From The Heart: Emotional Abuse

When I had the idea of handing over the blog to our readers every Sunday under our new ‘From The Heart’ feature, I didn’t truly anticipate the swell of interest I’d receive. Since our first From the Heart post went live this month, my email count from women wanting to make meaningful, human connections with other women on matters of love and life, rather than being a bride and getting married, have soared. I’ll admit that I was really quite nervous at first – I knew that in opening the gates to explore issues that sat outside the sphere of weddings, that some tricky matters might crop up – awkward issues that are more often than not shrouded in taboo – the things we don’t really talk about because we daren’t, or feel ashamed too, and certainly not on a wedding blog which is meant to be full of happy things. But that’s precisely where I feel I need to take a risk and step outside my comfort zone. By definition, and according to Wikipiedia, a community, ‘shares common values’ and is ‘connected by durable relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties, and who mutually define that relationship as important to their social identity and practice’. I truly believe that in opening our hearts about matters of our lives in this way, that our reader community can only be strengthened and shine a light on the values that we share. And that is something I feel deeply passionate about.

Today, I’m sharing a post that in every sense has been written from the heart. It’s author is very happily married to the love of her life. In fact, her wedding featured on Love My Dress in June 2014 – but you’ll have to read to the end of the article to find a link to those beautiful photographs. I wanted to thank Sarah today for her bravery in stepping forward and sharing her experience. What a selfless act of love and support shown to our community of readers.

This article has been shared to support others who may be going through the same, or who might have been through the same and found an escape. It is for those of you who may recognise a friend or relative in need. The message that Sarah wishes to convey, is that despite emotional abuse being a form of domestic violence, it is possible, with immense courage and the support of others, to escape such situations and find true love and happiness.

Love Annabel xx

______________________

In 2014 I married my lovely husband, my best friend and partner of 9 years; 10 years of friendship, 9 years of love! At our wedding I spoke about how it came to be that I was standing there, in a wedding dress, married and a wife. As I talked about how Huw and I came together, I really wanted to tell everyone that he was actually my hero. That over the year we were getting to know each other as work colleagues, he was saving me from an abusive relationship. Not even Huw really knew what he was doing at the time.

Abuse comes in many forms and has many disguises. Mine was not the sort of abuse that left me battered and bruised – maybe the occasional finger bruises round my wrists or on my arms. But like physical abuse, it left me totally and utterly numb. There are very few pieces I have read that focus 100% on emotional abuse (this is one of the few), and the stories I’ve read of physical abuse often talk little about the emotional side. Is it because it is so hard to explain? Whatever the reason, emotional abuse is a form of Domestic Violence.

It didn’t start; there was no trigger it was just there all the long for the three years I was with my ex. At 19 years old, I had drifted apart from my first love and gone on to meet my ex at work. He was 10 years older than me and everything I thought a man should be. After a drunken kiss at the Christmas party we started dating. He was completely different to my first love and I felt really positive about it. Looking back, I’m not sure there were necessarily any early warning signs – he was certainly louder, more confident, more confrontational and more opinionated, but everyone liked him so I just thought that’s what you get with maturity. It’s actually quite hard to talk about emotional abuse in a way that people understand and don’t just presume you are being over sensitive. How do you make someone understand that it wasn’t just an argument, that he wasn’t just upset, that it won’t blow over and it’s not the odd occasion? Where is the grey area? It wasn’t until recently that my Dad really understood the extent of it and though I’ve been reasonably open about it with family, I’ve made light of it so I don’t just get reduced to tears every time. Me; strong minded, black & white, practical, determined, loving and caring. How did it happen to me?

I met a man who needed fixing. He had been neglected by his mother after being born with a disability. He’d been raised for a short period by his Grandmother then finally taken in by a foster family who raised him till he was 18, and had to make his own way in life. Which he was doing a great job of. I on the other hand, had been raised in a tight knit family, loved and cared for where birthday’s and Christmas’ were celebrated. He was the way he was because of the cards he had been dealt and I was going to fix him. But rather than take this and embrace what we could have had together, the abused became the abuser.

He started picking me apart. He’d often say “Don’t do that” and not in a polite way – it always came out aggressively. He started telling me how he liked me to dress, that I should be in heels, all the time, and that he wanted me to dress more like a lady. He’d email me all day at work to the point I got a verbal warning. One minute he was hot then he was cold. He started swearing at me, spitting the words out, telling me I was too this or too that. He told me I talked down to him and patronised him. It seemed like his response to everything. Daily arguments and rows were aggressive and threatening. I was not used to confrontation, I couldn’t deal with it at all and just ended up mute and in tears not understanding what I had done that made him suddenly so angry.

