Domestic Violence isn't just about physical violence

What did I think domestic violence was? Like many people, when I used to think about domestic violence I thought about physical violence. To me they were different phrases to describe the same thing. Domestic violence was the bruises on my mother’s cheeks, the split lips, the black eyes and the numerous broken noses. Domestic violence was my father’s complete dominance over every aspect of my mother’s life, from their shared finances, to how their children should be raised, to where she went or how long she was gone. But primarily, to me, domestic violence was blood, and tears, and kindly police officers trying to convince my mother to press charges after they had hauled my father off to jail to sober up in the cells. I didn’t realise at the time that domestic violence is so much more than that.

I’ve only come to admit to myself very recently that I am a victim of domestic violence. I’ll tell you that was not an easy thing for me to do. After all, I am a strong, intelligent, independent woman. I have a university degree, I’ve always had good jobs, I owned my own house even before I meet my husband. If you ask most people I’m a strong feisty woman with a sharp tongue and a wit to match. And that’s the problem. Because very few people that know me, without being aware of what was occurring in my marriage, could believe me to be a victim of domestic violence. No one wants to admit that domestic violence can happen to anyone. We want to believe it only happens to the weak, the submissive, the poor. I thought it happened to my mother because she was weak and stupid and I blamed her for not protecting her children from the horrors of growing up in a house filled with violence. I blamed her. Don’t get me wrong, I hated my dad, but she was my mother and she should have protected me. Should of she? Yes. Could of she? I’m not so sure anymore.

I read somewhere a little while ago that when your looking for a relationship, you find comfort in what you know, even if what you know is painful. I suppose it’s a nicer way of saying I married my father, but ultimately it amounts to the same thing. For me, I’m not sure it was comfort that I found, although maybe that is true. I think because of what I experienced as a child, and what I learnt about relationships from my parents, I couldn’t see the red flags like a normal person would. To me aggression and violence were normal. Within the first month of dating my husband, I helped him into bed after a house party and tried to help him take his shirt off so he could go to sleep. He was wasted and he had just fallen up the stairs outside the house trying to make his way in. As I was pulling up his shirt. he ripped the shirt out of my hands and screamed at me ‘Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t fucking touch me! Get the fuck out!’. I was shocked, because I hadn’t seen it coming. So I left. I went home. The next morning he came straight over and apologised and said he had no idea what he had done, he was extremely drunk. When I told him he seemed shocked that he would do such a thing and promised it would never happen again.

Of course nothing else did happen for a long time. Not that I noticed anyway. The behaviours are far too subtle for that, initially. Perpetrators of domestic violence aren’t stupid, they know they have to have you cornered before the real fun can begin. They know they need you in a position where you must make the impossible decision between tolerating the behaviour or giving up your entire life. He proposed after only 5 months of dating. I said yes.

The first real moment I knew I was in trouble was a few months after our engagement party. We had been together for less then a year at this stage. He had moved into my house and had slowly but surely managed to completely ingrain himself in every aspect of my life. We went to a friend of the families wedding, his side of course. It was five hours from home, so we were going to be staying the night in a cabin. We went to the wedding and I was having a great time chatting to his mother and sisters and drinking champagne. Towards the end of the night I was a little tipsy and wanted to dance; he refused to dance with me because it didn’t sit with his masculine persona. So I danced by myself for a bit trying to entice him onto the dance floor. Like I said, I was having a great time. Then they announced they were going to throw the bouquet. I wasn’t married yet so when they announce that all the single ladies should get up on stage I did. I didn’t think it was a big deal. But he did.

To him I was making an announcement to the whole world that I was single and available. I could never have imagined what an innocent act like that could have produced. I hadn’t talked to any men. I hadn’t flirted with anyone. Hell, I hadn’t even looked in another man’s direction. I was in love after all. He was what I wanted so why would I?

