back into the house after the previous story. My mother sat my dad down and tried to explain tampons to him. She told him that using tampons is not proof that your hymen has been broken, and she explained that pads were literally inspired by bandages in the First World War and therefore had the same purpose.

Dad: “Can’t she just hold it in? It’s disgusting, young women peeing everywhere. Do they think they’re animals?”

Mom: *Exasperated* “[Dad], imagine drinking straws. Men have two. Women have three. A man can squeeze his drinking straws tight. A woman can squeeze two of her drinking straws, but there’s no muscle around the third to squeeze it tight.”

Dad seemed to understand this but simply murmured to himself and walked off. He didn’t apologize to me.

A month later, my mother found something that caused her divorce. She was tidying my room one day when she discovered a camera hidden behind an ornament. The ornament in question was one that I liked a lot, so I would never move it. When my mother looked at the file inside, she saw that it had been recording me.

She began to worry and searched my dad’s room. She found video files of my room and my brother’s bedroom going back for two years. When she confronted him, his explanation was that he was worried that we would take drugs. Since this started around the same time I’d been given a drug talk at my school for the first time, my mother believed this, but she was furious at my dad for spying on us this way.

Suddenly, things slotted into place for my mother. Dad searched people’s bags because he didn’t want “unnecessary” sex in his house, as well as looking for “immoral” or “illegal” items. Said “immoral” items included a certain children’s book series about magic, an anime about pocket monsters, jelly bracelets, Flavor-Aid, and anything “German”.

But when my mother dug further despite Dad’s protests that he was trying to “protect his family”, she found out why they had had romantic evenings. He had planned them around her menstrual cycle.

Dad: “It’s so I knew that any children we had were mine!”

My mother now knew why they hadn’t had sex in almost thirteen years.

Mom: “I need to go out.”

She learned from Dad’s friends that during the last thirteen years, my dad would frequent strip clubs. She filed for divorce before she even got back home.

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CONTENT WARNING: Spousal Abuse (Physical)

Many years ago, I was hired as a receptionist for an attorney’s office. I was still young then — in my early twenties — and this was my first office job. 

The attorney I worked for was a very nice man, and the law office was his father’s. His father had started the firm several years earlier, and [Attorney] had joined the firm about ten years earlier. His father ended up retiring due to health issues, so [Attorney] had taken over. 

I was made aware that emotions run high and I may have a few angry clients calling in. If any got abusive, cursed, or threatened me, I could transfer them to [Attorney] and he would deal with them, but I was told I had to get their name first. 

I had been at the firm for a little less than two weeks, and so far, the majority of the clients who called or came in were fairly nice to me. Some were rude or distraught but never abusive. 

Then, I got a call from a hysterical woman. She demanded to speak to the attorney.

Me: “I can see if [Attorney] is available. May I tell him who is calling?”

Woman: “No. You may not. Just put him on the d*** phone.”

Me: “Hold for just a moment and I will check.”

Woman: “Stop talking, you idiot, and get him on the phone!”

I told [Attorney] about the caller on the line and what she had said. He rolled his eyes and said to put her through, which I did. 

Toward the end of the day, [Attorney] approached me and said he needed to talk to me about the call from the hysterical woman.

At first, I thought I had done something wrong. I went back to his office, and he sat me down to talk.

Attorney: “For the lack of a better word, the insane woman you took the call from was not one of my clients. She is actually the ex-wife of a client whose divorce my father handled.”

He continued while I listened. 

Attorney: “About ten years ago my father handled this divorce case for a man he knew. It was a very bad divorce, and I am aware of it because he told me about it. The man filed for a divorce from his wife because she was abusive. She kicked him, punched him, and even bit him. He had proof of all of this, and the wife had been arrested a few times, but when she went to court, she got a suspended sentence and was ordered to attend anger management classes. And it gets better. Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

I nodded.

Attorney: “The wife fought the divorce as she didn’t want it. She tried and tried, but the husband was not budging. Her family encouraged her and told her she needed to go through with it. Well, you would think that would have been the end of it. The husband was filing for sole custody of the two children, and she agreed to sign away her rights; she didn’t want the children. When she came in to sign the divorce papers, as she was reading them, something in them caught her eye, and she was livid. What do you think it was?”

