This was originally posted back in October 2023 after my motion for divorce was denied in Mississippi with the judge stating that I "didn't act like an abused woman." I'm reposting here so as I have retired my Ko-Fi account.

________________________________________________________

I'm spilling all the tea. For the sake of context and anyone is new to my Crew-munity, my streams missed have not been because I don't want to vibe with y'all, but because of an ongoing simulation of hell. 

Well, court was horrid. Witnesses (supposedly mutual "friends") lied and muddied my testimony enough by doing so that I wasn't granted a divorce. So, I'm still estranged. Since I started dating someone in the past 2 years since separation, it's likely my ex will try to sue me for fault of adultery... BS.

BUT. He already had that as a counterclaim suing me for alimony and part of my LLCs' income & rights to my music... and then dropped his claim 3 days before court after failed mediation. After dragging this out since June 2021, claiming me to be a cheater but couldn't produce any reasonable inkling of proof, he dropped it. If he doesn't sue to for divorce based on adultery, I'll just have to be married to but estranged from the abusive asshole until he'll agree to an irreconcilable differences divorce so that we can finally split assets and he can get his "payday". 🙃 

Here's my statement of abuse I submitted to the courts in Mississippi - my request for divorce was denied. For the sake of legality, all names have been removed & I'll use "X" to refer to my ex. 

*************************************************************

I was weak for years. Staying in a relationship in the hope of a change for the better.

I've had dog shit thrown on me by my ex, I've been punched by my ex (in front of a friend, which was very painful and embarrassing), I've been called a cunt, bitch, whore, slut, and verbally bullied by my husband.  X told me on multiple occasions during verbal assaults that I deserved to be raped, despite knowing that I had been a victim of rape before I met him - that I must have put myself in the position for it to happen to me, or that I asked for it in some way. I was 13.  (Records will reflect battery instead of assault due to the grooming my assaulter put me through following the initial rape - In my naivety due to my youth, I denied and covered for this much older rapist, to avoid him "killing himself", as he had threated to do to keep me under his control.) Now, years later, I've been held emotionally hostage in the same way by my ex husband - threatening his own life if I didn't end up forgiving him for everything he did, or threatening to disappear himself whenever I brought up the subject of separating. There were too many instances to count that X would pathologically lie just to make situations easier or make him seem like the “bigger person” or “the victim”.  Hearing his lies and verbal batterings became part of my daily life - and I was too scared and numb to leave.  X would most times, eventually become apologetic, but after years of the same emotional abuse day after day, there was no more waiting around for him to change his behavior that had yet to occur in the 10 years we were together. 

We started dating when I was 16 and he was 22. At the time, I was actively working towards making musical performance my career. X seemed very supportive of my music, and presented himself as a morals-centered man with a drive to work in the athletic field. This was the man I said yes to marrying. 

Just weeks before our wedding, I found out about a $30,000 debt that he was in and had not disclosed to me. This was my 1st indication that he was manipulative, but I was young & decided to look past it.  Just a few years into our marriage, I saw X’s open emails on his work computer explicitly soliciting sex from a prostitute on Craigslist. This made me feel inadequate about myself and left me with a feeling of disgust and betrayal.  I confronted him and kicked him out of the house we were renting.  He went to his parents’ house for a week.  When I allowed him to come back to talk and get some things, he blackmailed me into staying with him - he called and told my dad we smoked weed in an attempt to harm my relationship with my parents.  He also attempted to call my place of employment to get me fired. He tried to alienate me from my parents, as well as render me unable to take care of myself without him.  He threatened to kill himself if I ever left him. He even made foreboding comments like “if I can’t have you, no one can.” This to me at 21 was terrifying, and I didn’t know how to get out of the situation - so I decided to try to be the “good wife” and forgive and forget.  I stayed in a hell of a marriage for 6+ years longer than I ever would have had I been older and wiser, knowing I had support of my family & a few good friends.  

X constantly came home from work, would start verbal battering, yelling insults at me.  There were many occasions where stuff (i.e. lighters) was thrown past my head into walls so hard it dented the Sheetrock.  He would yell at and kick our dogs out of his way on occasion too. This became a line drawn in the sand for me - but I was afraid what would happen if I asked for a divorce. 

My ex consistently placed selling weed above communication in our relationship. Even on “date nights” we would have to rush home so that X could service one of his “friends” - AKA sell them weed or THC concentrates.  X once told me he was thinking about shipping some “stuff” through the mail to me under the guise of fanmail - I said NO. Regardless of my protest, and without my prior knowledge, he had 1 lb.+ of THC concentrates shipped to my father’s work in my name. He had more shipped to my house in my name without my knowledge.  Putting me at risk of a felony was one of the things that raised my red flags and when I began desperately seeking a way out of the marriage.

