notsorted: oh don't you worry about OW. She'll find that out for herself soon enough.
Don't engage, don't contact, don't negotiate. No point.
All this time we have lived in a bubble, where 'What people think' is ALL important. To them, the abuser, and obviously to us, all that covering up, spinning of tales to deflect attention away from the silent horror of our day to day.
So here I am, 43. Single. Mum to a child in reception. The only single parent I know around here for MILES, and miles. I hate X. I loathe him. I distrust ALL men, and have little time nor respect for most of them tbh. Oh I'm sure there are lovely men out there somewhere, but I don't know that many that don't get on my tits in some way shape or form.
All these years, 40-odd of them worrying about what other people thought.
Now I don't care. They can think what the hell they like. Anyone got a problem with my decisions? Great! Walk a half dozen yards in my shoes honey and THEN come talk to me. All these concerned family members around me, 'cheering me on' 
yeah, I remember how you all ignored me when I needed a hand holding. So why would I worry about what you all think now? Hmm?
I'm not strong, I'm not brave. I struggle and fail to get out of the front door quite frequently. I really dislike phone calls some days. I can still rarely meet a male gaze. I know that most of my life and interaction with other people is over the broadband connection. This is not a life either. It's a better one than I had, but I'm the one limiting it now.
I didn't DO anything, for years I didn't rise up and chuck him out. He said he wanted to go 'home' I said Good idea. He thought I'd beg him to stay. I didn't.
I wept the same tears of defeat, I slapped my own forehead in total disbelief at my utter idiocy. For a while I knew I had been the biggest bloody idiot in the whole world. Catastrophically idiotic. I'd moved past the sheer disgust at my choice of a father for the most dear sweet boy in the whole world, I still regret that, but it was his choice to fail. I carried him for 5 years, made excuses for him for double that.
What comes across perhaps here as strength, may not be that at all. I have a very low bullshit threshold now, I don't tolerate bollocks in any way shape or form. For years (I now know) I was fed lie after lie, justification after justification for why my life was shit and staying like it. When you see the person you worshipped at one point, tell your BFF husband that you have been in a mental institute for 5 years, in the hope that H of BFF will instruct her to dump you, to take the only friend you had in 3 whole years away from you. Let me tell you, when you realise what these creatures wouldn't do to destroy your life, you find a rage, a power an indignance, yes, that's it, an INDIGNANCE that carries you though over and above all the BS, all the boloney being shoved your way in the attempt to manipulate your life into a darker and more unhappy place. How FUCKING dare he?
I hung onto the Mental institute line. It was MY rubber ring, my life preserver, in all senses of the words. It was the unassailable truth, the marker as to what depth that 'man' would sink to see me unhappy.
I told him once "To make me look bad, you have to lie. To make you look bad, All I have to do is tell the truth" I carried that truth around with me for days too. It helped.
That dear readers, was MY touching bottom. That was MY last straw. All the oppression of the last 10 years has gone. My life may be restricted, but it's ME that is doing it. With careful arse booting here and there, I can dare myself to do stuff. I'll get there.
My future may be uncertain. My future under his control would be certain, it would be hopeless, dark, sad, insignificant and an utter waste of a life. MINE. I may not have much, but I at least have HOPE!