Life after an abusive relationship

Eighteen months ago, I took the kiddos out for lunch. Bumped into a friend, and it ended up being a day that would change my life completely. Sat having lunch, said friend came over to tell me that the man helping in her daughter’s shop commented ‘how beautiful’ I was.

At this point, eighteen months on from a breakdown after my marriage crumbled, I was finally feeling strong and happy and not fussed about being single. A little flattered at his words.

Something made me message him later to say hi, and while I can’t regret that decision else Oren wouldn’t be here… .I never expected it to have such a profound impact on my life.

It’s easy to think you’d never get caught up in an abusive relationship, but the truth is, when it happens to you, often you are so blindsided that you suddenly wake one day and realise you are trapped.

The first few weeks was storybook perfect. Looking back, I should have realised it was too perfect. Hindsight! He said all the right things, he was kind and attentive and caring and it seemed we had so much in common. I felt just so happy that I had met someone, excited about the future and kind of smitten.

We met on the fourth of July… by the second week of August when he came away with us, I was already a shadow of my former self. That strong, independent woman had vanished, and the anxiety and panic attacks I’d said goodbye to were back. I was already feeling uncomfortable about being ‘me’ around him. When I said or did something ‘wrong’ I’d get the silent treatment. He played me so well, I’d confessed at the start of our relationship just how nervous about trusting again I was. How badly I had been hurt. He used that so very well to make me feel paranoid. Everything would be turned around to me just being crazy or reading into it things that weren’t there.

He rarely left my side, wanted to be with me every second of the day, wanted to know every thought I had. If I was silent he’d ask me what was wrong. If I said the wrong thing he’d storm out of the house for hours at a time. If I was tired and just wanted to curl up and go to sleep, he’d nag and nag at me to tell him what was wrong.

He talked about marriage and babies even though we’d only known each other for a few weeks. I put myself on birth control {and I HATE using hormonal contracteption} as he refused to use anything else. He found it and threw it away.

He told me stories about his last girlfriend, and how badly she’d treated him. He told me the mother of his two children refused to let him see them. When I tried to address the matter and tell him we should let them meet my kids, he’d shout at me that I had no fucking idea what I was talking about.

By the beginning of September, I was a mess. I didn’t know how to tell anyone what was going on, still convinced that maybe I was just being paranoid. He gaslighted me so well I didn’t know what was the truth anymore. Every doubt I had, he turned back around on me. THings he said didn’t add up, yet I didn’t dare question him.

Mid-September I had a miscarriage. I was torn in conflicting emotions. Distraught at the loss of a baby, relieved to not be tied to him, but heartbroken all the same.

He hated my emotions that weekend. Screamed and shouted at me. Threatened to leave. Refused to hear my no, even when I begged him to stop. Grabbed my wrists so hard there were marks for a week. Pushed me away, making me trip and hit my back badly on a cupboard. The first time he hit me, I shrank inside myself even more.

I was so unhappy. Yet I felt so trapped. To the outside world, he was so perfect, he said all the right things, acted all-loving and wonderful when we were in company. I was scared. I didn’t know how to get out of this situation I’d found myself in, afraid maybe I was just paranoid. Afraid no one would believe me.

By the end of October {not quite four months after meeting him}, I was pregnant again and I knew that I couldn’t have a baby in this situation. He’d tell me all the things I could and could do. I wasn’t even allowed to make decisions about what I ate for my dinner.

Then one day, he said he was going out to meet a friend. I didn’t believe him but was just glad he was out of the house for an hour or two. I fired up my laptop, and as I opened Facebook realised he’d left his account signed in on my computer. I did something I’ve never done before, and read his messages. At first just the last one – to a girl who he’d arranged to meet that afternoon – not the male friend he’d told me he was meeting. Buoyed by the fact I wasn’t paranoid for no reason, I read more and more messages… realising slowly that everything he had told me was a lie – quite literally every single thing – even the fact that the mother of his children had terminal cancer. Lie after lie I uncovered.

I cried so much, through anger and relief. When he came back, I asked how the friend was – he said he was good. Knowing I was lying, I picked and picked at him, and he must have realised that I was on to him, as he went outside and changed the password to his Facebook straight away. I paid the price for questioning him that night, curled up in a ball to protect that tiny baby in my tummy.

There are so many more things that happened, physical and emotional. He destroyed the strength I had worked so hard to build. He had worked with my ex-husband a few years back, and I’m certain he picked me to gain some kind of twisted ‘one up’ on him. He took great joy in texting my ex when we first got together to tell him I was his now. I found messages to his mum sent an hour after we first met, telling her I was his new girlfriend. It seemed that nothing was as it seemed.

It took me weeks, and I had to play it carefully, telling him he had to leave as we were screwed financially. I finally convinced him to get a bedsit so that he technically wasn’t ‘here’ – thankfully, he bought it {fuck knows how} and my the end of December he was gone. I packed up his belongings, left them at a shop he occasionally worked at, changed the locks and told him I didn’t ever want to see him again.

In the weeks after he left, I reached out to both his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his children. Both told me everything he had told me about them was a lie, with his ex-girlfriend admitting the reason they split was because he had been violent to her for over a year.

Horrified, but kind of glad that I hadn’t imagined it or made it up, I found myself single, pregnant and very traumatised. I never really talked to anyone about just how bad things were. By the time the relationship was over, I was pregnant, and I knew that someone, I had to get through the next few months intact. There was no option of breaking down – and I knew in trying to deal with the after-effects of an abusive relationship I wouldn’t be able to make it through.

Just over a year since I finally managed to get out of that relationship and I am only just beginning to try and process it. I talked a little with my midwife about it whilst pregnant, but mostly I’ve tried to keep it squashed down inside.

I came away with the most precious gift of all, and I wouldn’t be without Oren for a second. But it’s taken me everything to keep going, to not give in and breakdown, to find strength enough to birth his child alone.

The trauma is so real. I know he is still in the town we live in, and I live in terror of bumping into him. Friends occasionally tell me they have seen him, and the other week, I missed him by about a minute whilst walking to a friend’s house and had the first panic attack I have had in years.

Putting words down here helps, it’s scary to put it in black and white, to admit to missing all the red flags and finding myself trapped so badly. Trauma will never be resolved unless it is dealt with, and this is my step one in dealing… admitting to myself as much as to anyone else that this did happen, that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t imagine it, or ask for it, or deserve it.

Giving myself credit for getting out when I did. It’s common for abusers to isolate their victims – getting them away from family {I already was} and pregnant. He saw getting me pregnant as a way of keeping control over me, yet for me, it was the opposite. Seeing those two blue lines meant I knew I had to get out, I couldn’t survive with a baby in a relationship like that.

Over a year on and the trauma has subsided somewhat. I still hate walking through the town center in case I bump into him, I’ve seen him once, from the safety of a bus, since Oren was born. Thankfully, he’s left us alone – once he knew I was on to his lies, and I wasn’t going to be manipulated anymore he changed and didn’t want to know.

I can’t imagine ever trusting anyone again, not to get close enough for a relationship after the last two. The anxiety of letting someone in is huge, the fear that they will lie and cheat and hurt me. That what you see isn’t what you get. That my judgment on men is obviously not too good.

I’m enjoying my freedom, living life just for me, raising my kiddos and trying to heal myself.