X’s friend D dying was another trigger. Early 2021, D was reported by the newspaper as dying peacefully in his home. X came home and told me D was shot in the head, warrentig a closed-casket funeral.  X told me that D owed people money for drugs.  This all the more made me uncomfortable and scared to be with someone who so flippantly continued to put us at risk.  Full disclosure, in college and into my early 20s, it didn’t phase me. It was “just weed” so it wasn’t a “big deal”. However, when these instances occurred, it became clear to me that I no longer felt safe with X dealing with these types of people or doing things without regard to my safety.  

By March of 2021, I had enough - I asked for us to attend therapy.  It was flippantly disregarded - I became even more anxious about how to safely get out of the abusive relationship.  The next few weeks are all a blur if I’m honest - these traumatic weeks included him being extremely jealous, tracking my phone, restricting my contacts, trying to hack into my social media accounts, and putting child lock timers on my internet to keep me from streaming / working, harming my livelihood. These are just some examples of his abusive and controlling behaviors.  

These abusive tendencies continued after our separation when he canceled utility services already paid through June (my internet, which is vital to my livelihood), and withheld login information from me, hindering me from continuing to pay the bills for the house on time.  

By the end of a verbal altercation that occurred at the end of May due to him placing me as a “child” on our shared Verizon plan so that he could track and restrict my phone usage, I demanded he and I take a few nights apart to think and gain perspective.  He chose to respond to this request, along with my offer to put him up in a hotel by deciding to leave in the middle of the night to drive across the country for the West Coast.  He blamed me for “forcing” him out with nowhere to go - while posing a danger to himself due to his lack of logic, sleep, and emotional distress we both endured during the earlier verbal altercation. 

By May 2021, I finally got him to agree to attend couple's therapy. Let me make it clear that we “tried” therapy once before, after I caught him trying to solicit sex from a prostitute on Craigslist back in 2016 - he didn’t want to continue attending after the first and only session. Finally in therapy with the therapist as a 3rd party witness and safety net / fail-safe in June 2021, I asked for a reprieve from one another; X gave me an ultimatum of nothing changing with our living situation or divorce. I chose divorce. Then came the completely unfounded accusations of adultery and using him for financial stability. Then came the written libel to my family, friends, audience (which is the basis of my livelihood), and even work connections such as my partner manager at my previous employer.  He even posted these slanderous accusations on my official work Twitter account, and my public website in an attempt to harm my brand reputation and ability to continue running my business as a full-time creator / entertainer / musician. 

During the last 8 months of our marriage, we were not intimate. I was thoroughly disturbed and ashamed to read some of the explicit messages from X detailing how he touched me sexually while I was sleeping - this was never something I gave consent to at any point during our marriage - this was not a “norm” or a consensual “kink”.  This also occurred during the time that I had not been sexually intimate with him in the last 8+ months of our living together. 

Prior to my request for divorce, there were multiple instances of emotional abuse that I became numb to over the years as I was too afraid of what X would do if I left. 

• Threatened self-harm if I were to end the relationship 

• Continued to engage in selling marijuana out of our home even after I expressed on multiple occasions that I was uncomfortable and wanted him to stop 

• Encouraged me to “do thirst traps” to grow my brand - shamed me for missing the time window for capitalizing on sexy dance trends on TikTok

• When we weren’t on intimate terms (in the last 8+ months leading up to the separation), he would assault me in my sleep and then text me the next day in detail about how he knew I actually liked it. He did this knowing about my previous rape and assaults. This still makes me experience terrible emotional pain and makes me sick to my stomach to think about to this day and probably for the rest of my life.

• X told me on multiple occasions that I deserved my previous rape - that I put myself in the situation and must have “asked for it”.

• I was verbally harassed daily. Examples: 

• I cooked dinner. X came home, took one bite, laughed at me, scraped the food into the trash, and cruelly asked why I “even bothered trying”. 

• When he failed to satisfy me sexually, it was always because “something must be wrong” with me, not him.  

• He constantly would come home in a bad mood and throw a barrage of insults at me, including “bitch”, “lazy”, “cunt”, “slut”, “desperate for attention”, etc. 

• There was constant pathological lying, trying to manipulate and control me. He would say that he didn’t spend money, or that he gave me things I never even set eyes upon, then blame me when these phantom items went missing.

Upon the separation, X crossed many more boundaries, including: 

• Placed spyware on the home and my work internet connection. 

• Shut off my internet mid-stream shift to prevent me from working. An engineer from my service provider Cspire was the one that found the spyware software on my router. 