Me: “She was going to have to pay child support anyway, or maybe she changed her mind?”

Attorney: “Neither. There was language in the divorce papers that said both parties would have the right to remarry, and she was furious. She said, ‘H*** no, he can’t remarry,’ and she threw the papers on the floor.”

Me: “Wow! So, what happened?”

Attorney: “We went to court, and she told the judge she wanted the language changed so that the husband would have no right to remarry.”

Me: “That’s crazy.”

Attorney: “Indeed, it is. She had a couple of outbursts in court and was threatened with contempt of court if she didn’t settle down. She told the judge her soon-to-be ex shouldn’t get to remarry ever because he still belonged to her.”

Me: “What did the judge say?”

Attorney: “He laughed at her and told her that both parties had the right, she couldn’t dictate that he couldn’t remarry, and it would stay in the agreement. So, she had another outburst and was in contempt of court. Anyway, her parents convinced her that there was nothing she could do and she needed to let it go. So, the husband got the divorce, and the language was left in there that both parties had the right to remarry.”

Me: “Is that what she was calling about? Was she trying to have it changed?”

Attorney: “There’s a little more I want to tell you first, so you can see how crazy this woman is. About five years ago, she contacted our firm saying she wanted to sue her ex-husband for dating again. My father got that call, and when she told him who she was, he realized it was part of that case. He told her she couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t help her or refer her to anyone else who could. He said it would be a conflict of interest. She got mad and accused my father of being in a conspiracy with her ex-husband to make her life miserable.”

Me: “Wow, that’s messed up. What was she calling about today?”

Attorney: *Sigh* “Well. When I asked her for her name, she gave her first name and maiden name, probably hoping to throw me off. She said that I had handled her divorce, and she wanted to sue her ex-husband for getting married again! I couldn’t find her in the files, so I asked if it was under a different name, and she gave me her ex-husband’s name. I remembered the case then. She said her ex had no right to remarry and he needed her permission. She just kept repeating that over and over.

“I told her I couldn’t help her and that, per her divorce decree, her ex had every right to remarry, and he didn’t need her permission. She said he should have at least asked her for permission, and she would’ve told him no. She asked, ‘What about me?’ So I told her to move on with her life.

“She asked, ‘What about me?’ again, insisted that he was still ‘hers’, and said she needed me to sue him. I told her that was not going to happen. I told her to answer her ‘What about me?’ question, she needed professional mental help, not a lawyer, and the conversation was over. 

“She accused me and her ex of being in some conspiracy to make her life miserable. I told her she was doing that all on her own. Then, I told her not to call here again and hung up on her.”

Me: “That is completely the craziest thing I have ever heard.”

Attorney: “Well, this might do it: the ex-wife worked as a nurse at the hospital before getting fired after she abused her ex.”

Me: “That’s terrible. I wouldn’t want someone like that as my nurse.”

Attorney: “I agree. She is insane. Anyway, if you get any more calls from anyone else being abusive, send them to me right away. I don’t care if I am on a call. If I’m not here, you have my permission to hang up on them. I will not allow my staff to be mistreated.”

I stayed at the firm for about a year and then got another job. Luckily, while I was there, the crazy ex-wife didn’t call back, and I only had a handful of abusive callers whom [Attorney] had to deal with. I did have maybe two whom I had to hang up on. 

Wow, those poor children. I’m glad the ex-husband got custody, and hopefully, the ex-wife got mental help. If not, she could be working at another hospital, which is scary to think about.

My uncle named one of his first sows (bought after his first marriage ended) after his ex-wife.

A bunch of mutual “friends” went to tell her and got her worked up that he was insulting her to people. She called him in tears because their divorce truly was very friendly; they just married much too young and grew apart. (He was even a groomsman at her second marriage, and she was his second and so far only other wife’s matron of honor because she introduced them, although the introduction happened years after the sow incident.)