When I turned 21 I organised a party in London with old friends, and new work friends – he brought some of his friends along too. I’d just found out my Grandad had cancer and I was quite emotionally drained at the time, but we pushed ahead with the party to cheer me up. We kept getting split up in the club as he partied with his friends and I partied with mine. I went to look for him and found him leaving the club. He said I’d ignored him all night and I’d made no effort to integrate our friends and that I’d embarrassed him. How he’d ordered champagne for midnight (it was my birthday the next day) but I’d ruined it all and then just left me standing there in the street. I ended up crashing at my best mates and then going home and spending my 21^st locked in my bedroom in tears. My calls went unanswered, when he finally picked up it was a very abrupt “What the f*ck do you want?” I was so confused by his actions and of course, it was all my fault and I believed him.

We split up, briefly, at this point, and I knew friends and family were relieved. But it was short-lived and we were soon back together. We worked together and it would be easier to be with him then deal with the problems he’d cause if I didn’t. We then quite quickly bought a house together.

My grandmother gave me a small amount of moving in money and I chose to spend it on tangible things like a washer and a tumble dryer, bed linen. We had a huge row about how I was buying things I could take with me when I leave. He continually said I was cold and calculated. What to me were innocent ways to spend the money, were to him something worth having a huge row in the car about. Then he threatened to throw me out of the car.

I was constantly left bewildered. Was it me? Was I talking to him in such a way that it was making him this angry? Was I cold and calculated? Was I patronising? Was I a c*nt and a stupid b*itch and a f*cking idiot?

When we moved in together, it was actually good for a while. Then I’d find every time we were due to see my family he would do something to ruin it and not come. Initially I understood it because he just wasn’t used to family so I forgave him. But I found I’d then be torn between leaving him, having usually argued, and seeing my family. If I chose my family, I tried to be away for as little time as possible. I became anxious spending time with them as I knew he was at home resenting me for being out. I wondered each time what I was going home to. He’d tell me my friends were holding me back, that I should see them less and spend more time with him. I still saw friends regularly at the weekend which was my saviour as I couldn’t wait to get away. But that too would lead to more arguments.

He’d encouraged me to join the gym, and I went 5 days a week. He stopped me eating carbs at home, he’d tell me I ate too much chocolate when we never had chocolate in the house. I’m 5ft 7” and I was a tiny size 8 and weighed 8 stone. I am quite silly, in a jovial way – I remember dancing round the living room and him telling me to stop being silly and grow up. Every argument just became an excuse for him to call me names and belittle me. Think of the worst names you can call a female and I got called them. I’d always apologise to him and he would tell me, “That’s ok”.

It was the first time I’d lived away from home so it was a totally new experience to me. He on the other hand had lived by himself since he was 18, yet as soon as we moved in he became incapable of doing anything. He once pinned me up against the fridge because I hadn’t gotten any food in for him when I was out one evening. I didn’t do the washing quick enough, I didn’t clean the house enough. He would sleep walk, which was at times terrifying because he usually woke up when he was having, what can only be described as, a night terror. One night I woke up to him dragging me out of bed telling me I needed to do the housework. I kept trying to wake him up, shouting at him as I was dragged across the bedroom floor. When he woke up he never had any recollection of what had happened. It sounds comical, but the inability to wake him up when he was being so aggressive was incredibly scary. I’d be covered in bruises from being kicked repeatedly during the night with quite frequent blows to the face. He told me the neighbours were knocking on the wall all the time and he’d get up in the middle of the night and bang on their door. Then shout and swear then come back in and fall straight back to sleep.

It just started getting to a point where I didn’t really feel anything anymore. I stopped arguing. I stopped responding. I didn’t know who I was. I was, by this stage, all the things he told me I was. I just felt like a robot. I did what he asked me to do, I’d dress how he wanted me to, I cooked what he wanted me to. I saw my family and friends for a very limited amount of time. When my best friend was getting married and I wanted to go wedding dress shopping with her I made an excuse to get out the house, I was terrified to tell him where I was going. When I received the phone call to tell me my grandad had died, I knew instantly as he picked up the phone that morning what my mum was telling him. I kept saying “give me the phone” and gesturing as I couldn’t bear to hear the muffled voice of my Mum delivering the news. He threw the phone at me and called me a f*ucking idiot then rolled back over and went to sleep as I sat there crying and absorbing the news alone with no comfort from him.

Things started to come to a head when after another argument, I found myself matching him. And when I say argument, I’m talking in your face, where spit is sprayed across your face, gestures that make you flinch, voice at the loudest, pure aggression. He was pushing and shoving me, and I began doing it back, willing him to hit me so that it would give me the ammunition I needed to leave. He knew I wanted him to do it and I knew he would never knowingly hit me. He lifted me up and threw me out the bedroom door and I just lay there in a crumpled heap wondering how I had got here. I even plucked up the courage to tell him he was a bully. He was completely floored. And I could see in his eyes he was genuinely shocked I had described him like that. I thought it would improve. We even discussed children. I thought that would be the one thing to really fix him because making him feel loved, my desire to give him the life I had growing up hadn’t worked.

