When I look back over my love life, one thing I know for sure - you have to kiss an awful lot of toads before you find Prince Charming!
It seems incredible to me now that, for so long, I had such desperately unhappy relationships with men. My first husband was a control freak from whom I was lucky not to have caught Aids; the second cheated on me with one of my staff and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Even before them, the first man I lived with and thought I loved had a dark side. He was good-looking and funny. When we first met his chat-up line was: "I'm not gay, me. I can **** all night." I almost passed out with shock. It was direct, and he wasn't lying.
Scroll down for more...
New start: Trisha and Peter on their wedding day with her daughters Madi and BillieRead more...
Man escapes jail in domestic abuse case after using video of ex-partner on Trisha chat show to prove she was violent 'My husband cheated on me as our daughter fought for her life' - Trisha Goddard on the marriage crisis that very nearly destroyed her
But he was so jealous he beat up any other man who dared look at me, even a friend of mine who just put his hand on my shoulder at a party.
He squared up, screaming like a madman. Then he turned his fists on me. He hit me in public, he hit me at home, and then would blub and say he was sorry and beg me to forgive him. And I did.
I kept on putting up with his violence, believing his promises, hoping he would change, and stayed with him when I should have left.
Finally I did. He had some friends round one night while I was in bed trying to sleep and I went down in my nightie and asked them to keep the noise down. He came at me, fists flying and literally frothing at the mouth.
His mates intervened and managed to pull him off me. As they held him down, one of them said: "Get out, Trisha, get out!" I took his advice, slid the window open and jumped.
The video player followed as my "boyfriend" pushed off his mates and hurled it after me. Luckily, it smashed into the ground and not into me. Still wearing my nightie, I ran to my car, drove away and never went back.
I'm still amazed I stayed so long. I went home to a violent man every night for several years, and in the long run I'm wiser for it. But I wish I'd been wiser at the time.
Now, when I think of all I went through in my life, I feel like I'm talking about another person. Don't get me wrong, though. I don't sit around thinking, poor little me who suffered at the hands of all those bastard men! Rather I think I got the relationships I deserved at the time.
I might not have beaten anyone, I might not have tried to change and control others and I was always faithful, but - as I said right at the very beginning of this series - I was damaged goods as a result of my childhood. And people who are damaged tend to attract partners who are damaged, too.
Scroll down for more...
Trisha says Peter is the only person she's every really married and that she took her vows 'in spirit, soul and mind'
From a young age, I'd shut myself off from people, afraid to let anyone in. If they couldn't get to me, I couldn't be hurt. I learned to be fiercely self-dependent. I never leaned on anyone, financially or emotionally, and I didn't expect any of the men in my life to lean on me.
What I missed out on as a result was what I needed most - love.
All this became clear to me in the therapy I received after my nervous breakdown, following the break-up of my second marriage. I realised I had to change. It was time for a new me.
When I left hospital, closed down my television production company and told my unfaithful husband to leave, for the first time in my life I had the chance to take stock and focus on myself.
But this new life was scary. I was living in Australia, thousands of miles from my family, a single mother with two small daughters and no job, and I was slowly on the mend from a lot of pain. Money was a real worry, too, especially after the highly-paid work I'd been used to.
My girls were my salvation. I'd put Billie in my giant running stroller and Madi in a baby back-pack and I'd power-walk the three of us round the neighbourhood for miles and miles.
We'd sing "We are the Goddard Girls" at the tops of our voices. The walking also lifted my mood in a way that no medication ever could.
But I had a social life, too, when Billie and Madi were with their father (my ex). In my late 30s, I did what I had been too busy with my career to do in my teens and 20s - I partied!
I met some great men, and what was special about them was that none of them wanted anything from me. They weren't needy or possessive. They were fun.
First was James, one of a set of wealthy, bad boys I went clubbing with.
They were heavily into Ecstasy, and eventually I tried some. I have to admit it made me feel "loved up" in a way I'd never been before.
I felt great. And I kept on with it, until I realised the low that inevitably followed the high of the night out on pills just wasn't doing me any good.
James was a gorgeous, kind but messed-up man, and we were in love in the way that great friends can be. He never judged me, and he never tried to change me, and he wasn't a pain in the butt. Both of us knew we weren't going to last for ever - and that's what made things work between us.
At the same time I became mates with a guy called Andrew, an amazingly perceptive man who had been through very similar mental-health experiences to me.
He was a posh boy, too, but, unlike James, he was confused about his sexuality. He was gay but not entirely comfortable with it.
