Where Do You Get the Strength to Leave an Abusive Relationship?
I spent nine years in an abusive relationship. These years included numerous attempts to leave, one child, and a lot of pain and suffering. It resulted in more emotional damage than I could ever have imagined.
For years I couldn’t see a way out. I gave up trying to leave because I couldn’t trust myself not to return. Instead, I tried to make the best of the situation I was in.
I became a master at saying what he (my ex) wanted me to say and controlling his moods. Every word I spoke was analysed before it came out of my mouth and every action was risk-assessed.
Without the physical violence, I could convince myself that life wasn’t too bad.
But then the messages started coming, warning me that I could not carry on with the life I was living.
These messages gave me the strength to leave and stay away. They switched my fear of leaving to a fear of staying.
A message from my subconscious
I have always been a big believer in the power and importance of our dreams. Whilst I was in an abusive relationship, I used to have a recurring dream of being in love. My subconscious was showing me what true love felt like. It felt so warm, comforting, and empowering.
These dreams were my escapism over the years. He could never touch or harm those.
One night I found myself in a dream where I was at an old childhood home. But I wasn’t a child, I was an adult, and I was with my abusive partner. We had people around and my partner was giving me orders. I felt tired and old.
I slowly walked up the stairs to our bedroom for a bit of peace. As I walked into the room, a voice told me to look in the mirror. I immediately replied saying there was no point, this was a dream, and you never see your face in dreams. (I regularly have lucid dreams). But I felt an urge to take a look.
My heart was thudding as I made my way to an old-fashioned dressing table with a triple mirror on it. One where you could see all angles of your face. I told myself, “I’m dreaming, I’m not going to see anything”, but I still felt nervous.
As I sat down at the dressing table my eyes found their way to the mirror. And there it was, my reflection. But it wasn’t a face I was familiar with. This face was old and haggard. My wrinkled face, dead eyes, and straggly hair looked almost witch-like.
I knew immediately that this depleted, worn-out face was to be my fate if I stayed in the situation I was in.
Messages from my body
When I met my ex, I was fit and healthy. I looked after myself by eating healthy foods and exercising regularly. I never smoked and had never tried any drugs. I rarely got sick.
But over the years, the physical and emotional abuse started to take a toll on my body.
The aches and pains of physical abuse started taking longer to heal. It got to the point where I believed my body would not be able to take another beating. That’s when my body’s self-preservation mode completely took over. I became a puppet, a slave to survival. Saying and doing everything I could to prevent any more physical harm.
I lived in a high-stress state. Cortisol rampaging through my body every day as those eggshells I was walking on became more and more painful.
I noticed my heart speeding up uncontrollably at random moments, and every time he would emotionally abuse me a flash of pain would course through my heart.
I started to suffer from regular heart palpitations, and I felt like my heart had switched off. Most of the time I was devoid of all emotions.
The weight started to creep on. A physical reflection of the burden I was carrying.
My body was telling me that I could not continue with this eternal struggle I had found myself in.
Messages from my son
These were not verbal messages, they were small things that silently spoke to my self-preservation mechanism, telling me that the person I loved most in this world, the person I needed to protect, was hurting.
The physical violence towards me had calmed down. There was still the odd moment, but I was no longer subjected to lengthy beatings. I would reassure myself that our son was not being affected by what was going on.
Until we were on a flight to Mexico. It was a long flight, especially for a five-year-old. He started fidgeting and I asked if he needed to go to the toilet. His dad took him, and they seemed to be gone a long time. When they returned to their seats, my partner looked angry, and my son had a flushed cheek.
As my son sat in his seat, he placed his head in my lap. He was visibly upset. His dad told me that they hadn’t managed to get to the toilet in time and my son had dribbled in his pants. Nothing major, but to his dad this was unacceptable.
My heart broke as I considered the likelihood that he had smacked my son across the face whilst in that small toilet cubicle on the plane.
I started to question my belief that my partner would never hurt his son.
More than a year later, I came home to find my son with a big bruise on his forehead, and his dad pacing around the living room. He started to shout at me, saying that my son had tripped as he was coming through the front door. My gut immediately fired into action telling me something about this situation didn’t feel right.
Later that evening, when I was alone with my son he said, “You know Dad did this don’t you?”. I felt sick to my stomach but tried to stay calm.
The next day, when I dropped my son off at school, I asked to speak to his teacher. I told her that my son had told me his dad had caused the large bump on his head. Her reaction was to tell me that kids blame their parents all the time. Had I been wrong to believe that my partner would hurt his son? Apparently so.
I also started to notice that my son was thinking before he spoke. In particular, before he answered his dad. And especially when he knew his dad was in a bad mood. I stood there one day watching his little face as he tried to come up with an answer that he knew his dad would approve of. I could almost see his young brain whirring around trying to assess what his dad wanted him to say.
I knew this wasn’t normal for a six-year-old.
There were times when my partner would be shouting at me, or angrily stomping around and my son would sit on my lap. Forming a barrier between me and his dad. Protecting me when I should have been the one who was protecting him.
The final message
The one that tipped my fear of leaving into a fear of staying was a clear, verbal message from my son.
We were in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and he said, “I’m scared of Dad sometimes, especially when he goes crazy”. This message came shortly after the bump on the head incident. There was no uncertainty, and no one could tell me that this was a normal comment for a child to make about their parent.
I felt something inside of me fire up, and I knew I had to take action. We had to leave.
We left the week after my son made that comment, and we never went back.
Only now, many years later do I realise exactly how much danger I was in, and how dangerous it would have been to stay.
At the time, I truly believed I would be putting my life at risk if I were to leave and take our son. His dad would often tell me he would kill me if I ever left with our son. The physical violence over the years, the twisted ways he would threaten me, and even just the look in his eyes made these threats a dangerous reality.
I also thought my son would be taken away from me. If people (social services for example) were to find out exactly what had been going on, and the abusive environment I had kept in him for seven years, I was scared I would lose him. I wouldn’t have been able to live with that.
I did not act upon the messages immediately. But they built up into a ball of fear that finally gave me the strength to take action and remove myself (and my son) for good. They made me realise that our lives were in far more danger if we stayed than if we left.
We leave when the fear of staying becomes greater than the fear of leaving
Only then will our self-preservation mechanism allow us to remove ourselves from the situation.
Leaving an abusive relationship is extremely dangerous and takes super-human strength, at a time when we are suffering from low self-confidence and living in a constant state of stress and fear. We are tired, depleted, and can’t think straight. We feel weak and powerless.
But as soon as the fear flips, we find the strength.
I didn’t know what was on the other side of my dash for freedom, but all of a sudden, I knew there was no other option. The uncertainty wasn’t important, the impracticalities of restarting our lives didn’t matter. All I could think of was to run. Strength flooded through me as I made the necessary arrangements to leave as safely as possible.
And as I sit here, happily married and enjoying a wonderful relationship with my son, (who is now 25 years old), I am proud of us both for the lives we have built. Lives free from abuse and full of love and respect.
We broke the cycle.