Domestic violence:-It all Starts at Home

I have put the kids to bed and I’m catching up on some work by the computer. I have a busy weekend it’s a friend’s Hen party and while I’m really looking forward to it there is an underlying nausea that it is causing, maybe it will be okay but maybe it won’t. This feeling of uncertainty is how I live my life.  I hear the car on the gravel, the engine stops, footsteps, and then the door opens.

A man enters my home, he glares at me but remains silent I know this is not good and my heart is racing. He kicks the chair away from underneath me and I land on the floor he is calling me a slag, a slut and a whore. I’m starting to panic I can’t run or escape my children are upstairs, I can’t leave them and I don’t know what to do. I get up and try to find somewhere safe, I’m trying to keep him away putting furniture between us but he is following me and I’m running out of places to hide, He is yelling but I don’t hear what he says. He is getting closer and closer and then he has me, he puts his hands around my neck and he starts to strangle and shake me.  The terror is running through me, all I can hear is the thumping of my heart, I don’t know how violent this will get and I want it to stop. He throws me to the floor with such force I have hit my head before I even realise I’m falling, I hear the dull thump as my skull hits the tiled floor, I’m dazed, I want to yell for help, but the only ears are that of my children and I’m scared what will happen to them, and to me if I shout. He has the mop and he is hitting me across the stomach and kicking me in the legs, he is yelling that he hates me and that he wants to throw boiling oil in my face. I manage to get up but as I did it he found a knife, and now he has me by the hair he is banging my head off the wall, my eyes are closed, I can’t look, he is brandishing a knife, and he is telling me that he wants to kill me. 

I would like to be able to tell you this man was a stranger, that he can hurt me because he does not know me,  that he can behave so appallingly because he wants to steal from me, but I can’t because this man is my husband. I can say however this was the last night I ever spent with him in that house, and that my life is happier now and moving on. I don’t live with a sense of uncertainty anymore, and the people I have to thank for that are the women’s refuge.

As a teenager I used to read articles in magazines and I could not understand why a woman would stay with a man who hits or abuses her. Once you have been on the other side of the fence you realise that the issue is far more complex, and it takes a lot of strength and inner determination to leave that man. Refuge has taught me that the violence only comes as a reaction, and that domestic abuse runs on a much deeper level than simply the physical violence. It is fundamentally about control and what lengths a man will go to in order to maintain it. Violence occurs when they feel that they are losing control over a partner. It has been a hard journey but refuge have helped me every step of the way while I have discovered  what it is in me that makes me stay in that relationship.

I knew his behaviour towards me was cruel and demeaning, I used to justify it by being convinced that deep down he really loved and cared for me; it is only in retrospect that I realise that all of this was a pattern of manipulation. Its starts with loads of love and affection that draws you in, just when you think that you are getting close and things are going well he starts being cruel and nasty and he keeps it going till you are just on the edge of the boundary then draws you back in with affection and attention, this pattern goes on and on pushing that boundary a little further each time making you jump more and more through the hoops, there is no love, only control and manipulation. It’s a feeling of being stuck on the top of a cliff they have got hold of you pulling you up and just when you think you are safe they start to drop you, your slipping, thinking you are going to fall, there is a feeling of fear and sheer terror, and suddenly just when you are about to let go they have got you again pulling you back to safety and you are so grateful to feel safe again you will do anything in your power to keep that feeling so you hang on tighter than before. When eventually I plucked the courage to actually look down I realised that I wasn’t on that cliff top, clinging on for dear life, terrified that I was going to fall, when I opened my eyes the ground was only a foot away and all I needed to do was let go and put one foot on the floor. 