But through him I met types of people who were worlds apart from anything I was familiar with. He took me to gay clubs where we hung out with a "non-specific-gender" crowd - strange-looking people with no hair, no eyebrows, dressed in gothic rags and big clumpy shoes.
I couldn't tell the girls from the boys. They weren't gay or straight.
I got to know many of them and our nights often ended with us all sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking about their lives and their problems.
Some were rent boys, others drag queens. Yet all were fascinating, decent people who had adopted a certain way of life in order to survive.
It got to the point where I would turn up and they would all say, "Oh, it's Trisha, I wonder what we'll end up debating tonight."
In some strange way, I must have been preparing myself for the work I would do years later on the Trisha show.
I loved my new-found freedom. I wasn't "black", I wasn't a "single mum", wasn't "her off the telly" and pestered for autographs, I wasn't a "nutter" who'd had a breakdown. I was just me, and it felt wonderful.
The next guy was Steve, British with a cut-glass accent. We met through a mental health awareness project I was involved in. He was going through a divorce, too, and we had a fine old time bitching about our exes.
Emotionally we just clicked, and we had a fling. He was great for me. He was a gentleman. But I wasn't ready to commit to anyone.
Then my daughter Billie set me up with John, the father of a friend of hers. The friend told Billie she didn't have a mummy, and Billie said she didn't have a daddy, so they thought it was the perfect solution.
John was an airline pilot, attractive, kind, charismatic and clever, and we ended up pretty serious about each other. He was a proper grown-up, and a complete contrast to the men I'd spent most of my life with.
At this point I was seeing James, Steve, and John all at the same time (plus another guy called Chris, who was really just there for decoration).
They knew about each other, and didn't seem to mind.
Each was passionate about life in his own way. All of them opened my eyes to the fact that there are men in the world who care whether a woman enjoys herself or not.
John ended up taking priority, and we were together for about a year. But eventually it went wrong. Though I loved him, he wanted more commitment than I still felt able to give to anyone.
I wasn't distraught after it finished. I realised just what a positive period I'd had with all those guys. I'd done what I should have done in my teens. I'd learned a ton of things about men, and discovered they can be wonderful creatures after all.
And, do you know, at that point I remember thinking that I didn't care if I never had another relationship. I'd got my girls, I'd got my health (just about!), and that was all that mattered.
The usual angst that bedevilled my thinking - that I was a single mother, that I'd never make it on my own, that I would go bankrupt, that I was a bad person - all that had disappeared. I was at peace.
Naturally enough, a couple of months later, I found myself dating the man who would become the love of my life.
The first time I met Peter Gianfrancesco was when he was applying for a senior government job in mental health. Because of my long involvement as a governmental mental health adviser, I was on the interview board.
The plans he put forward to help sufferers were new and exciting. So was he! He was dark, brooding and intelligent, and, as I told the board when they asked my opinion, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating biscuits!
It was me who asked him out, the first time I'd ever done such a thing. I was asked to bring someone along to a do to promote mental-health issues in the media, and he sprang to mind.
I asked six mates if I should ask Peter. Three said yes, three said no, so eventually I just went for it.
The evening went amazingly. Peter was incredible with the celebs invited along, and afterwards he drove me to a cafe where we drank all night - coffee for him and peppermint tea for me. We talked and talked until it got light. Then he drove me home. The girls were away, so I asked him in.
He was nervous, sweet and natural and I adored him from the word go. I was comfortable with him. He was very moral, very male, but not frightened of his feminine side. And I realised all this on the first night! I wanted to see more of this man.
About six weeks later, I introduced him to the girls as a friend of mine, and they all got on famously. He didn't talk down to them, but treated them as equals.
I watched how he was with them very carefully but he was all the things I could wish a man to be for my daughters. He was tender with them but also solid, a brilliant father-figure.
The night he told me he loved me was the most romantic of my life. I arrived at his house for dinner and the front door was slightly open. Inside it was dark. On the floor there was a candle burning beside a red rose and a piece of parchment, charred around the edges.
On it was written "When I look at you ...". I walked along the corridor to find another candle, another red rose, another piece of parchment, "... my heart stops".
I moved to the next candle. "In your eyes I can see the future..." Eventually I arrived at the last candle, on a table set for two. I sat down and read: "I love you", just as Peter stepped out from the darkness.
I was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me in my 39 years on this planet. But I didn't tell him I loved him because the old impetuous Trisha was gone. This was serious. I needed time to think.
Yes, I was in love with him and I knew it was a love that could only grow over time. But because of all I'd been through with men, it was not easy to throw my caution aside and accept how much I felt for him.
