Leaving an Abusive Relationship

If you disregarded all the red flags and find yourself in an abusive relationship, and feel trapped, it may be the time to make a conscious decision to leave. Most victims leave two or three times before they actually get away.

Making the decision to leave:

• If these things are going on, you need to take the steps to keep you and children, if you have any, safe.
• You are hoping that the abusive partner will change, change will only happen it the abuser wants to change, most don’t. They have quite the power trip, and your opinion doesn’t matter.
• You still love him and you think your love can fix him, your love hasn’t fixed him thus far, and if you stay you are only enabling him and compounding the problem.
• He promises to change, abusers often beg and plead for another chance, or threaten to commit suicide if you leave. They may seem sincere, but their only agenda is to make you stay. If you want to give in because you’re afraid they will hurt themselves, chances are they won’t, they are trying to get your attention. If you forgive them, then, later on, they will question why you are upset, after all, you forgave them last time.

• He minimizes the abuse, you weren't hurt that bad, you’re always exaggerating things to make him look like the bad guy.
• You didn’t have to go to the hospital, this is a big one, I can’t remember how many times we were in court when the attorney would ask the victim if her partner had hurt her, ‘well, I didn’t have to go to the hospital!’
• He claims that you are actually the abusive one.
• He says he cannot change unless you stay to help and support him.
• He blames others for his behavior.
• He says you owe him another chance, after all the stress you’ve put him through.
• He tries to pressure you to make a baby to fix the situation.
• He tries to get sympathy from your friends and family members.
• He pressures you to make decisions.
• If you do go to a doctor or the hospital he stays with you all the time so no one can dispute his story of what happened.

• Start to squirrel money away somewhere safe, where he won’t find it.
• Get your identification cards, or copies of them and put them the same place.
• Turn off the GPS tracker on your phone.
• If you’ll have your children, have their identification, as well.
• Call a domestic shelter from a friend’s phone, in case he’s monitoring yours.
• Get a second phone and load it with police and shelter numbers, as well as the numbers of trusted family members.
• Change all your user codes and passwords.

• Cancel all bank and credit cards, if you do open new ones use a different bank and a p.o. box address.
• Take a new route to work or the sitters.
• Change the times you leave your work, or get someone to walk you out.
• Change where you shop and the times you go there.
• Keep a cell phone, fully charged, on you all the time.

But be careful.

Leaving is the most dangerous time, this is why you need to be ready at a moment’s notice. 75 percent of domestic violence murders happen during separation and there is an increased chance of domestic violence injury in the first two years after separation.