This story started at the end but if I go to the beginning it was very different I was young (19) and very naive.  At that point he was truly charming and appeared to be totally in love with me, I could not believe my luck, there were no arguments until I had already committed and given up so much that there was no going back. There were rumours that he had been violent towards his last girlfriend, and it was not that I didn’t believe it, it was that I believed  (a)  he wouldn’t treat me like that because I was different and (b) that if he did hit me I would leave .  Little did I realise I was setting the bar so high, I did not understand that emotional and psychological abuse could even exist let alone the effect that it could have on you, he didn’t need to beat me to control and terrify me, but it took him to really hurt me before I could find the strength to leave. I had to be more frightened of staying than I was of leaving, when you  feel that you may as well be dead, as to stay in the marriage any longer, and I would rather he killed me for trying to leave than to remain there in such unhappiness.

In the early years I think I just accepted the relationship he was ‘older and wiser’ and I did what he said. I was easy to manipulate and retrospectively that is what he saw in me, if I had been challenging and far less submissive he would never have wanted me.  Friends and family say we were happiest then , but I think I was always pretty unhappy I just hid it and tolerated it more, hoping that it would get better,  thinking that things like getting married, having children, moving home would make it stop. It took a long time to realise that the only way to make it stop was to leave.  Walking eggshells becomes such a way of life that you can’t remember at time when you didn’t live like that.  Always waiting but never knowing the next time he would kick off. He didn’t use much physical violence but the threat was always there, he terrified me by smashing things and not just a cup he would pull doors off hinges, punch panes of glass, throw lamps that were on and plugged in on the floor with insults and arguments where there was no way out, damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. 

After 10 years of marriage you have been slowly eroded, your confidence and self esteem have been crippled you have lost control of you and your life so much so, that you don’t even know who you are anymore. It has happened so slowly like ivy creeping through a forest that by the time you realise, it’s too late. It has been a long hard battle to regain my life I have needed the support of my true friends and family, but friends and family don’t really understand this fully and that is why refuge is so important, their help and support has been fantastic providing me with the drive and encouragement to move forward, without which I doubt I would have maintained the control to keep away.  They have helped me to deal with each and every situation as it has arisen, at first I didn’t know how to handle anything he did. I needed their help to understand the lengths that he would go to in order to get me back and the strength that I would need to resist all the promises of change that are not real, and even though I knew from experience that nothing changes, you always want to believe that it might. Refuge arranged for me to see a counsellor to overcome the impact of the emotional abuse, nobody can see the scars that emotional abuse leave,  it’s like deep caverns that run through you, that you are desperately trying to fill but don’t know what to fill it with, and because people can’t see it, they don’t realise how much pain they cause .It’s amazing to know that there is somebody on the end of a phone day or night to help you deal with what you are going through and I believe you cannot put a price on that support. It would be a tragedy for refuges to lose their funding, their work is amazing in looking after people who have reached the lowest possible point but want to change their lives for the better. Their support is an emotional bolster mixed with good practical assistance to help you start again.  A woman at the door of a refuge has just made the strongest most difficult decision of her life. 

Domestic violence is a huge problem in the UK one in four women will suffer at the hands of a partner, One woman is killed by a partner or ex partner each week, every six seconds a woman is assaulted in her own home, every minute of the day police deal with a call relating to domestic violence, yet only 35% of domestic violence is even reported to the police. This is a huge problem that needs highlighting. Refuges need to keep their funding battered women are not like fluffy animals that pull on peoples heart strings so you can run them like a charity knowing that people will donate. We know this because there are 2000 cat and dog homes in the UK and only 200 woman’s refuges. The general public feel uncomfortable talking about it, they want to believe that it only happens to certain people, this in turn makes it so hard to come forward and tell somebody about it. We need to admit that domestic violence is so prevalent and the only shame is on the man that you think loves and cherishes you, but will actually beat you so hard that you think you may die. The only way we can change this is by accepting that it happens, and then by not tolerating it in our society and in our homes           

As for me I’m still on my journey but life is getting better and I m feeling stronger. I don’t sit in my home feeling sick with fear anymore; I have learnt to laugh again with my children, and to have fun. Sometimes it’s lonely but not as lonely as my marriage. I’m doing all the lovely things that I have not done in years and it feels good. For this I have to give my thanks to refuge and its committed fantastic team of staff! x