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Welcome to the world of the Vincent D'Onofrio obsessed - and a bit of real life thrown in.


Saturday, April 07, 2012

Next One's a Ruby!

On this day in 1973, at the tender age of 20, I took the plunge and married my university sweetheart. Of course, I hadn't yet graduated, and he had another term to go, but we were in lurve!

We split in late 1977, just after buying the house I still live in. He moved back in with his mother, and a few months later she married the man who'd been pestering her for years and moved out! That obviously wasn't far enough, because they then moved to Kos (she was Greek).

We were finally divorced on Leap Year's Day 1980, just a couple of quick signatures on a form and a fee of £25 (I made him pay).

I subsequently went to his second wedding (which also ended in divorce) and his grandmother's and his mother's funerals, and he came to my mother's funeral. Then he phoned me in drunken state (not unusual) sometime in 2000 and asked me if I'd come to his next wedding, and be the only other person there who'd been at all three of his weddings!

A while later, when I was looking into my family history, I had some wonderful news that I thought he would enjoy sharing. I got his answering machine, and left a message. He didn't return the call. A week later the same thing again. The third time I told him to get stuffed, and that was how a relationship that had stood the test of 27 years was finally finished, all because he couldn't be bothered to return a call.

I'm pretty sure wedding number 3 never happened, so perhaps he was too embarrassed to call back. Whatever the reason, it was his loss.

11 comments:

JoJo said...

Wow! I'm surprised his new wife/wives would agree to have you at their wedding. I sure don't want Russell's ex at our wedding!!!

val said...

JoJo, you don't know the half! Number 2 was one of his students who obviously had a crush on him from the start. She invited us to dinner (her parents were colleagues of his, they were on holiday) and she was clearly smitten. After we broke up, she insinuated herself into his flat because it was close to the hospital where her sister was dying of a brain tumour!!! Eventually she moved in, and she was always on the phone to me quizzing me about his libido - he was 9 years older than me, 15 more than her, so past his best! As they didn't want kids, he had a vasectomy, and he was indisposed for an opera they had tickets for, so she rang me up and invited me. I guess it was weird, but it seemed quite civilised at the time.

Sadly, when they split, she took all their savings, and her nice, middle class father and brother came to collect stuff they shared, and beat John up. No wonder his mother preferred me.

JoJo said...

Oh OK, so she already knew you first. Gotcha. lol This isn't Rat Scabies' dad, is it? I know you knew him or dated him....

Too bad she screwed him over when she left like that. How sad. :(

vikeau said...

Okay Rat Scabies sounds like a REALLY good story. I don't know what my problem is but I've stayed friends with 90% of the guys I dated. I'm even godmother to a couple of kids. So sometimes you're with the right guy at the wrong time.

Eliza said...

As I only have one ex this isn't a problem I'm likely to encounter any time soon..thankfully :-)

My parents have stayed civil with each other on the odd occasions that they meet, but my brothers ex has been a cow, which is sad as they have a daughter

val said...

JoJo, Rat and his dad were people I knew after John and I split. Vikeau, I went on holiday with Rat's father and stepmother to France as their interpreter while they searched for the secrets of the Holy Grail (this is well pre-Dan Brown but based on the same sources) but when they got close to Rennes-Le-Chateau, a place strongly linked to the story, they ditched me in case they found anything out and had to share it with me! End of a friendship.

A more recent book by Rat indicates they are all still searching, having found nothing. For some reason this makes me smile...

vikeau said...

Wow. So this dude's name is Rat(I'm assuming an alias), with a family that in the 20th/21st Century are searching for the Holy Grail. But ditched you because of greed. Sounds like you have a book in the making.

val said...

Vikeau, his real name is Chris Millar, his stage name is Rat Scabies, and he's the drummer of the punk rock group The Damned.

vikeau said...

It's a great story and you should think about writing a "novel". Never heard of The Damned but then again I was never a big fan of punk.

sixtwosue said...

I just read the story in today's New York Times about how you have to give actual reasons when you seek a divorce in England; there is no such thing as no-fault like here. It made me think of this post and your ex. I think my favorite example in the story was the husband who communicated with his wife only via Post-it note for 15 years.

val said...

The grounds of "irretrievable breakdown" we're what we used. Two years' separation used to suffice, but before we divorced it had just been reduced to one year. And of course you could always lie about the time if neither one wanted to contest the divorce and both were in agreement.

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