I had thought about leaving many times. I had thought it would be easier if he didn’t come home. Most days I wished he didn’t walk through the door after work. But I couldn’t leave. It was too complicated, we had the house together, I was tied up in a mortgage with him. It would get better, it had to. Friends kept telling me to leave.

It’s very easy to say leave him but the hardest thing to do.

I wanted someone to come and get me.

This is one of the things I find hardest to write – that I really wanted someone to come and get me, to save me from this place I was in that no one knew about, couldn’t understand or thought that he couldn’t possibly be that person I was talking about. But as it turned out a number of things fell in to place that gave me the opportunity I needed to leave.

I started a new job in London, well away from where we worked together. We started looking for a house closer to London. Every house we looked at I thought how nice it would be for just one person. One of my new colleagues became a great friend and over the six months leading up to when I finally left ‘him’ made me realise that there are still good men in the world and not every ‘man’ behaved the way he did. It wasn’t normal.

The more houses we looked at the more distant I became. I finally called my Mum and asked to come home. I can’t even tell you the range of emotions I went through when I finally plucked up the courage to tell him I was moving back to my mum’s. I chose my words carefully – telling him I was ‘leaving’ him would have been a very bad idea. I was floored by how well he took it. He said he knew I was not happy and that he understood. That was in the April.

Initially I stayed in the house in our spare room while we tried to sell it. After a couple of failed sales I set a deadline of August for moving out. He had agreed he would rent until he found somewhere. Then as my moving date got closer he told me he was going to buy somewhere. This caused a huge problem as he already had a buy to let with bad credit rating and I knew it would cause a delay in getting the house sold and the longer I was tied up in something with him, the longer I was trapped. After I made it clear I was still going he finally gave up and we pushed ahead with the sale.

I went to see his new house, but saw him infrequently until the day the house we owned together was sold in the November. It was bittersweet. I saw him once after for a mutual friends birthday. He sounded almost suicidal and I had to leave not wanting to get drawn back in. I never saw or spoke to him again after that day because I knew I wouldn’t be truly free. He tried to get in touch again a year later on my birthday but I had moved on with my life and didn’t want to give him another thought. I’d lost 4 years to him and I didn’t want to lose another second.

I can vividly remember going to the pub with a friend shortly after I had told him I was leaving, taking a deep breath and knowing I was nearly there. The relief was so huge I can remember that feeling today.

My husband saved me because he reminded me of what I’d lost in myself when I was 19. He made me laugh every day. I’d forgotten what it had felt like to be happy even for just a few minutes. He was silly and he was addicted to chocolate. We ordered pizzas and burgers and beers when we had to pull a late one at work. He never told me what to do or how to be – he just let me be me.

Six months after I left my ex, I was still figuring that out, but as our friendship became a loving relationship, my husband helped me remember who I was. Up to that point my husband knew little about what had happened, but I chose at this point to tell him, because he was going to have to help me find my way a bit. He’d described me as being quite cold because I wasn’t particularly affectionate, so I had to start to really open up to him as things like that were going to take a while to come back and for me to trust him.

Three years later, things were going pretty well and I went to see someone about some of the lasting affects that the nearly four years of abuse had had on me. I still felt anxious most of the time. I was trying to second guess my husband’s moods. I was also trying to be perfect all the time. I had developed a temper which was quick to flare up in an argument. Any bickering or small arguments reduced me to tears. I couldn’t think about what had happened. I wanted to wash it all away. Get rid of everything that was from that time. Until recently I still had photos of him, but they’re all gone now. It’s 11 years on from that April when I left and those days trying to forget turned into weeks, months, then years.

I know I am lucky. I know I got out and that it didn’t move on to potentially physical or maybe financial abuse. I had somewhere to go, to leave to. That the grass was greener and I didn’t get myself into the same situation. I am still dealing with it, it has changed me. My husband still has to deal with some of the repercussions of that time. But it isn’t ‘My Story’, it’s just something that happened in my life. The one positive thing to come out of it is knowing what sort of person I wanted to be with. Knowing that the mundane things that couples argue about is quite normal; those socks that *never* make it in to the laundry basket, the lack of cooking and cleaning, the inability to put the wet towel back in the bathroom are normal and great and ok.

Emotional abuse is a form of Domestic Violence and Domestic Violence does not discriminate. You can be young, old, straight, gay, rich, poor. It can be partners, parents, children, friends. If you know this is happening to someone and you recognise what I’ve described, then please help them. Go and get them and take them away from their abuser. If you can’t then find someone who can. It does not get better, it will not go away, but as I have proved, finding the strength to remove yourself from an abusive relationship can lead to finding true love and happiness.

Sarah x

________________

Sarah tied the knot with the true love of her life, Huw, on 23rd June 2014. You can enjoy the wedding on Love My Dress here or by clicking on the image below. Please feel free to comment anonymously on this feature.