He asked me to marry him but I told him I needed the girls to agree first, and Billie wasn't keen. She liked Peter but wanted it to be "just us" - her, her sister and her mother.
I could understand that, so I told Peter he'd have to wait.
A few months later, he asked again, on bended knee at twilight in the Sydney botanical gardens. I knew Peter was right for me, and in the months since he had first proposed, Billie had come round to the idea. This time I said yes.
I took him to England to meet Mum and Dad. They liked him, but, more to the point, they respected him. Peter is the only man I've ever been with who my father hasn't referred to as a "boy".
He witnessed my family at their worst as a spectacular screaming match broke out between Mum, Dad and one of my sisters. A chair was wielded in the air. But the amazing thing was that Peter did something about it.
He took Mum aside and told her in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be around arguments, and he didn't want Billie and Madi to be subjected to them either. He wasn't nasty. He was firm and polite. I'd never heard Mum apologise to me in my life, but she did that day.
We chose to get married in Italy. My two previous weddings were such dismal events I can hardly think of them as weddings at all.
To my mind, Peter is the only person I've ever really married. He's the only man I've ever stood at the altar with for the right reason - love.
I was married in spirit, soul and mind, and I thought my life couldn't get any better. And then it did.
Anglia Television had seen tapes of my work in Australia and invited me to England to host a new show.
But the "new me" was cautious. I wasn't going to let work come between me and my man, as it had done so often in the past. I was ready to turn down the chance.
"But, Trisha," Peter said when I told him, "what an opportunity! Go for it and I will be right there behind you. This is your time."
And that is precisely what it has been. Since I married Peter and started the Trisha show in 1998, it's as if my life has been blessed. My career has blossomed, yes, but the happiness I have experienced and the love I have been surrounded by are a million miles away from anything that came before.
I have watched my girls grow into strong, confident young ladies. As for Peter - who came to England with us and works for a mental health charity - well, he is the absolute icing on the cake.
People expect a lot of happiness from life, but if you think everything is going to be great all the time, then you're setting yourself up for a fall. As the saying goes, s**t happens, and I've been through a fair amount.
Some people have been through more than me, some less. But in the end it's the way you deal with it that counts. I believe that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and, when I look back on my life, I wouldn't change a thing.
If I hadn't gone through all those awful relationships, if I hadn't hit rock bottom and bounced back, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As it is, I've arrived at a point in my journey where I'm finally happy as I am.
It seems incredible to me now that, for so long, I had such desperately unhappy relationships with men. My first husband was a control freak from whom I was lucky not to have caught Aids; the second cheated on me with one of my staff and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Even before them, the first man I lived with and thought I loved had a dark side. He was good-looking and funny. When we first met his chat-up line was: "I'm not gay, me. I can **** all night." I almost passed out with shock. It was direct, and he wasn't lying.
Scroll down for more...
New start: Trisha and Peter on their wedding day with her daughters Madi and BillieRead more...
Man escapes jail in domestic abuse case after using video of ex-partner on Trisha chat show to prove she was violent 'My husband cheated on me as our daughter fought for her life' - Trisha Goddard on the marriage crisis that very nearly destroyed her
But he was so jealous he beat up any other man who dared look at me, even a friend of mine who just put his hand on my shoulder at a party.
He squared up, screaming like a madman. Then he turned his fists on me. He hit me in public, he hit me at home, and then would blub and say he was sorry and beg me to forgive him. And I did.
I kept on putting up with his violence, believing his promises, hoping he would change, and stayed with him when I should have left.
Finally I did. He had some friends round one night while I was in bed trying to sleep and I went down in my nightie and asked them to keep the noise down. He came at me, fists flying and literally frothing at the mouth.
His mates intervened and managed to pull him off me. As they held him down, one of them said: "Get out, Trisha, get out!" I took his advice, slid the window open and jumped.
The video player followed as my "boyfriend" pushed off his mates and hurled it after me. Luckily, it smashed into the ground and not into me. Still wearing my nightie, I ran to my car, drove away and never went back.
I'm still amazed I stayed so long. I went home to a violent man every night for several years, and in the long run I'm wiser for it. But I wish I'd been wiser at the time.
Now, when I think of all I went through in my life, I feel like I'm talking about another person. Don't get me wrong, though. I don't sit around thinking, poor little me who suffered at the hands of all those bastard men! Rather I think I got the relationships I deserved at the time.
I might not have beaten anyone, I might not have tried to change and control others and I was always faithful, but - as I said right at the very beginning of this series - I was damaged goods as a result of my childhood. And people who are damaged tend to attract partners who are damaged, too.
Scroll down for more...
