I won’t say my experience and decision are the right way to go, but your post could have been written by me 8 years ago.
Abusive manchild who was all sweetness and light when we met, I managed to fall for his love bombing because I was 18 when we met (he was 25/26) when I suggested we move in together he pushed me into a mortgaged property rather than renting as it’s ‘dead money’.
Then the financial, verbal and emotional abuse began. I was trapped as he refused to leave the property when I finally woke up and realised what he was doing to me (took 4 years of living together to get there but I got there!).
I found out he’d been using my ‘half’ of mortgage payment, ground rent, bills money etc. to cover the cost of everything then pissing away his monthly pay packet on online gambling, getting drunk and generally being a degenerate arse.
I wanted to keep the flat, I had a job within the financial sector so to have any negative credit reported would jeapordise it.
I started squirrelling money away and it took 6 months to save up for a down payment and rent for a single bed flat near my workplace. He got wind of it and emptied my accounts. So I took the hit, I used the one credit card I had, maxed it out to cover the cost of moving and rent, left the flat and eventually it was repossessed and defaulted.
Not the best way to get away but I had to make a choice between my financial future and my safety, I chose my safety.
If I’d been in a position to get legal help I would have, if I hadn’t been systematically cut off from friends or family I would have asked somebody else to help me save the money and keep it out of his reach, I planned badly, but I made it out, you can too.
He’s a disgusting pig of a ‘man’ - he doesn’t deserve you or the space he currently occupies in your head. Stay strong, start putting plans in motion. Keep that fire alive that you do not deserve to be treated this way and that he is not the ruler of your life - you are 