Leaving an abusive relationship
The freedom to heal.
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I've been trying to figure out how to approach the topic of abusive relationships for a few years now. I had a go back in 2018, but it was still too raw, too personal. A few years later and far away from where my own dubious relationship happened, I am on holiday with my growing son. While deeper wounds are still healing, I have now overcome the trials that I feared when I chose to leave, and more that I never saw coming. Maybe now is the time to try again.
I escaped the close confines of an abusive relationship. One where I recieved coldness, sarcasm and passive aggression from my partner rather than compassion. Where I felt inadequate, isolated, lonely and scared rather than loved and respected.
It was hard to say that. Our relationship wasn't always like that - we had some good years before things went sour. And now, even though I left, we are still connected through our son. I have to assume that my son will read what I write, eventually. He deserves the opportunity to forge his own relationship with his father, unfettered by the full gamut of distress and fear that I felt. There is a chance that my ex might see this and I am conscious that I don't want to puncture the uneasy truce that we have as our son's now separate parents. I know that he would vehemently deny being an abuser. I am also uncomfortable using the word because I still wonder if, somehow, I allowed it to happen. Like a frog in a kettle allows the water to heat up around it.
But, this is my story, from my perspective, on a part of my life that I need to own. And there is no doubt that I felt increasingly abused over the course of our years together, psychologically and emotionally.
Whenever you Google ‘domestic abuse’, the assumption is always physical violence, or, more recently, a predatory narcissist, actively looking for someone to destroy to make themselves feel better in some way. The relationship I left fit neither of these profiles. There was no actual violence pepetrated. Yet by the end I did feel physically threatened. I do not believe I was ‘targeted’ as a means of narcissistic ‘supply', or ‘sucked in' by someone pretending to love me but who always intended to manipulate and control me. Yet, in trying to survive in that relationship, I felt increasingly manipulated and controlled. And ultimately the relationship almost destroyed me.
The harsh reality is that anyone can behave abusively, particularly when feeling threatened or vulnerable. We instinctively choose between flight, fight or freeze, and the ‘fight’ rarely follows the Queensberry rules in the heat of the moment - offensive and insulting is often a prime aim. It is also human nature to form behavioural patterns based on our background and experience. These patterns perhaps once served some protective role, but sometimes, out of context and over time, they can become unhelpful, and potentially destructive habits. Like habitual cruelty towards a loved one.
My ex and I were two people who initially seemed to be well matched, and who I still choose to believe loved each other once. But when life got mundane and messy and stressful, and when it threw some serious challenges our way, our behavioural patterns, based on our emotional baggage, clashed. Badly.
His emotional baggage made him increasingly likely to withdraw under pressure, both affection and communication. To accuse and be-little and gaslight, perhaps in order to avoid admitting mistakes or feeling vulnerable. To view alternate opinions as a threat instead of an opportunity to gain a new perspective. To walk away from conflict rather than discuss and resolve it. And to threaten to leave for good to silence dissent, maybe to feel in control of something, someone, when everything else was spiralling out of control.
My own emotional baggage made me vulnerable to this behaviour. Under pressure I needed more connection, greater understanding. I needed acceptance, respect, compassion. I needed a partner to collaborate and problem solve with. I needed tangible love that I could feel wrapped around me to help me feel safe. All things that I thought I would always have from him, that suddenly vanished when I needed them the most. Their loss left me feeling despised and abandoned despite him never actually acting on his threats and moving out.
All relationships have rocky patches - when two imperfect human beings get that close together, there is bound to be friction. What matters is how we deal with that friction. We had been together for over 20 years by the time I left, long enough to have discussed our conflicting baggage ad nauseam. Yet, from my perspective, his behaviour kept getting worse, passing from uncaring to sarcastic and spiteful. No matter how hard I worked on trying to sort out my own baggage, I could do nothing about his, which seemed to get heavier with each passing year, each stressful life event.
Over the years he seemed to increasingly regard the impact his behaviour had on me with cold detachment and disdain, refusing to discuss how he could, perhaps, stop causing me so much distress. That choice, and that apparent detachment, in my mind made the difference between a bad patch and a trend of habitual abuse. There was no discernable hurt or anger or passion or compassion on his part. No willingness to accept that things were going wrong, let alone to communicate to try to work things out when it mattered. Just cold detachment, it seemed. This was what eventually killed any hope I had that our relationship would ever improve. It increasingly frightened me - who knew what someone so detached from another’s distress could do - yet it also gave me the freedom to finally choose to leave. Because I knew I could not survive it, and I knew I could not let my son grow up thinking that this was how a loving relationship should be.
It took everything I had to leave, emotionaly, mentally and financially. I had spent so many years swallowing my contrary opinions on the small stuff because they were not welcome. Bending to his will to keep the peace where I could. Fighting until I was exhaused to gain compromises that didn't really work and agreements that were not upheld, and that he sometimes denied even coming to, for things that mattered to me. Soaking up the little passive aggressive and sarcastic digs that eroded a little more of my self worth each time. Curling up inside more and more, trying to avoid the subtle sneers and snide comments that meant he thought I'd done or said something wrong again. I had almost lost myself. I was constantly second guessing every thought I had. I had little self esteem left. I felt every bit as worthless and useless as he made me out to be. And towards the end, I was physically scared, of what he might do to me, my son, or to himself, particularly when he found out that I was leaving him and taking our son with me. Leaving an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time of all. Whether or not I had good reason to feel so scared was not something that I felt strong enough to find out.
I felt alone, confused. Anguished at the thought of leaving. Terrified of the potential consequences of staying. I had never wanted my son to experience a broken family, yet in the end, I made the same choice that my own mother had to.