He left the reception, drove to our cabin, packed all our belongings up and put them in the car. He then drove back to the reception and skidded in the dirt driveway he came in so fast. He got out of the car and screamed, with all the intimidation he could muster, ‘Get her in the fucking car now!’. Which they did. Once we started driving home, he screamed at me for so long I can’t even remember, using every obscenity he could think of, and I honestly thought in that moment I was going to die. I was crying hysterically. I turned my phone on silent and had the sense to secretly message a friend of mine that I knew I could trust and arranged to go to her house. He drove the whole way back at high speed and I held on to my phone for dear life as I was sure that any moment my life would be over. At some point he saw me send a message and realised what I had done and that’s when his whole demeanour changed. He knew he had gone to far. I told him I was going to stay at a friend’s house but by the time we got home he had assured me I was safe and convinced me to come home. He slept on the couch and I took off my engagement ring. The next day he promised that he would never do that again. I knew I had to make a choice. I knew it was a fork in the road moment. I remember thinking to myself, am I just doing what my mother always does, accepting false promises and apologies and knowing full well it will happen again? But the other side of me said, this has only happened once, how will I know he can’t change if I don’t give him a chance? I asked him to seek help with his anger. He refused. That should have been my cue, but it wasn’t.

It took me five years to leave. Four years of marriage, a house, a business, a life. I can only thank god that we never had any children together. But in that five years I became an empty shell of myself. I lost all my self- confidence. I start to shut down every time he raised his voice or started an argument. I was constantly trying to think of how I could be better; a better wife, a better partner, a better person, just so I could find a way to make him happy. I couldn’t understand how, even though I tried so hard, I still managed to do everything wrong by him. Everything was my fault. According to him, he was never responsible for any argument we had, and he would never apologise for anything. So I started apologising for everything. I took all the criticism to heart and started doubting myself constantly.

Then he started to rewrite history. Anything that happened that could remotely be construed as resulting from his aggression or temper, suddenly happened in completely different ways to what I recollected. I started to think that my once sharp mind was slipping. Nothing he said that happened, from the night before to months before, seemed to fit with my memory of it. If we went to a wedding or an event and I had a few drinks, even though it seemed like we were having a great time and everything was fine, the next day he would quietly remind me of all these horrible things I’d said and done. Things I had no recollection of. He would blame my inability to recollect it properly on my drinking. I desperately wanted to ask the people around me if those things had actually happened, but he made me feel so ashamed I didn’t want to embarrass myself any further. So again, I tried to change myself. I stopped drinking wine (because he told me I was crazy when I drank wine). I stopped going to social events to avoid embarrassing myself. I stopped seeing my friends.

It was only after one night, when he had been drinking and I hadn’t, that I finally realised what he had been doing. That night he got so drunk he refused to come home so I went home by myself and left him drinking with friends. I called him once I got home and again tried to convince him to come home because he was well past intoxication. He again refused, and told me to leave him alone. So I did. I went to bed. The next day, he accused me of refusing to pick him up. He said he called me and asked me to pick him up and I wouldn’t. This time though, I had physical evidence of what had transpired, because the phone call log on my phone clearly showed I had called him, not the other way around. I showed him this but still to this day he refuses to accept that version of events, and still claims he called me. He was so angry the next day that he punched a door so hard it broke his hand. I took him to the hospital and then had to go and run our business by myself.

After that I started looking at everything he was doing in a completely different light. I started standing up for myself again. I stopped taking responsibility for everything that happened. I started to pay attention to all the little manipulations and put downs and seeing them for what they really were, just a method of controlling me, and not just my actions, but how I thought about myself. And that’s when he started to lose control.

It took a few more months, and quite a few more serious incidents where my physical well being was threatened, before things finally disintegrated so much that it was beyond repair. I finally accepted he would not change and that I deserved better than him. It took me a further 9 months of deep reflection on his behaviour and my own psychology to understand what had actually occurred during our marriage, how it had occurred and why. I now understand it for what it really was; a domestic violence situation where my husband sought to control me through gaslighting, intimidation, bullying and verbal abuse. And the sad part is, he didn’t have to do any of that. I was completely devoted to him.