Uncle: “I didn’t mean it as an insult! I named the other two sows [His Mother] and [His Stepmother]. All three of you are fierce and amazing moms, and I wanted to give my cute little sow piglets someone to live up to.”

Apparently, when [Ex-Wife] met her namesake, she was so charmed (and the sow named after her was a darling) that she forgave him immediately for naming a pig after her.

Oh, and his current wife also has a piggy namesake, chosen for being a golden pig and my auntie being a natural blonde. (She is also a fierce mama in her own right; she once reduced some busybody to tears when they implied to her youngest stepson that she wouldn’t love him once she had “her own” child. She did it without raising her voice, but the TONE was pretty scathing, I’m told.)

My friend messaged me right after this happened to vent. [Woman] moved into the apartment next to [Friend]’s a couple of weeks ago. [Woman] has struck up short, polite conversations with [Friend] just two times in that period, with the second being the day before this whole fiasco unfolded.

This morning at about 9:00 am, [Friend] was having a nice Saturday breakfast. (She gets up at 6:00 am on weekdays, so this was a weekend lie-in for her.) Someone started aggressively banging on her front door. When [Friend] answered, [Woman] was standing there with [Kid], her sweet five-year-old daughter, who had a little backpack on.

Woman: *Sounding very flustered* “I’m so sorry to have to ask this with no notice, but could you please watch [Kid] for a few hours? I have somewhere really important to be.”

Now, something you need to understand about [Friend] is that she can’t stand kids and has no idea how to deal with them. Like, she tenses up and gets super awkward if a kid so much as waves at her in the supermarket. [Friend] is also disabled. She uses a motorised wheelchair sometimes and a walking cane for short distances or when she’s just pottering around her own home. She lives with her girlfriend, who is also her carer. Her chronic illnesses involve fainting spells and a lot of brain fog, so by her own account, she’s absolutely not someone who should be left in charge of a child.

[Woman] has seen [Friend] using both her wheelchair and her cane and has seen [Friend]’s girlfriend (who was at work when this all happened) helping her in and out of their car.

So, [Friend] responded with a firm NO, explaining that her medical conditions meant that [Kid] would not be safe in her care and that she was not well enough at the moment to have any guests (let alone an unattended kid) in her home, anyway.

[Woman] immediately flipped from pleading and simpering to hand-on-hip indignation, accusing [Friend] of “faking” her disabilities. (Because, of course, if she can walk AT ALL, then she obviously doesn’t actually need a wheelchair, right?) She threatened to report her to Centrelink (welfare) if [Friend] didn’t watch [Kid] for her.

Never mind the fact that [Friend] isn’t on welfare. Her girlfriend has a high-paying job and [Friend] works somewhere between part-time and full-time hours from home most weeks. (She’s a g**d*** machine, and I don’t know how she manages it.) News flash: not all disabled people are unable to work. Although, of course, getting employers to actually hire us is another matter, ‘cause ableism.

Friend: “I’m not on Centrelink, and I don’t appreciate being blackmailed. Find another babysitter, because I am not it.”

And she closed her door. [Woman] kept banging on the door for a bit, but she eventually left.

About twenty minutes later, [Friend] heard a very faint, timid tapping on her front door. She said if she hadn’t been so close to it, she probably wouldn’t have heard it. She sighed heavily, having kind of already guessed what was happening. She opened the door and there was [Kid], who had clearly been crying, clutching the shoulder straps of her little backpack.

Kid: *Very softly* “Mummy said I could stay here today.”

Now, like I said, [Friend] cannot stand kids, but even she said that [Kid] was an absolute darling throughout this entire fiasco and the most she ever did was cry because her mother is clearly a monster. [Woman] had driven off and sent [Kid] to [Friend]’s door, clearly thinking that if she left [Friend] with no alternative, she’d just play along and babysit [Kid] for her, anyway — especially since [Friend] had literally no way of contacting [Woman].

WRONG.

[Friend] escaped abusive parents at a young age, and this s*** made her furious. She got [Kid] settled in front of the TV with a drink and some snacks, and she called the police.

