What was the creepiest thing your ex ever did?
THERE’S crazy and then there’s creepy — that point when you can’t decide whether someone’s actions cause you to feel fear or unease. We’ve all had our share of what we’d term crazy exes, but what about that in-between — the behaviour that is strange, unpleasant, and which leaves you scratching your head.
What was the creepiest thing your ex ever did?
Paul, 35, manager:
I told her it wasn’t working out and she said she knew, so we should just be friends. So naturally, I was surprised a few weeks later when she announced that she was pregnant by me. Apparently I didn’t react as joyfully as she expected, because the next thing I knew, my mother was calling me to tell me that this “lovely young lady” had been by the house and had told her about her grandchild, and she didn’t understand why I’d never introduced her before, or why I hadn’t told her about the baby. Then this girl hit me with another whopper — she told me that she had an abortion, news that devastated me and my family, by the way. But the most hurtful thing was that it was all lies, and she wasn’t even pregnant. Years later I saw her again, and she confessed that her plan was to tell me about the baby, have me get back together with her, then try to actually get pregnant, and I didn’t co-operate. I was amazed, because she didn’t understand how she traumatised my family with her actions.
Nedburn, 30, trailer driver:
This ex-girlfriend of mine used to sleep outside my house for months after we broke up. And she wasn’t sleeping in a car or anything — she would be in the bushes, on the roof, under the parked trucks in my yard, all in an effort to see if I was taking any other women home. She would be there in hot weather, cold weather, rainy weather — no matter what, she would be out there, until one day she just disappeared.
Laura-Ann, 28, technician:
This was me, and not an ex, and I can’t say that I’m proud of my actions. But I would lie on my belly in the grass in the ball field next to my ex’s yard, and look to see if he was cheating because I didn’t trust him. There was never any other woman, but I did this for weeks, until one day I saw a few mongoose heading my way and I ran, and realised what an idiot I was being.
Natalie, 42, interior designer:
This man was everything you’d ever want in a partner — kind, decent, good looking, and treated me like a queen. So for a long time I tolerated him being a little OCD about cleanliness. Now that I look back it was weird, but back then I was just happy to be treated right. Anyway, he was obsessed with me being clean, and he couldn’t be intimate with me until I met his standard of cleanliness. So I had to shower before he would touch me, and even then, he would go over my body — every single crack and crevice — with baby wipes and Q-tips before we could make love.
Latoya, 27, shadow teacher:
He tried to kill this guy he thought I was cheating with! He had somehow bugged my phone and saw some messages he wasn’t comfortable with where I was planning to meet up with a friend from college when I went overseas. He hired a private investigator to find the guy — who was just a friend by the way. This is all stuff he confessed to me months later. He asked how I could have thought of cheating with someone who had a criminal record, then he reeled off the guy’s address, age, place of employment, and even some family members of his, and then said if I had met up with the guy, he would have bought a ticket, gone to the guy’s home, and would have had no control over what he did to the guy. Luckily, I guess, my friend had changed his travel plans at the last minute. The whole situation freaked me out though, because he told me everywhere I had been when I was out of Jamaica.
