I’m sorry in advance for the length of this. I’ve never posted on one of these before. I just need to tell someone, I can’t live with it all inside anymore.
I’ve lived in an abusive relationship for over 20 years. We have 2 ds’s now 17 and 15. I met my dh when I was 14 and he was 17. I’m 35 now. It wasn’t long before the relationship became abusive, probably only 6 months in. There’s been so much and I was so young I just can’t work the timeline out in my head anymore. I remember having an argument with him and he kept shouting at me to call him a bastard. I didn’t want to but he kept shouting at me to do it. When I did he pushed me hard in the chest against a wall. He was then sorry, told me he shouldn’t have done it and told me to slap him back. I didn’t want to but he kept telling me to slap him, shouting at me over and over until in the end I did it and slapped his face. He then of course let rip. I couldn’t tell anyone, I knew what this was, I never thought I deserved it and I knew I should get out but I thought I loved him. I didn’t want to lose him. And I was ashamed, so ashamed of staying and putting up with this.
Over the next few years he ground me down. Isolated me from my family and my friends. It was me and him against the world he used to say. Things escalated when ds1 was born when I was 17 and we moved in together. I woke up once being strangled. I don’t even know why. Somehow I managed to get him off, grab the baby and run. I went to my mums, never told her why, and the next day I went back. I didn’t want to lose him.
When I was pregnant with ds2 he regularly used to kick me in the stomach, told me the baby wasn’t his. Would constantly accuse me of having affairs, cheating on him because either he knew he wasn’t good enough for me or I was a complete slag depending on what day it was. I never did, I never cheated. He’d do this in front of his parents, who knew that this went on. His mum used to tell him to stop but he never listened. They even used to do my shopping for me when I was too ashamed to go out because of the bruises. Who does that?
He never cared if the children saw or heard. My kids were conditioned to think I was worthless or capable of having an affair and leaving them or I didn’t care enough about them and my ‘family’ from the day they were born. He never hurt them. Instead it would be me who would shout at them. Frustrated and emotionally unstable I would yell at them for the slightest thing, taking it out on them because I couldn’t defend myself from him. I’m not proud of this. I hate myself for it. I love them more than anything in the world and they hate me for it. They learned that it was mummy who was the bad guy and deserved to be punched or kicked and generally treated like shit.
The beatings and emotional abuse continued, over varying time periods. Sometimes it would be weekly, sometimes even daily and then there were the good times when it might be a few months. I became a shadow of my former self with no confidence and no-one to turn to. I knew I needed to get out but I was still too ashamed to tell anyone. I knew I needed to build something that was mine that he could never take away from me. I considered going to a shelter, it sounds stupid but I didn’t want to take his kids from him. He always told me if I took them away then he’d find me and kill me. He had people watching me, watching everything I did. I believed it.
When I was 25 I found the one thing I knew he couldn’t stop me doing. I decided I would train to become a doctor. I know it seems ridiculous and completely at odds with any of this but I knew that if I did this I would have the absolute full support of my parents (who were doctors) and that he wouldn’t be able to belittle it. I’d never even been allowed to have a job before but I thought that doing this would give me the ability to get out and get out safely. It was the only thing in the world that I knew, it was what I’d grown up with. I had no training in anything, but I had left school with the grades to enable me to do it. And how could he continue to hit me when I was surrounded by doctors and other health professionals who would know the signs? I told him what I was going to do. Of course this caused what I knew it would, the name calling, the belittling. Telling me I wasn’t good enough, who would want me as a doctor he said, when I couldn’t even hold a rational conversation. And then the beating.
Up until then it would have been enough to stop me but this time it was different. I went ahead and applied in secret, had an interview in secret and got accepted in secret. I told him the week before I started medical school 6 months later. I’d planned to leave as soon as I could get enough money together to rent somewhere. I wish now I’d just told my parents as they would have helped me but I couldn’t, I was just so ashamed. 2 days before I was due to start I had a phone call, he told me he’d been knocked off his bike by a car and was on his way home from hospital. He turned up with a bandaged knee and a sling but no major injuries. He’d also hurt his back. I still don’t know if this actually happened or not. There was no objective evidence. I thought at the time he may have been faking it to stop me from starting medical school but I don’t know for sure. I started anyway and put up with the jibes about how already it was more important to me than he and the children were and what a shit mother I was for only caring about myself. He continued to have back pain, enough to keep him sick off work and then he developed depression. He took voluntary redundancy from work citing depression as the reason. I felt guilty leaving him, he had no money and no way of surviving. So I stayed, and we survived just about on my student loan. He continued to verbally and physically abuse me in places no one would see, and I still didn’t leave. How can you leave someone with chronic back pain and depression? Who threatens to kill themselves if you leave? How can you put your children through their father killing himself because your mother left him? I look at this logically and know that it wouldn’t be my fault and that he probably wouldn’t even do it but then I get overtaken by an irrational fear that he might.
