OP, how are you today? Please come back and talk to us on here. We’d love to know that you are ok after NYE which can be a flash point for domestic abuse. It’s ok if you haven’t felt able to leave or report the situation yet. I mean I really wish you would as I do feel you and your child are in danger but I do understand that it’s not always easy to go ahead and take the steps that people are urging you to here.
I would think hard about listening to that Shelley troll person over and above the hundreds of other supportiveness posts on here. It was very unhelpful to say the least, but there is plenty of lived experience as well as professional experience on this forum telling you that the professionals don’t see things this way.
IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT!
I know how you are feeling and I just wish I could get you to see things the way I do now with the benefit of hindsight. I once slapped my abusive ex-husband during an argument for calling me a slut (after I accepted the kind offer of a lift to work an hour away from a male colleague when I was still learning to drive - the irony being I didn’t even like this colleague or get on with him at all but I did appreciate his kindness in the offer). He was furious, especially as this all took place in front of a group of strangers on a train, and made me feel so so guilty and awful about it. He hadn’t been physically violent to me before then and he always blamed me from that point on for “bringing violence into the relationship” 🙄, as if that gave him a free pass for what he did to me later, and I believed him for a long long time and blamed myself for what “we” were doing and how “we” were behaving. But I now understand that it was just a convenient excuse and blame placing exercise for him. The marriage was already abusive (who calls their new wife a slut for going to work with a male colleague in the normal run of things 🙄) It would have been better for me to respond without any physical action but I think most people would understand that I was being heavily provoked by emotional and verbal abuse and I am only human.
Another time I threw a tea towel at him in serious frustration after an argument about what effort we should put in to repairs around the house to get our deposit back from the landlord when moving out - and he responded by punching me in the jaw so hard that I fell backwards and put my hand behind me for balance, unfortunately it went through a sheet of glass behind me and I severed a nerve and an artery in my finger. Even then I didn’t get out yet and lied to the people at the hospital that I had tripped 🙄. They didn’t notice my split lip as they were so busy trying to stem the bleeding and rescue the nerve in my finger. To this day many years later he still insists that I caused that scene as I shouldn’t have thrown a tea towel at him. I ask you does throwing a tea towel at your husband in frustration normally make it ok for him to punch you in the face, knocking you off your feet and leaving you needing to go to A and E and end up under the plastic surgeons for a damaged artery and nerve? No, it does not.
What I’m trying to say is that I really get where you are coming from and how responsible you feel for what is happening to you. But you’ve got it wrong, this is his problem and not yours, you have done nothing wrong. What can look to outsiders as a couple being as bad as each other is actually much more commonly one person being violent and the other trying to protect themselves from the violence. It’s ok to do that. And it’s ok to be human. You don’t have to be a perfect person who would never react no matter how provoked, to be a woman who is being abused. You don’t have to be the perfect victim to be believed.
I wanted to also say that any resistance in an abusive situation is a sign of strength. I read something recently which resonated with me, which said that victims of domestic abuse are often misunderstood as being passive and accepting of the abuse, and people struggle to understand how they “let” this happen and don’t just leave etc. I remember a friend of my ex asking me why I “allow” him to speak to me like that. I didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t allow it?! But really I can’t force him to speak nicely to me much as I wished he would but you can’t control other people’s words so what choice do I have other than to leave? Which seemed at the time like overkill when we are talking about some low level verbal insults (what she overheard was way less bad than the slut accusation for example). And this was a conversation we had one week postnatally when I’d just left the hospital after having his baby and struggling with the beginnings of postpartum psychosis so really I was very vulnerable and she should have been talking to him and not me, or supporting me to leave his ass. Luckily we are now moving away from accusing rape victims who didn’t actively fight back in the attack as “letting the rape happen”, or somehow wanting it to happen or being passive about it. You can be just as frozen in fear in a domestic abuse situation. And that doesn’t mean you give your permission to be treated like that. Every time you say or do something he doesn’t like it is a huge risk and shows strength to resist. And abused women resist their abusers in a million ways every day. You should be actively proud of yourself for fighting back in my opinion, and not taking his abuse lying down. However it is risky to do so especially in high threat situations like yours (the strangulation thing is a real worry) so I advise keeping your head down from now on actually til you’re ready to get out. Having said that, you will never be able to stop him being provoked so don’t fool yourself that if you walk on eggshells and do everything perfectly forever it will be ok.
The truth of the situation is that it is psychologically and emotionally as well as often physically or financially very challenging to get out. Which isn’t to say that isn’t the right thing to do. But someone who hasn’t lived it cannot understand how difficult it is to make up your mind to leave, however obvious it is from the outside. And part of that is due to the gaslighting and the boiling a frog effect. At least try to keep a sense of true reality in your head. Talk to us here about what he says or doesn’t I feel you think you’re in the wrong about things, it’s anonymous and we can be that sounding board for you.
If you aren’t ready to leave now it doesn’t mean you can’t do it in the future and you will be supported then too so please don’t feel it’s right now or never. Yes social services will ask why you continued to expose your baby to potential harm but abusive dynamics are powerful and it is understood that someone might make this unwise decision essentially under duress. It won’t mean the baby would necessarily be removed from your care even then as rightly the father will be blamed for creating the risky situation which you are being forced to react to, and possibly doing so imperfectly, but what I will say is that you will never get as much support and help to leave as in an acute situation like right now where you and your child are clearly at risk. There is also the risk that either you or your baby will not survive to leave in the future if you delay. But I get it if you do. And I really don’t want you to think that because you haven’t listened to us now that in a few weeks or months or years time when you do decide enough is enough, that not leaving earlier will be massively held against you.
Keep your head up, know that you are not the problem, and document document document. You might need that evidence in a criminal court or child custody court someday. If police are too scary, perhaps you can talk to your GP about it. I am a GP and have kept records of what patients tell me in confidence about what’s happening at home when they are in the stage of realising things aren’t right but haven’t made up their minds to leave yet. 100 percent of them come for those records later because they need them. And they are glad I have kept them.