Living with domestic abuse is NOT a choice!

I lived with domestic abuse for 20 years. I married my husband at the age of 19 and left him just before our 20-year wedding anniversary.

One of the things which always stumped me was the question people would ask – either while I was still married or afterwards – “Why did you stay”?

The question is always asked with confusion and as though I actually had, or had made, a choice!

People need to understand that in that kind of situation, you really don’t have a choice. If you did and you could so easily make that choice, then you are probably not being mentally abused. I think if my husband had started beating me within the first few months of our marriage and had left a few bruises or broken bones, I might have been able to leave more easily. And please note I only say MIGHT – because I have not been in that situation, and I can easily imagine that physical abuse can also be part of mental abuse. My husband did hit me a couple of times, and he definitely used force on many occasions and especially during arguments. However, on the whole I suffered more mental abuse than physical abuse and now, more than 15 years later, I still have nightmares about being re-married to my abuser/husband and I can very easily enter into bouts of depression if I think too much or remember the details too much!

In this day and age, mental abuse, and the signs that it is happening, are much more well known and understood. There are many horror stories that crop up in the news these days and a lot of well-known people have told their stories, which has helped to highlight the issues and how it can happen to anyone: rich or poor, well known or obscure, old or young, male or female.

I feel that I am ready to write my story down, and this is a place I can do that without my family (children/grandchildren) reading it, but where HOPEFULLY I can help anyone who is going through this kind of abuse. If I can help just one person to have some hope and belief that there IS a way out of this kind of relationship, then I will have done what I hope to do. I know when I was going through it, I used to go into book shops and look through all the titles to see if there was anything that had been written that might help me understand why I was still in the relationship and how I could escape it.

In the next release I will start at the beginning of the story and get into how it all happened and what I wish I had known all of those years ago!