It began in New Zealand, on a warm Wellington evening in December 1996, when he walked into my life with confidence and charm. I was in my twenties, working reception at Drake International, still believing people were mostly who they said they were. He was born in Christchurch, living in Townsville, and serving as an infantry soldier in the Australian Defence Force. He carried himself like a man who had already conquered the world. I mistook that for strength. I mistook that for safety. When he looked at me across the bar, I felt chosen. Seen. Wanted. I didn’t yet understand that some people choose you not because they like you or are attracted to you, but because they need someone to orbit around their emptiness.

I flew to Australia three months later — 10 March 1997 — believing I was flying toward a future. And for a while, it felt like I was. The first two years were good, deceptively good. We lived in a small house on Dalrymple Road in Townsville, building a life that looked solid from the outside. We got engaged on New Year’s Day 1999, and I believed we were in love. I believed he was the man he pretended to be. We married on 01 July 2000.

But love can be a mask, and some masks are worn so tightly that you don’t see the monster underneath until it’s too late.

He deployed to East Timor in 1999 (INTERFET) with 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR), and then deployed again East Timor in 2001 (UNTAET) with 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR).

— and each time he returned a little more fractured, a little more unpredictable.

The ADF had put him on experimental anti‑malarial drugs, the kind later linked to psychosis, depression, and neurological damage.

The ADF Administration of the drug mefloquine (brand name Lariam) in clinical trials to over 3,000 personnel—particularly during INTERFET in 1999–2000 and subsequent deployments up to 2015. 

Causing severe, long-term psychiatric and neurological damage, including psychosis, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and cognitive damage.

I didn’t know that then. I only knew that the man who came home wasn’t the man I had fell in love with.

The first moment that truly frightened me happened after his return from East Timor. Something in him had shifted — a volatility I didn’t yet have the language to name. One evening, an argument flared and escalated so quickly that I barely understood what was happening. I found myself on the floor, his hands wrapped around my neck. I was unable to get away, panic rising as I realised how powerless I was in that moment. It ended only because a friend of his, Sean, who was staying with us at the time, walked in and intervened. The spell broke instantly. Afterwards, my husband cried, apologised, swore it would never happen again. And I believed him. I forgave him. That forgiveness became the first link in a chain I would spend years trying to break.

From that point on, the relationship shifted into something I didn’t yet know how to name. I lived inside a cycle of domestic violence and coercive control, where apologies were followed by promises, and promises were followed by threats. He told me that if I ever left him, he would destroy my life and leave me with nothing. Over time, I believed him — because he had already shown me how far he was willing to go.

Over the years he grew louder. Angrier. Colder. The empathy that once seemed like shyness revealed itself as absence. He blamed everyone for everything — the army, his family, the world, and eventually me. Especially me.

I didn’t yet have the language for what was happening.

I didn’t know the word narcissist.

I didn’t know that love‑bombing has an expiration date.

I didn’t know that a person without empathy can mimic affection the way an actor memorizes lines.

All I knew was that the man who once held my hand now held power over every part of my life — my money, my choices, my body, my safety. And whenever I tried to leave he would beg me to stay, he told me he would destroy me. I believed him, because by then he already had the blueprint.

This is the beginning of how I lost myself.

And how, slowly, painfully, I began to wake up after being dormant for a long time.

He lacked empathy, and with it, the emotional intelligence to understand anyone’s feelings but his own. That absence shaped every moment of our life together.

I married a man who lacked empathy. He had the inability to understand, share, or consider another person’s emotions or perspective, which led to dismissive, cold, or selfish behavior. It caused severe communication breakdowns, making me feel unheard, unloved, or invalid.

He was the "textbook" narcissist, exhibiting a rigid pattern of grandiosity, entitlement, and a profound lack of empathy, often displaying manipulative behaviors like love-bombing, gaslighting, and devaluing me  to maintain control and superior status.

Arrogant, loud, manipulative, passive-agressive.

He was always looking for someone else to blame because that type of person does not take responsibility for their actions. Someone who lacks empathy is difficult to deal with; misunderstandings and disagreements follow constantly.

A person who lacks empathy struggles to recognize or value other people’s emotions. That gap in emotional understanding makes them quick to blame others and slow to accept responsibility. The result is repeated conflict, constant misunderstandings, and relationships that never feel safe.

• People who lack empathy can’t read or respect other people’s feelings.

• They refuse responsibility and always find someone else to blame.

• A lack of empathy often shows as poor emotional insight and repeated conflict.

• When someone can’t feel for others, it leaves you carrying the fallout alone.

• No empathy, no accountability — only blame and broken conversations.

He was a monster disguised as a gentleman.

He was medically discharged from the ADF in 2013.

And it only got worse, not better.

After my father died, I met someone who treated me with kindness. I told my husband the marriage was over. I was exhausted by the lies, the cheating, the way he treated me like the “other woman” in my own marriage. But grief makes you reach for stability, even when the stability is an illusion. We tried again. Counselling. He attended anger‑management programs. A promise of a new beginning overseas. We sold our investment property to fund the move. He had approval from the Department of Veteran Affairs to travel, but he had not completed his medical assessments. Looking back, he was not in a stable mental state to live abroad.

Alas, and to the detriment of our marriage, we left Australia on 10 December 2014 and began moving through the world in search of a fresh start — Fiji, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, the United States, Canada. It looked like an adventure from the outside, a family reinventing itself through travel.

In Mexico, we finally settled. The children went to school, learned Spanish, made friends, and built a life that was theirs. For a time, they were happy. We all were, in the way people can be happy while something deeper is quietly coming undone.

But behind the surface of our new life, everything was deteriorating.