• He placed tracking on my phone.

• He moved me to a child status on our Verizon (cell phone) account so that he could retrieve my calls and text logs without my knowledge. 

• He removed me from the account manager position on our Verizon account to "child" so that I had no control over my ability to communicate with people other than him.

• He turned off service to my phone the night he moved out - I was unable to call my parents or message my therapist at a time when I needed it most. He paid to have my number reserved so I could never have it again on any new account - this hurt me professionally, as I lost years of contacts, people that I had given my contact info for music, streaming, promotion, etc. My overall mental health has suffered due to his petty actions and cruel treatment.

• Before I had the locks changed, he drove back, let himself in the house while I was asleep, and took all physical copies of my house files and all of my tax files from the past 3 years for my businesses/LLCs. 

• He messaged my parents, and all mutual friends to smear my name by stating that I was an abuser, user, and cheater, claiming that I had been having an ongoing affair. 

  • I never even met my current boyfriend (or anyone else) until after we separated.  

• X also took it further to post these slanderous claims publicly on my social media, which is a large part of my work. Twitter and my website are both public platforms I use for brand promotions and content provision - which is how I get paid. 

• Furthermore, X tried to hack and fraudulently access my brand social media accounts for ArielJade.

Since June 2021, I have remained in the house, paying all expenses with no help from my ex.

After being separated since May/June 2021 with no contact except via lawyers failing to negotiate an irreconcilable differences divorce, I have moved on with a new boyfriend.  I am looking to file based on Habitual, cruel and inhuman treatment. Since X left the marital home in May 2021, he has made this process as difficult as possible, often harassing me with ridiculous claims to my business and own creative work, as well as other company assets (business checking and work vehicle). He sent friends to harass me while I was working (live streaming on the video game streaming service ‘Twitch.tv’ in front of an audience). I have screenshots of this individual admitting that he was harassing me on X’s behalf and instruction. 

X is seeking 50% of all future profits from my company/LLCs. I am an online entertainer/streamer on Twitch. We consistently split home utility & mortgage bills 50/50 while we were together from 2012 - 2021.  I never took care of his portion or had the need to take care of his portion of the bills. 

I have been performing under the name Ariel Jade since I was 9 - this is a brand I built alone and prior to meeting X. Without me, the company is worth nothing as it is literally my identity. 

He has also unfairly restricted my usage of pictures that he took for me at gaming events - According to my trademark & copyright lawyers, he should have no more claim to the content than I do. I already removed all content as soon as the request was received - none of this content was sold for profit in any form or fashion. 

My ex is completely out of touch and hell-bent on making it seem as if my choosing to move on after separation from our abusive marriage has been an ongoing affair.  Again, for the record, I did not meet my current boyfriend in person until after X and I were separated - we had both agreed in therapy that we were going to pursue divorce. At the point in time that we were separated, I decided not to let X control my life any longer - I met my new boyfriend (BikeMan) a month after.  He came to visit Mississippi in August. The visit turned into us returning to Boston to get his pets to come back to stay through the winter. We have continued living together since.

*************************************************************

Final Thoughts...

I didn't get the divorce granted like I had hoped, but at least I kept my integrity on the stand and never lied. ❤️‍🩹 

Being berated with "bitch" "whore" "slut" and being told I deserved to be raped is behind me. I'll never forget the disgust I felt reading in detail how my ex touched me on multiple occasions as I slept after we were no longer in an intimate relationship... and how I "obviously liked it"... but being estranged from my abusive ex-partner/husband will be good enough for now. 

To any fellow humans in an abusive relationship, SAVE EVERYTHING. Never delete anything, even if you do forgive and forget. Put it somewhere safe... until one of you dies. 

And don't wait to leave - I know it's hard, but it gets harder as more time passes. Cut those anchors loose and navigate your own way to true happiness. 💜

*************************************************************

My next steps in finally healing will be to petition the court for a name change so I can at least find some peace in my day-to-day without having to sign my abusers last name on anything I do. 

Keeping my house after splitting equity will cost me around $35k. Hiring a lawyer and covering legal fees (again) will likely run me upwards of $15k with this case. 

I have created a GoFundMe for anyone willing and able to help me finally escape this living hell. 

Sharing this link will help I'd you can't afford to donate! 

Help Me Escape My Abusive Ex

Sharing this story will hopefully help others in abusive relationships realize what's at stake if you wait. 

Sharing this story will hopefully bring awareness to the antiquated laws in the state of Mississippi and a few other states that essentially enable abusers to maintain control over their victimized spouses. The fact that after 6 months+ separated a party cannot simply walk away is disgusting. 

If you read all of this, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your love. It means the world. ❤️‍🩹