Leaving frequently does not end the contact. It changes its form. A great many women describe more contact after separation than before, because the person who has lost control is trying to get it back, and because he now has to work harder to do it.
What this looks like
- Calls and messages from numbers you do not recognise, often a new one each time you block the last.
- Turning up at your workplace, your church or mosque, your mother’s house, the school gate.
- Messages to your relatives, your employer or your pastor, describing you.
- Gifts, apologies and threats in alternation, sometimes within the same hour.
- Using contact with the children as the route to reach you.
- Third parties passing on messages, very often people who sincerely believe they are helping to reconcile a family.
- Appearing somewhere he could only know about if he still has access to your phone or your accounts.
That last one is worth taking seriously rather than explaining away. If he keeps arriving where you are, check the phone before you assume coincidence. Tracking, account access and monitoring software are covered separately, and the settings to check are listed step by step.
Record everything before you block anything
This is the part women most often get wrong, and understandably so, because the instinct is to make it stop immediately.
Screenshot every message with the number and the date visible in the frame. Keep a log with the date, the time, what happened and anyone who witnessed it. Do not delete anything, however distressing it is to keep.
A documented pattern of contact after separation is often easier to prove than the original abuse, because it is written, dated, addressed to you and repetitive. It is frequently the evidence that turns a complaint into a case.
Many women keep one channel open specifically to collect evidence, and read it only with somebody beside them or not at all. That is a reasonable strategy rather than a failure to protect yourself, and you can hand the reading of it to a support worker.
Tell the places he will go
He knows where you work, where your family lives and where the children go to school. Get ahead of him rather than waiting.
- Your employer, in writing, with a request that reception never confirms you work there. What an employer can reasonably do is short and costs them almost nothing.
- The school, in writing, listing who may and may not collect the children, with a copy of any order.
- Your landlord, estate security or caretaker, by name, with the same instruction.
- One neighbour, so that somebody would notice him arrive and could call.
Ask friends and relatives not to confirm anything about where you are, even to people they consider harmless. Most disclosures are accidental and well meant, and a single sympathetic aunt can undo three months of planning.
Reporting
If you already have a protection order, contact in breach of it is an offence in its own right and you do not have to prove the original abuse again. Report each breach, quote the reference number from the previous report, and keep your copy of the order with you.
If you do not have an order, this is the moment to apply. A documented pattern of contact after separation is exactly the evidence such an application needs, and it is far more persuasive than a description of what happened inside the marriage. The process is here.
What actually happens at a police station, including what to do if you are told it is a family matter, is set out separately.
Changing what is predictable
Vary the times and routes you use. Change the shop, the day you visit family, the hour you collect the children.
Post nothing with a location, and ask the people around you not to either. Being tagged in somebody else’s photograph, or appearing in the background of one, is a common way women are found. Check what your employer publishes as well, because staff photographs on social media have located women more than once.
The point where it escalates
Escalation after separation is a recognised danger point, and there are three triggers that come up repeatedly. He learns of a new relationship. A court date is set. He discovers your new address.
If contact suddenly increases, or changes tone from pleading to threatening, treat that as significant information rather than as more of the same. Tell somebody the same day, and say specifically what has changed.
Do not negotiate
Any reply, including a reasonable one asking him to stop, is treated as engagement and usually produces more contact rather than less. One clear message saying do not contact me again, and then nothing, is enough for the record.
Where children mean contact cannot stop entirely, move it into a court order with handovers at a neutral place or through a third person, rather than leaving it to be negotiated by message. Arrangements made under pressure by text are not arrangements.
Questions people ask
Should I reply to ask him to stop?
Generally no. Any reply is treated as engagement and usually produces more contact. One clear message saying do not contact me again, then nothing, is enough for the record.
He is using the children to reach me. What do I do?
Get contact arrangements into a court order rather than agreed informally, with handovers at a neutral place or supervised. Handovers are where women are most often assaulted after separation.
Should I block his number?
Screenshot everything first. Many women keep one channel open purely to collect evidence and never read it themselves.
He keeps finding me. How?
Check the phone and the accounts before assuming coincidence. Location sharing, a shared account password and a linked WhatsApp session are the three commonest explanations.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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