His attention shifted toward drugs, alcohol, and sexual behaviour that crossed boundaries I never agreed to. At times he involved other people and pressured me to participate, or would disappear with men for sexual encounters, leaving me feeling trapped inside situations I didn’t want and didn’t consent to.

There were days when he behaved like a child I had to manage — impulsive, reckless, demanding. And then there were the other days, the darker ones, when he became calculating and predatory, using substances to blur lines and manipulate circumstances until resistance felt impossible. The confusion of it all was its own kind of violence. I never knew which version of him I would face.

Afterwards, I would feel repulsed, humiliated, and deeply alone. I didn’t have the language then to understand that what was happening wasn’t about desire or intimacy — it was about power, control, and the slow erosion of my sense of self.

Over time, his moods became increasingly erratic, swinging so sharply that it was no longer safe for the children or me to be around him. The volatility was constant, unpredictable, and exhausting. What I didn’t know then was that he had brought a handgun into Mexico — something he had obtained from a friend who was in Special Forces in USA. He kept it with him, a symbol of power he should never have had access to.

When he was intoxicated or high, the danger escalated. He would wave the weapon around, threatening harm or threatening his own life, his judgment completely gone. On more than one occasion he discharged it, leaving the children and me terrified. We learned to disappear when things turned volatile — slipping out of the house, walking down the road, waiting for hours until the storm inside him passed and it felt safe enough to return.

Living like that reshapes you. You become hyper‑aware, always listening for the shift in tone, the change in breathing, the moment the atmosphere in the room tilts. The children learned it too — a survival skill no child should ever need.

When a partner repeatedly threatens suicide, it becomes a form of emotional abuse — exploiting your fear and love to keep you trapped.

He did relapse with his second suicidal attempt and was flown back to Australia to spend six weeks at Toowong Private Hospital, but when he returned, it was like nothing changed, several months passed, then eventually, the moment came when he decided to leave again— not in anger, not in crisis, but with a cold, deliberate finality. The memory of what he did to me. Before he left will stay with me forever, he raped me, Then he walked out of our lives in Mexico and never returned. It was intentional. He didn’t want us back. It was as if he had already begun building a new life for himself, one that didn’t include the complications of a wife and four children.

Two weeks after he left, I discovered he had joined an online dating site. When I confronted him, he brushed it off as a mistake. A mistake — entering his credit‑card details, paying for a subscription, all while I was struggling to feed the children. That was his explanation. That was the level of respect he had for the family he abandoned.

He never intended to bring us home. The only reason anyone in authority became aware of my situation was because I contacted the Australian Embassy in Mexico, desperate for help. But once he began filing his own complaints in Australia, the narrative shifted. His version — polished, rehearsed, supported by paperwork — somehow took precedence over the truth. My reality was pushed aside, rewritten, or ignored.

And who were the authorities more likely to believe?

The man with the lawyer, the uniform, the official documents — or the woman who had been financially trapped, isolated, and worn down by years of domestic violence. In the end, he claimed I was the one with the drug problem. That was the story he offered. That was the lie he hid behind.

There is a name for what he did: litigation abuse — when the legal system becomes another weapon in an abuser’s arsenal, a way to continue control long after the relationship has ended. That is what happened to me. And the truth is, it is almost impossible for a victim to fight it. I couldn’t. My children paid the price. That is the part I will carry for the rest of my life.

I will never forgive Australia for what happened — not the government, not social services, not the Australian Defence Force, not the Department of Veteran Affairs. Every door I knocked on stayed shut. Every institution that should have protected us looked the other way. Somehow, it all became my fault. End of story.

I don’t want anything from Australia now. The red tape, the excuses, the protection of retired veterans who were also domestic‑violence perpetrators — it disgusts me. I gave Australia my life. What I received in return was silence, blame, and abandonment.

He was also reckless with money, and he didn’t care that our savings were disappearing. Every warning sign was there, but by then I was too overwhelmed, too isolated, and too busy trying to keep the children safe to see the full picture.

After he left us in Mexico, I began to understand just how much money had passed through his hands. He had received a significant lump‑sum compensation payout from the Department of Veteran Affairs. He had also borrowed repeatedly from his mother — loans he never repaid. And then there were the trust funds meant for our eldest son, gifts from his great‑aunt Sheila in England. That money vanished too.

His sister questioned him about it. She never believed his excuses, especially when he tried to blame relatives in England. She had seen the pattern long before I did — the financial chaos, the secrecy, the constant trouble he created and then denied, always expecting a hand-out from his mother.

After abandoning his family in Mexico, he sent me approximately AUD $20,000 over several months. That was, in effect, the divorce settlement. Nineteen years together reduced to a handful of payments and a few personal belongings. He kept everything else — including all our household items in storage, and sentimental items that belonged to me. I’m not sure if he went through legal channels, but something doesn’t add up here. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t have the strength. All I wanted was to protect the children, and I couldn’t even manage that.

I felt like a failure.

And the lies. So many lies told to my children - how dare him.

I have been separated from my children since 2018. Financial abuse played a major role in that separation. But I was also scared to tell the truth. He is estranged from two of the children. The damage spread far beyond me. It shaped their lives too. Starting over has been almost impossible because of domestic violence.

In late 2017, desperate and overwhelmed, I sought help from a lawyer at the Sayulita police station in Mexico. He prepared a detailed complaint — around twenty‑five pages long. I no longer have a copy, and I have no idea how to obtain one. I fear it has been lost, buried, or quietly forgotten, like so many parts of my story. At the time, I was also dealing with violent incidents in Mexico, and the weight of everything became too much to manage alone.

So much time has passed, but the period that carried the greatest impact remains 2017 to 2022, spanning our two extended visits to Mexico.