It's been a little over a year now since I finally left him for good.
We were married. I still struggle in coming to terms with accepting everything he did. In the last couple months of our relationship-- after cheating problems, and my trying to leave once before-- during intimacy one day, he just randomly began to slap me across the face. From that time on, he kept doing it whenever we were intimate. He noticed and verbally acknowledged once that I didn't like it. He stopped that once, and then the next time continued. I began flinching even outside of intimacy. He acted like it was no big deal. This happened, and yet I struggle to say that he ever physically abused me.
He attempted to be intimate with me once, and when I gently turned him down because I was very tired, he ended up "jokingly" tickling me, chasing me when I started to try to get away, blocking all exits. While still laughing, he pinned me to the ground, took my underwear off, and had intercourse with me. I was so confused. Afterwards he behaved like normal and went to clean up in the bathroom, and I just laid there on the bed struggling to comprehend what had happened. I assumed it was a miscommunication. This happened, and yet I struggle to say he ever raped me.
I could barely leave home. He didn't want me driving anywhere out of our small town due to gas, and even within it didn't want me going many places. When he rode with me, he kept track of how many stop signs I hit and told me I was wearing out the brakes. There was a set amount I could spend on groceries per week. When we went to the store, if I wanted something, he often would tell me I didn't need it, and then buy himself something. I was so paranoid about anything being out or unclean when he came home because he got so mad about my not keeping everything clean or cooking enough. One time he became very angry at me and lectured me until I was visibly shaking and sobbing and locked myself in the bathroom-- all because I washed some mushrooms the "wrong" way. Yet I struggle to say he was controlling.
I left him twice. The first time he had an entire out of control meltdown, running from room to room and sobbing and shouting while our little son tried to cling to his leg. He didn't want me to leave the house when I tried. I had to put our son in the other room to shield him from what was happening, and I asked him to stop, but he kept going. He got on the floor and grabbed my ankles and said everything he could think of. He switched, moving from things like "Please no!" To "To think I could lose everything for doing so little" and "Did you ever even love me?" He contacted all of my friends and family and started stalking behaviors. He persisted so that within a couple days I'd basically agreed to try again.
The second time, it ultimately evolved from all kinds of tactics, phone calls, messages, him trying to use our son in different ways, etc to him physically stalking me. He started driving by my apartment back and forth every night. Sometimes when I drove in town I'd catch sight of his car and take a couple weird turns to lose him and he would keep popping up, making it clear he was following me. When I eventually ended up seeing someone else, we got video footage of him pulling up to the other person's car in the middle of the night in a private property parking lot and taking photos of the license plate. There were multiple other videos of him pulling up late at night. I went camping in a no- internet area in the summer and my family believes they saw his car pull up one morning.
I was terrified. I had nightmares most nights about him breaking in and attacking or killing me. I was scared to go anywhere alone. I was scared to walk to my car at night. Finally, after one night when he showed up at my apartment unexpectedly with our son after midnight and attempted to talk me into reconciling and made such ominous comments ("I've been hearing rumors..." "You know I'd do anything for you, right?") that I genuinely feared I was about to be harmed, I reported his behavior to police. I filed to get a stalking order.
So you might be able to imagine how much it physically hurt me to go before a judge and tell them what he had been doing, and to have the judge tell me that it was "creepy, sure, but not threatening" and that it sounded like "he was just having a hard time getting over me". They did nothing. Not a fucking thing. I dissociated so hard as I walked out of that courthouse that I had suicidal thoughts and wasn't myself for weeks.
It's been over a year, and I am still facing the repercussions. I have so much anger inside that this has all been allowed to happen to me and so many other people with no real consequences. To have someone that could have helped me say that it was just him having a hard time getting over me as I FEARED FOR MY LIFE on a daily basis is possibly one of the most traumatic parts of leaving.
I am still so angry and hurt and there is nowhere for it to go. Yet I still have a hard time saying I was abused.
How many of you have stories like this? How many of you went unheard, unreported, or were treated like you were overreacting? If it's happened to you, if you're reading this, I'm so sorry. It is not your fault, and it never was. It is not fair that this is allowed to go unnoticed. You deserve to be heard.