But I didn't have to do it alone. I sought, and was given, help from Scottish Women’s Aid. They gave me validation, advice, lots and lots of tissues. And when I chose to leave they got us into a refuge. My son, then seven, offered more acceptance of the situation and greater moral support than I ever expected from one so young. When I managed to find a rented flat not too long after, friends and work colleagues helped me pack and move stuff so that I wouldn't be alone at our old house. I reached out in one of the worst times of my life and found all the understanding and compassion that was so lacking in our relationship. Away from my ex I finally began to feel safe in my own skin again for the first time in a long time. And when things began to feel safer, I arranged contact between my son and his father.
Looking back, sometimes much of our relationship feels like a myth held together with whisky, blind hope and a stubborn determination not to give up. I could never regret a relationship that resulted in our son, and I am grateful that we have been able muddle along as his two parents in the aftermath, largely by leaving each other alone. Yet several years on I am still recovering. Still trying to find what I like again, after years of walking on egg shells, trying to please, trying not to rock the boat. Habits, years in the making, that I'm still struggling to shed even long enough to write and publish this, my own story.
So, what lessons can be learned from this cautionary tale?
If it feels like abuse and your partner keeps doing it no matter how you explain its destructive impact, it is abuse.
An abuser does not always start out with the intent to abuse, but they can destroy their partner just as effectively. Habitual coldness, disdain, disapproval, sarcasm, gaslighting, disrespect, passive aggression, control, threats, violence all have the same impact whether they were pre-meditated or not.
There is a difference between a bad patch and a trend of increasing and habitual abuse. Bad patches might be solved with communication and work. But someone who has inflicted chronic abuse, whether physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological, may lack the self awareness needed to even accept that they have made mistakes, let alone that they should learn from them and change their behaviour. Or they may simply not care.
Just because an abuser cannot or will not take responsibility for the emotional baggage that led to their abusive behaviour patterns does not mean we have to carry it. Or suffer it.
No matter how much we once loved them, how fine a person they once were or have the potential to be, how much pain they are in themselves - it is not our job to heal our abuser. It is their job.
People stay in abusive relationships for far longer than perhaps they should, not because they are weak or stupid, but because relationships are messy and rarely clear cut. Relationships also mean something. They hold a value that makes it hard to just give up at the first sign of trouble. Or the even the second sign.
Hope can hold people in abusive relationships for quite a while. Hope that it's just a bad patch, that the perpetrator will come to their senses, that the relationship can be saved and forged into something healthier. Sometimes, it is only when that hope dies that sufferers are finally free to choose to leave.
Even after that choice is made, in many abusive relationships there can be practical, emotional and financial constraints holding a sufferer captive, either due to circumstance, or through the abuser's design. These take time to find work-arounds for, particularly when sufferers have had their self esteem replaced by self doubt.
There is no rating system for abuse. All sufferers are deserving of help. If it feels like your relationship is destroying who you are, physically, mentally, or emotionally, reach outside your relationship for help.
If you think you might be in an abusive relationship, speak to Women's Aid or your local equivalent. You will be welcomed. Met with compassion. Listened to. Plied with tissues and cups of water. Your experiences will be validated. They will not tell you what to do, but they will give you advice and they will support you as much as they can.
Also reach out to friends and family. True friends will be there for you. True family will have your back. You are not alone, even if it feels that way.
Mediation is a useful way to avoid dragging things through the Courts and can keep a split more civil, but keep discussion firmly focused on forging agreements for the future.
Engage a lawyer, not to pursue everything you can get, but to ensure that the agreements reached are fair, and legally binding. A professional on your side to protect your back when you are feeling at your most vulnerable is worth the money.
Unless you really want to give it one last go to try to fix things, be very wary about discussing the past in mediation. Mediators are by nature neutral. But they also provide an audience that an abuser can play to. You may well find yourself in the same pointless and painful discussions where your abuser denies that anything is wrong with the relationship while simultaneously pinning all the blame on you.
If you have children, remember that the relationship between your ex and your children is just that - their relationship with your children. This is separate from your relationship with your ex, both past and present.
If it is safe to do so, encourage your children to have contact with their other parent. Don't force it if they don't want to. Just make sure that they have the opportunity to know, and to love, both of their parents. And be aware that they may change their minds about contact and that's ok.
It is up to your ex to make their relationship with each child work, but don't sabotage it.
Be honest with your child, in an age appropriate way, about why you left, but don't burden them with the pain and vitriol inevitable at the end of a relationship. And never ask or expect them to ‘choose sides'.
If you couldn't co-parent effectively when you were together, it is not going to be any easier after you split up. Trying to co-parent with someone who disagrees with your parenting expectations, or simply doesn't care enough to remember what you had agreed, is soul destroying and futile. If it is not working, give it up.
Parallel parenting works fine as long as you make the rules in the different households clear. And it is much less stressful for everyone.
Over time your rules will naturally change and perhaps lessen as your children grow. They may become closer or further away from those of your ex. That is fine. If your children are happy and safe, do not let anyone tell you otherwise.
Six years on I can look back at my own experience with compassion and forgiveness - for both of us. I feel sadness for the dark path our relationship took. I still occassionally mourn losing the man I once thought was my soul mate, yet I know that I lost him long before I left him - if he ever really existed. And I will never forget what happened.
This family is broken beyond repair and I still feel fractured and scarred. But, like my own as a child, the peices of our family actually work better apart. And like Kintsugi, the process of repairing myself with safety, freedom, and self care, leaves gold seams where the cracks in my soul once were.