Trisha says Peter is the only person she's every really married and that she took her vows 'in spirit, soul and mind'
From a young age, I'd shut myself off from people, afraid to let anyone in. If they couldn't get to me, I couldn't be hurt. I learned to be fiercely self-dependent. I never leaned on anyone, financially or emotionally, and I didn't expect any of the men in my life to lean on me.
What I missed out on as a result was what I needed most - love.
All this became clear to me in the therapy I received after my nervous breakdown, following the break-up of my second marriage. I realised I had to change. It was time for a new me.
When I left hospital, closed down my television production company and told my unfaithful husband to leave, for the first time in my life I had the chance to take stock and focus on myself.
But this new life was scary. I was living in Australia, thousands of miles from my family, a single mother with two small daughters and no job, and I was slowly on the mend from a lot of pain. Money was a real worry, too, especially after the highly-paid work I'd been used to.
My girls were my salvation. I'd put Billie in my giant running stroller and Madi in a baby back-pack and I'd power-walk the three of us round the neighbourhood for miles and miles.
We'd sing "We are the Goddard Girls" at the tops of our voices. The walking also lifted my mood in a way that no medication ever could.
But I had a social life, too, when Billie and Madi were with their father (my ex). In my late 30s, I did what I had been too busy with my career to do in my teens and 20s - I partied!
I met some great men, and what was special about them was that none of them wanted anything from me. They weren't needy or possessive. They were fun.
First was James, one of a set of wealthy, bad boys I went clubbing with.
They were heavily into Ecstasy, and eventually I tried some. I have to admit it made me feel "loved up" in a way I'd never been before.
I felt great. And I kept on with it, until I realised the low that inevitably followed the high of the night out on pills just wasn't doing me any good.
James was a gorgeous, kind but messed-up man, and we were in love in the way that great friends can be. He never judged me, and he never tried to change me, and he wasn't a pain in the butt. Both of us knew we weren't going to last for ever - and that's what made things work between us.
At the same time I became mates with a guy called Andrew, an amazingly perceptive man who had been through very similar mental-health experiences to me.
He was a posh boy, too, but, unlike James, he was confused about his sexuality. He was gay but not entirely comfortable with it.
But through him I met types of people who were worlds apart from anything I was familiar with. He took me to gay clubs where we hung out with a "non-specific-gender" crowd - strange-looking people with no hair, no eyebrows, dressed in gothic rags and big clumpy shoes.
I couldn't tell the girls from the boys. They weren't gay or straight.
I got to know many of them and our nights often ended with us all sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking about their lives and their problems.
Some were rent boys, others drag queens. Yet all were fascinating, decent people who had adopted a certain way of life in order to survive.
It got to the point where I would turn up and they would all say, "Oh, it's Trisha, I wonder what we'll end up debating tonight."
In some strange way, I must have been preparing myself for the work I would do years later on the Trisha show.
I loved my new-found freedom. I wasn't "black", I wasn't a "single mum", wasn't "her off the telly" and pestered for autographs, I wasn't a "nutter" who'd had a breakdown. I was just me, and it felt wonderful.
The next guy was Steve, British with a cut-glass accent. We met through a mental health awareness project I was involved in. He was going through a divorce, too, and we had a fine old time bitching about our exes.
Emotionally we just clicked, and we had a fling. He was great for me. He was a gentleman. But I wasn't ready to commit to anyone.
Then my daughter Billie set me up with John, the father of a friend of hers. The friend told Billie she didn't have a mummy, and Billie said she didn't have a daddy, so they thought it was the perfect solution.
John was an airline pilot, attractive, kind, charismatic and clever, and we ended up pretty serious about each other. He was a proper grown-up, and a complete contrast to the men I'd spent most of my life with.
At this point I was seeing James, Steve, and John all at the same time (plus another guy called Chris, who was really just there for decoration).
They knew about each other, and didn't seem to mind.
Each was passionate about life in his own way. All of them opened my eyes to the fact that there are men in the world who care whether a woman enjoys herself or not.
John ended up taking priority, and we were together for about a year. But eventually it went wrong. Though I loved him, he wanted more commitment than I still felt able to give to anyone.
I wasn't distraught after it finished. I realised just what a positive period I'd had with all those guys. I'd done what I should have done in my teens. I'd learned a ton of things about men, and discovered they can be wonderful creatures after all.
And, do you know, at that point I remember thinking that I didn't care if I never had another relationship. I'd got my girls, I'd got my health (just about!), and that was all that mattered.
The usual angst that bedevilled my thinking - that I was a single mother, that I'd never make it on my own, that I would go bankrupt, that I was a bad person - all that had disappeared. I was at peace.