Friend: “My neighbour just abandoned her five-year-old daughter outside of her apartment, and the kid showed up at my door, asking to come in.”

When the officers arrived, [Friend] told them the full story, and while they were appalled, she said they weren’t surprised.

Officer: “You’d be shocked at how not rare this kind of thing is.”

Which is honestly kind of the worst part of all this.

The officers took [Kid] with them and were really sweet with her, explaining to her that she wasn’t in any trouble and had done the right thing and that they were there to look after her and find out where her mummy had gone.

They were able to contact [Kid]’s father, who is currently working on finalising a divorce from [Woman] and was also appalled, but not remotely surprised by what she’d done.

This morning, [Friend] had another knock on her door, only it was the dad with [Kid] in tow. He was there so he could apologise for what his ex had done, and so he and [Kid] could thank [Friend] for looking after [Kid] and for calling the police. [Friend] said he seemed like a good guy who was clearly putting his kid first in all this, which was really reassuring to hear.

He told [Friend] that, according to his lawyer, her calling the police and handling everything the way she had would basically be a gift-wrapped custody battle win for him, because what kind of court would ever grant [Woman] custody after the s*** she’d pulled? His lawyer was over the moon when [Dad] called him!

[Friend] also asked [Dad] what had been so important that [Woman] had abandoned her own daughter over it.

It was an appointment at a nail salon. She’d taken [Kid] with her several times previously, and she just demanded that the staff babysit her and refused to even acknowledge the kid during her “me time”. When she called yesterday morning to book a last-minute appointment, the staff put their foot down and told her she could no longer bring her kid to her appointments and would be refused service if she did.

[Dad] also said that [Woman] had shown up so late to the appointment that they’d refused to see her, anyway.

So, she abandoned her daughter cuz she wanted her “me time”, to get her nails done.

[Dad] told [Friend] that “me time” is an excuse [Woman] uses to ignore her kid, basically any time she feels like it. “DO NOT talk to me during my me time!” etc.

[Dad] also asked [Friend] if she would be okay to help with his custody battle. He said he understood that her health wasn’t great, but his lawyer had said a written statement would be fine. He said while it probably wasn’t essential, since they had the police report, he wanted to have as much evidence on his side as possible, just to be sure. Of course, [Friend] agreed.

[Woman] hasn’t yet shown up at [Friend]’s door to scream at her, so [Friend]’s thinking maybe dealing with the police put some actual fear of consequences into her. We shall see.

This story is part of our Even-More-Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2024-(so far!) roundup!

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I used to work in a call center for a UK car insurance provider which was also a supermarket. One day, I received the best call ever.

Me: “Hi, you’re through to [My Name] at [Company]. How can I help you today?”

Caller: “Yeah, hi, [My Name]. I need to remove a driver from both cars.”

Me: “No problem.”

I go through account security and explain the increases to her premiums.

Caller: “Oh, that’s all fine and dandy.”

Me: “Okay, who are we taking off of these policies?”

Caller: “I want to remove Alistair, my husband. Given that I’ve just gotten home from work and he’s in bed with another woman, I think he can go spin. He pissed off in my Audi, and I’ll be calling the police as soon as he’s uninsured.”

Sh*****t.

Me: “Okay. Removing your husband will definitely put your premiums up, and if he is stopped, you’ll need to pay to get the Audi out of the impound.”

Caller: “Oooh, it’ll be worth it, [My Name]. That saggy sack of s*** will rue the day he messed with me.”

Me: “Yeah, I don’t think he’s made a smart choice here. Anyway, your new payments will be [double her previous payment] per month.”

Caller: “S***. So, he’s still costing me.”

Me: “Yeah, having a spouse or partner will normally lower the cost. So, let us know straight away if someone moves in.”

She proceeds to add her best friend as a cohabiting partner.

Me: “I’ll waive your admin fees, too, and your new premiums are [10% lower than the original price].”

Caller: “Brilliant! Thanks, [My Name]!”

She went on to leave me a five-star review and write a letter to the head of our department about the great service.

Also, her (ex) husband got pulled over, and the police called us to ask if he was insured.

Godspeed, Angry Lady.