I was a year and a half into my training when he kicked me out. No warning, just told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. The relief was overwhelming. I found somewhere to live and took the children with me. He stayed in our (owned) home. For about a month it was fantastic and I felt free for the first time in my life. And then I was lonely. I didn’t really have any friends as I’d never been able to keep any. Any friend I had made over the years I would always be told how bad they were for me, what a bitch they were talking about me behind my back or how they’d talk me into having an affair. I knew that none of this was true at the time but I just stopped seeing people to try and avoid the arguments. I had no one to talk to and I was lonely. He barely saw the children during this time. They would cry and ask for him. The only way he would see them is if I took them there. So I did. I shouldn’t have done but I thought that if I didn’t it would be my fault that they didn’t have a dad. And he got back in my head. Made me feel like I wasn’t doing a good enough job with them. Made me feel like I wasn’t good enough period. This was confirmed when I failed my year at medical school. I wasn’t good enough. I was stupid for having tried to do this. Who the hell did I think I was getting ideas above my station. I quit medical school my confidence completely though the floor and 2 days later he said i could move back in. Unable to afford my rented house now I’d have no student loans and desperate for my children to have a family I did. It was the worst decision I ever made. I was under no illusion that he wouldn’t continue to be abusive but at that point I don’t think I cared enough about myself to even care. And two weeks later it started again.
To cut an already very long story short this was 8 years ago. A year later I managed to convince him that the only way we could survive financially is if I went back to medical school (neither of us working, house repossessed). My university had held my place open knowing I was going through personal problems (although not the extent of it) and amazingly he agreed. Determined not to mess it up this time I worked hard and just shut myself off to what was going on at home. I qualified nearly 3 years ago and have been working as a doctor since. The more I progressed in my career the stronger I became and with it the abuse changed. These days the physical element is more rare, it happens once or twice a year usually when I do something that pushes him too far. The last time was about 7 months ago. Emotionally is the same as always, it swings between explosive rages of name calling and shouting swear words at me to virtually ignoring me and not talking to me for weeks at a time. And it took me a while to figure this one out but a new kind of abuse has appeared, I didn't even know it existed until I looked it up. He’s worked hard at making himself the victim, continually having a ‘poor me’ attitude and how everyone is out to get him. How depressed he is and how in pain he is all the time. How scared he is to say the wrong thing to me because, get this, he’s scared of me ranting and shouting. Scared of me not letting him walk all over me anymore? This is a man that has on various occasions broke my ribs, my wrist, my fingers, my cheekbone, made me go temporarily deaf, knocked my tooth out, knocked me out, stamped on my head, strangled me, spat in my face and numerous other things. And he’s supposed to be scared of me? He hasn’t worked since his supposed accident. Refuses to get a job and won’t ‘demean’ himself by claiming benefits. Even in the days where we had to survive on student loans and I used to beg him on my knees to help me he would refuse and go on about the fact that he had a good reason not to work as he was so unwell. Doesn’t stop him playing football with the kids of course. So now I am in what I think is also a financial abuse situation. I’ve wracked up massive debts in loans and credit cards just trying to survive. I work extra shifts on the majority of my off days on top of 60-70 hour weeks just to get by. Everything is in my name not his (including the debts). I even buy his cigarettes! I’ve tried not to a number of times but he becomes unbearable.
I know I need to leave. Since getting back together 8 years ago all I’ve done is dream and fantasise about leaving him and I just don’t understand why I still don’t have the courage to do it. I know I can survive by myself, I know I have the means to but I just can’t say the words. I’m so scared. I’m scared I’ll lose my kids, they think so much more of him than me and will hate me for leaving their poor depressed ‘disabled’ dad. It’s not as easy these days as just taking them with me. I feel guilty because he has nowhere to go and no means of surviving, even though I know this is down to him and not me. I still have the fear and the guilt that he’ll kill himself and it’ll be my fault. And ultimately I still have the fear he’ll kill me. But I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. I can’t bear it.
To this day no one knows, not even my parents. I’m so ashamed that I’ve put up with this for so long and taught my sons that this is how you treat women. I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve by posting this. I’m sorry it’s so rambling and long. I just needed to tell someone.