Naturally enough, a couple of months later, I found myself dating the man who would become the love of my life.
The first time I met Peter Gianfrancesco was when he was applying for a senior government job in mental health. Because of my long involvement as a governmental mental health adviser, I was on the interview board.
The plans he put forward to help sufferers were new and exciting. So was he! He was dark, brooding and intelligent, and, as I told the board when they asked my opinion, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating biscuits!
It was me who asked him out, the first time I'd ever done such a thing. I was asked to bring someone along to a do to promote mental-health issues in the media, and he sprang to mind.
I asked six mates if I should ask Peter. Three said yes, three said no, so eventually I just went for it.
The evening went amazingly. Peter was incredible with the celebs invited along, and afterwards he drove me to a cafe where we drank all night - coffee for him and peppermint tea for me. We talked and talked until it got light. Then he drove me home. The girls were away, so I asked him in.
He was nervous, sweet and natural and I adored him from the word go. I was comfortable with him. He was very moral, very male, but not frightened of his feminine side. And I realised all this on the first night! I wanted to see more of this man.
About six weeks later, I introduced him to the girls as a friend of mine, and they all got on famously. He didn't talk down to them, but treated them as equals.
I watched how he was with them very carefully but he was all the things I could wish a man to be for my daughters. He was tender with them but also solid, a brilliant father-figure.
The night he told me he loved me was the most romantic of my life. I arrived at his house for dinner and the front door was slightly open. Inside it was dark. On the floor there was a candle burning beside a red rose and a piece of parchment, charred around the edges.
On it was written "When I look at you ...". I walked along the corridor to find another candle, another red rose, another piece of parchment, "... my heart stops".
I moved to the next candle. "In your eyes I can see the future..." Eventually I arrived at the last candle, on a table set for two. I sat down and read: "I love you", just as Peter stepped out from the darkness.
I was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me in my 39 years on this planet. But I didn't tell him I loved him because the old impetuous Trisha was gone. This was serious. I needed time to think.
Yes, I was in love with him and I knew it was a love that could only grow over time. But because of all I'd been through with men, it was not easy to throw my caution aside and accept how much I felt for him.
He asked me to marry him but I told him I needed the girls to agree first, and Billie wasn't keen. She liked Peter but wanted it to be "just us" - her, her sister and her mother.
I could understand that, so I told Peter he'd have to wait.
A few months later, he asked again, on bended knee at twilight in the Sydney botanical gardens. I knew Peter was right for me, and in the months since he had first proposed, Billie had come round to the idea. This time I said yes.
I took him to England to meet Mum and Dad. They liked him, but, more to the point, they respected him. Peter is the only man I've ever been with who my father hasn't referred to as a "boy".
He witnessed my family at their worst as a spectacular screaming match broke out between Mum, Dad and one of my sisters. A chair was wielded in the air. But the amazing thing was that Peter did something about it.
He took Mum aside and told her in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be around arguments, and he didn't want Billie and Madi to be subjected to them either. He wasn't nasty. He was firm and polite. I'd never heard Mum apologise to me in my life, but she did that day.
We chose to get married in Italy. My two previous weddings were such dismal events I can hardly think of them as weddings at all.
To my mind, Peter is the only person I've ever really married. He's the only man I've ever stood at the altar with for the right reason - love.
I was married in spirit, soul and mind, and I thought my life couldn't get any better. And then it did.
Anglia Television had seen tapes of my work in Australia and invited me to England to host a new show.
But the "new me" was cautious. I wasn't going to let work come between me and my man, as it had done so often in the past. I was ready to turn down the chance.
"But, Trisha," Peter said when I told him, "what an opportunity! Go for it and I will be right there behind you. This is your time."
And that is precisely what it has been. Since I married Peter and started the Trisha show in 1998, it's as if my life has been blessed. My career has blossomed, yes, but the happiness I have experienced and the love I have been surrounded by are a million miles away from anything that came before.
I have watched my girls grow into strong, confident young ladies. As for Peter - who came to England with us and works for a mental health charity - well, he is the absolute icing on the cake.
People expect a lot of happiness from life, but if you think everything is going to be great all the time, then you're setting yourself up for a fall. As the saying goes, s**t happens, and I've been through a fair amount.
Some people have been through more than me, some less. But in the end it's the way you deal with it that counts. I believe that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and, when I look back on my life, I wouldn't change a thing.
If I hadn't gone through all those awful relationships, if I hadn't hit rock bottom and bounced back, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As it is, I've arrived at a point in my journey where I'm finally happy as I am.
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