The Silent Pain of Domestic Abuse
Breaking free from a partner who manipulates and controls you
A couple of months after I got married, I went to a party sans my new husband. I arrived home in a great mood, happy to have reconnected with old high school friends. “Old” being relative, as we’d just graduated the year before.
When I opened the door of our apartment, my stomach dropped. My portable stereo lay in pieces on the floor, silver plastic bits littering the bland beige carpet. There was also a broken cassette tape, its shiny black guts ripped out and strewn all over the place.
Audio cassettes were nearly extinct at that point. I’d had this one since I was nine. You know the song, “Return to Pooh Corner,” by Kenny Loggins? That was the one. I was a music lover and acoustic guitar player now, largely thanks to Mr. Loggins.
I followed the mess and found my husband in the bedroom. I looked at him with wide eyes, dumbfounded.
He explained that he’d thrown my childhood stereo against the wall and then snapped the cassette in two because I smoked a cigarette at the party.
Earlier that night, I texted him about trying a cigarette for the first time. I was happy to report that I hated it. I was just 19 and curious, but my husband didn’t care. I made the decision to smoke without his permission.
As his wife, my body was his body. And if I rebelled, he made life miserable.
No one else could love me like him
Right before our wedding, I tried to talk him out of it.
I had this big epiphany during one of my walks in the park, and I drove over to the little apartment for which we’d just signed a lease. I was still living with my parents, waiting until after the wedding to have sex or cohabitate.
I put my speech together on the drive over. I sat in the dark parking lot, reciting it in my head before going inside.
A mountain of gifts from the bridal shower climbed toward the ceiling in the tiny kitchen. Small appliances and bath towels and cutlery.
When I asked him if we could postpone the wedding until I finished college, he immediately rejected the idea.
We argued for hours. I was afraid I’d get pregnant before I graduated. I’d converted to his family’s religion/cult and was taught I’d go to hell for using birth control.
“If we don’t get married now, we’re never getting married,” he said.
To this day, I’m not sure why I gave in to his ultimatum. He had me convinced that no one could love me like he did. I loved him back and I didn’t want to lose him forever, even if I wasn’t ready for marriage.
I also remember feeling like I wasn’t worth the wait. He wanted me now or never.
I was simultaneously smothered by his love, yet not worthy of all of it.
He could argue circles around me and manipulate my feelings from the day we met, and it had always baffled me.
I married him a week later.
A treasured childhood keepsake bashed against the wall was a picnic in the park compared to the rest of our relationship.
I didn’t want to disrespect the “real” victims of domestic abuse
I experienced emotional and psychological pain throughout most of my first marriage. But I was never comfortable labeling it as “abuse.” That was a powerful word, reserved for people who were being beaten or raped regularly. Or being held prisoner in their own home.
For some reason, I believed that accepting my abuse meant lessening what other people were going through. My relationship wasn’t that bad, comparatively.
I didn’t learn how wrong I was until after I left.
It’s amazing how well your brain can process when you give yourself room to breathe. When you’re not pressured every night for bad sex or feel controlled when it comes to major life decisions like your education, career, or how many kids you have to have.
He never hit me. But he fought dirty during our endless arguments with name-calling or threatening. He could twist what I said and convince me I was being unreasonable or dramatic. He made me feel crazy for my emotions instead of validating me.
Back then, my husband tried to convince me that calling me a “fucking retarded bitch” wasn’t abuse. That forcing sex on me when he was drunk, while I was crying and begging him to stop, wasn’t abuse.
He tried to convince me that leaving the house with our son to avoid a fight would get me arrested. When he called the cops on me after coming home from the bar one night to find us gone, one of them asked to speak to me on the phone.
The officer said something to the tune of, “Your husband is drunk, and no, you can’t get in trouble for being at your dad’s with your son. I suggest staying there.”
Having an authority figure on my side was eye-opening. For once, I started to think that maybe I wasn’t crazy.
Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a healthy marriage.
Threats, coercion, and control
Four years in, I started bringing up divorce during our fights. He told me he’d spoken to a lawyer, and he could take custody of our son away from me based on my mental health history and the medications I took daily for anxiety.
Somehow, I believed him.
I was our baby’s primary caregiver. I handled all the doctor’s appointments, play dates, baths, feedings, diapers — everything. I loved it, and I never put my child in harm’s way due to my anxiety disorder. I also worked part-time in the evenings to help with household bills and managed to balance that with new motherhood.
But my husband had me convinced for a good long while that I was too crazy to be a single mom. He used a number of other coercive techniques on top of that.
If I left, I’d go to hell, he told me. And of course, I’d make him go to hell too. His family would ostracize him and he’d never be allowed to marry again. He’d go to jail for not paying child support. He’d die all alone. He’d be damned for all time. All because of me.
(He’s since re-married and had two other kids with his wife, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz.)
My husband fed on my empathy and guilt and lack of self-esteem like a narcissistic vampire. The closer I got to leaving him — the more his abuse reared its ugly head.
He hid my laptop as punishment over some fight I can’t recall. Material things are replaceable, but I had years of work stored on that thing. My writing was a precious outlet for me that he wasn’t supposed to be able to take.
He eventually gave it back. But there were other desperate attempts to keep me.
He hid my car keys and cell phone one day so I couldn’t get to work. His hope, I guess, was that I’d be a no-call/no-show — the most common fireable offense in the restaurant industry. I understand now that he wanted to cut off any source of income I had.
I retrieved a rusty old bike from our shed and rode it across town to work, catching shit from my manager for being late.
When my gynecologist called me after a routine exam and said I had chlamydia, that was the moment.
It truly is daunting — feeling happy after learning you got an STI from your husband when he’s the only one you ever slept with. But it gave me the push I needed to break it off for good. No one could fault me for not wanting to put my physical health at risk, right? It seems so silly now.
Not long after that phone call, I took my son and went to my sister’s, where I stayed for six months. I worked at a daycare and took my son with me to work. I saved up to rent my own place. At 22, I was finally free of him.
All abuse is real abuse
It took me a long time to figure out I was in an abusive relationship. Even when I suspected it, another voice would pipe up, telling me that I was being over the top.
Great manipulators have a knack for convincing their significant others that this sort of behavior is not abuse. And someone with low self-esteem and little romantic experience — like me at that time — is susceptible to believing it.
My first marriage was a deep and dark journey that marked my life forever. But the lessons I take with me from that experience are invaluable.
If you’re trapped in an abusive relationship, you can visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline to call, live chat, or text with an advocate who can help.
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