Survivor Story: I Never Saw It as Abuse

Written by: BTSADV Survivor

My heart breaks as I write about someone whom I don’t know anymore, and I am not sure I ever did. Did he know me? Maybe, but not as he should have. Not like he said he did. Why? I lived a year and a half of my entire life for him. I changed his life, I made him a better person – or so he told me more than once. 

I had known of him growing up in my hometown. I would run into him again as I was working temporarily nearby with a goal of moving to a new state. He was “busy” work for me. I had no intentions of having a boyfriend because I had always done things alone. He was working a factory job, and he hated it.  He had a great family, but even they had secrets.

I remember talking to his mother early on. She had told me that his dad had cheated on her and broke her nose. His dad had apologized years later when they had both remarried. I should have left then.

“I should have left then…” is what goes through my mind every day when I think of the red flags. Although my family lived a few miles away from him, I stayed with him. Within the first few months, he was saying “I Love You” and “You are my best friend,” and I just felt it was right. I felt compassion for him in his situation. I only knew a little about his exes. I knew he had physical encounters with them. As his girlfriend, I overlooked it.

One thing he knew was that I did not need him. I came to know that a narcissist will not be with someone who does not need them. Over time, as my love for him grew, I lost who I was; in turn, I came to need him, and he knew it. I was willing to move to a state I didn’t want to go to so he could get a job as a police officer.

When his background check came back as negative, again, I should have left then. Ten months into the relationship, the drinking became more apparent along with steroid shots. The verbal abuse, the fighting, and the words that were said echoed loudly. 

I started telling him, “I want my life back,” but I didn’t even know the life I had before. The problem was that I never saw it as abuse. I didn’t know. In my mind, I thought since I had come this far with him, we can get through this. I can stay because he told me I was his best friend. My best friends lived elsewhere. He never met any of them, except one or two.

Again, I should have left. I was protecting my friends, but I didn’t know it at the time – or maybe I did – and I shoved it down like everything else I would come to know. He would put his house up for sale; he would agree to move with me to the state I wanted to be in long before I ever ran into him again.

This change of power, this change of his lifestyle, would almost take my life and put me in a grave. He would stress over money, his family relationships, and his job, and the drinking got worse. He had the cycle of domestic violence in motion. I did everything for him.

We did have more good days than bad, but the bad ones became my worst nightmare. Within two weeks of moving, he would be drunk most days. One night we fought, and he looked at me holding his hands out going for my neck, picked me up by my throat, and slammed me against our new front door. As he held me up there, as breathless as I was becoming, I knew I could calm him down for some reason. I was able to do so with the two words that “victims” know too well: “I’m sorry.”

That night would change everything. He never apologized for it, and he had always apologized. He never showed it, but he would say it. I never heard that he was sorry after that.

He wasn’t hitting me; he wasn’t beating me. He just slammed me up against a door by my throat. I never knew how serious that difference was until it would happen again. I knew it was coming. I knew, and I had nowhere to go.

Within two months, he would come home from playing golf with alcohol on his breath, and it happened again, only this time I had no way of calming him down. I begged him to let me get my purse. I knew calling the police would ruin his chance of ever becoming a cop. I knew that I poured my life into this man that I lived with, and I knew I was going to have to throw it away. My heart split in half.

I never dreamed that within 48 hours I would be following a detective to a hotel under an alias while the man I loved was in jail, faced with several felonies and misdemeanors. Strangulation is no joke. The death rate and the statistics on the abuser coming back to kill their victim are extremely high.

After several court dates and two protective orders, we now face a trial, and he has blamed me for everything. He always will.  He has never shown remorse. He never will. What I’ve learned most through extended trauma therapy is that the outcome doesn’t matter, not the years on probation or the jury verdict. He will never take responsibility. We both lose regardless.

Why? He will do it again if he hasn’t already.  Even though I’ve done everything I set out to do long before running into him, each day is a memory, a heavy heart, and a fear of him coming after me. The hardest part has been knowing that nobody understands unless they have been there.

I have managed to look more at the things I did right, instead of what I did wrong. I’ve met so many great people in support groups who wish they could have called the police, who wish they had a permeant protective order, who wish they could have left sooner. It’s different for everyone.

I’ve had to grieve him as if he died to keep living my life. He will never hold himself accountable, but I owe it to myself, to my best of friends, and to many new friends in law enforcement, to make sure I help others.  I lose either way knowing he will do this again to someone else. I just know that it won’t be me. 

Nothing has been easy, but I am thankful I finally got my life back. 

**If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, there is help. You can visit the Break the Silence website at www.breakthesilencedv.org, chat with one of our helpline advocates at 855-287-1777, or send a private message through our Facebook page.

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