My Story – Kristen

I met my husband when I was in a relationship with another man. They worked together and were friends and we’d all hang out together. He became a close friend to me and made me feel special. He would tell me how I deserved more. I got pregnant. I had always wanted to be a mom so I was thrilled but also devastated that I was having a child with my bf at the time as we were fighting a lot over his drug and alcohol abuse and not wanting to live the life he did not want to give up living. My husband gave me the courage to leave when my son was 6 months old. We dated for a year. He got offered to move back to his home town an hour and a half away and asked me to move in with him there so I put in to transfer with my job and moved in with him. The first red flag that should’ve made me run but I didn’t. I was driving to his home town, our son in the backseat with a teething biscuit and my husband in the front seat next to me. My son started choking and my husband said,
“you’re so stupid”. I was on the freeway so couldn’t pull over right away but I did as soon as I could and made sure my baby was ok. I was really upset he had said that to him but continued in the relationship because I believed he was so good to him. I got pregnant 3 months after moving in with him and he wouldn’t come home until late at night or middle of the night. He would constantly go out drinking after work and get mad at me for getting upset about it. I felt very alone in a new city, pregnant, then with a new born and my husband rarely home. We married a year after our son was born. When he was about two and having one of his many temper tantrums, my husband was downstairs and we were upstairs but he got upset at the what he thought he heard and thought I was hurting our son so he came in and tackled me hitting me on the forehead. I called the police and he was arrested for dv. I still remember that officer telling me they don’t change and it will always get worse if I don’t leave. I made excuses though and felt like he didn’t mean to. It was all just a misunderstanding of the stressful mess of having a child that threw a lot of tantrums. He got out of jail that night, I didn’t press charges so when he went to court they just made him take anger management. He said he didn’t belong there with those people. He constantly threw that incident in my face and blamed me for it, for years. About a year later I got pregnant again with a baby girl. Things were really good for awhile. Then when my daughter was about 3 years old, I got pregnant again. He was drinking a lot again. He was drinking whiskey a lot and it made him get really nasty sometimes. One night he got in my face and when I asked him to stop and said the baby, he mocked me saying “the baby, the baby”. So I just started staying away from him as much as possible and trying to ignore him when he was drinking. Another night of him drinking whiskey again and getting really nasty towards me, I was sitting on the couch, trying to just watch tv and ignore him and he rushed over and slapped me so hard that I immediately knew something was wrong. Everything started ringing super loud. I screamed and cried and he took off. I called his mom to come over because I was terrified the kids were going to wake up and see me like that and I knew if I called my mom she’d have him arrested. He had ruptured my ear drum and given me a black eye. I had to go to an ent dr who asked me what happened. I lied and told him a storage bin had fallen on me. He looked at me and said, he’d only ever seen that he’d only ever seen that kind of injury from a slap. I was so embarrassed. Embarrassed to be in this situation of being pregnant with my 4th child and being married to an abuser. I later lost that baby boy. He wanted to keep trying but it was so devastating for me. His parents paid for the burial and we were mourning together so things felt good again. We were trauma bonded. I got pregnant again and lost another baby and then got pregnant with our youngest child. Things were good again. He would lose his temper at times though. He got abusive with our older boys. When our son was in 2nd grade, he pushed him down so hard on the floor he gave him a black eye. He told me he didn’t want to go to school because he “looked damaged”. That broke my heart. I’m ashamed I didn’t leave then. I thought I could protect them better if I stayed in the marriage. I was scared to ever leave them alone with him because something always seemed to happen when I did. There were other incidents where he lost his temper and would sweep everything off the kitchen counter breaking glass everywhere, and picking up all 3 of my instant pots and smashing them on the kitchen floor, ripping my phone out of my hands and throwing it at the wall and smashing it. I would leave it make him leave but always allow him to come back home. When COVID hit in 2020, things were really good at first because he was home more than he’d ever been, spending more time with me and the kids. But by the fall he was deep in addiction again. He had another incident losing his temper, destroying the kitchen so I took the kids and left, he agreed to leave if I came back so I did. I did eventually let him come back home but he used this happening over his 40th birthday as an excuse to start having sex with someone else right before Christmas and our youngest’s birthday. I didn’t find out until about a week or so after Valentine’s Day but I suspected because he was coming home really late and leaving really early in the morning. He was super neglectful of the things he was supposed to take care of around the house that became serious issues, and most of all he was extremely verbally and emotionally abusive. Saying he hates me, calling me all kinds of names, cussing at me. I was diagnosed with breast cancer a month later, in April. The next month, on Mother’s Day morning while I was upstairs getting ready for church, him and my oldest, then 13 started arguing, I rushed downstairs because it didn’t sound good, as soon as I hit the bottom of the stairs I see my husband shove him into the pantry door, really hard. I rush over to break them up and my husband takes off. I chase him down, he gets in the car, screams in my face and picks up a cup of ice tea that was in the cup holder, and throws it all over me and the headliner of my car. All while my them 3 year old was in his car seat in the back. CPS got involved over this incident and a safety plan was put in place so he wasn’t allowed in the house unless my mom or his parents were there. He started staying in hotels mostly spending a lot of money, I had my surgery which was extensive and a long recovery. When I had only been home from the hospital a few days, he came home drunk, passed out in our little ones bed, when I woke him to ask him to help me with something, he got extremely angry and came after me like he was going to physically attack me in front of my mom. I had to start chemo after I was recovered from surgery, then radiation. He came back in the house about the time I started radiation, without my permission. He moved in while the kids and I were out of town and didn’t leave when we got back. 3 months later he got violent with me again. Started arguing with me and when I tried to get away from him and asked him to leave me alone, he got angry and shut the door to the laundry room I was in, then threw a chair at the door, putting a hole in the door. He then tackled me in the couch and ripped my phone out of my hands when I tried to call the police, took off upstairs with my phone and hid it from me. I was eventually able to get him to leave and he hasn’t been back in the house since. I always blamed the alcohol for his behavior and abuse and thought if he were to just get sober, everything would be better. This time though he had been sober for 4 months. It’s been a little over a year since then. I filed for a protective order and filed for divorce. Both are still pending. The legal process hasn’t been easy at all but I don’t regret leaving. Our house is so much more peaceful and the kids are so much happier even though we’re struggling financially with him using financial abuse now and refusing to provide anything at all for them. It’s still better than the environment he created when he lived here. We all constantly walked on eggs shells never knowing what the next thing one of us would do to make him explode and how bad it would be this time. I’m ashamed for how long I allowed the kids to be in that environment but thankful for the peace we have now and that we have each other. Praying the cycle is broken and the generational curse is broken with me.