My Story of Domestic Violence and Coercive Control
“It was a Tuesday night when I phoned my parents at 1 a.m. whimpering, ‘Mom, I have a really bad feeling about my relationship…’
That Friday, my parents pulled up with their pick-up truck and helped me flee to their house. Packing up that day was easy because I was finally making a good decision for myself. The scariest night was back to that Tuesday. My then-husband had gone to bed and I was sitting on the couch, terrified my gut feeling was true – I had been in an abusive relationship for 13 years without knowing it.
The man who was my first boyfriend, first love and who I thought was my best friend – was my abuser and the reason for so many years with extreme anxiety and insomnia.
“I had been in an abusive relationship for 13 years without knowing it.”
My home, which was supposed to be my safe place, was not feeling safe anymore. Weird things started happening. While I was sitting on the couch that night, I heard a loud crash. My shoe rack, which had been leaning against a wall near the bedroom, was now in pieces by the front door. When I asked what happened, he denied touching it. The previous day, my jewelry box had been emptied on the bed. And he started hitting the walls and slamming cupboards.
A voice in my head started playing on repeat, ‘You’re going to die here.’
I was petrified. I couldn’t move and sat there for hours as the image of my entire adulthood came crashing down. The shift in perspective was so sudden, the walls in my apartment rippled like a wave, as if I was seeing it for the first time.
I started asking questions I had never thought to ask before, like, ‘Why don’t I have credit cards in my name?’
‘Why do I feel I have to ask permission to buy something when I earn my own salary?’
‘Why does he have 5 bottles of top brand Gin, but I get anxious at the liquor store for buying the cheapest ciders?’
‘Why do I feel better alone, but panicked when he is coming home?’
‘Why does he leave the front door open a crack when he goes to work, even if I’m sleeping?’ I had asked him to lock the door a thousand times because of my recurring nightmare of break-in and attack.
‘Why have I been accused of being the non-loving one our entire relationship, but he looked so cold tonight when I told him he was scaring me?’
I asked myself questions for hours that night, each answer hit me like a punch in the stomach. A man would lock the door so his wife would feel safe and a friend wouldn’t lie or scare me.
One by one, however, they peeled off a layer of this fog I had been living in. After the shock wore off, the only person I wanted to talk to was my mom, so I called her at 1 a.m.
Age 24 During my teaching practicum
The next day, my parents came over while he was at work. I had never told anyone about what living with him was really like – my muscles tightened and I had trouble breathing. It caused a full body panic attack.
How could I not know I was in an abusive marriage? It was not obvious because it was not physically abusive. Before this, abuse was done through emotional, mental, and financial control. The first obvious physical violence happened in the last week – when he started hitting the walls and destroying my belongings. He was losing control over himself, because he was losing control over me. Two weeks before, I made a vow to stop reacting to him with anxiety and control myself with calm, loving responses.
Of course, these relationships don’t start like a nightmare; they often start like a dream.
We met in university when I was nineteen. Everyone told me how lucky I was, and I felt lucky. He seemed so nice, almost innocent. He was an athlete, very intelligent and had inspiring career goals.
The control mostly started when we moved in together a year later. Like when I went to get birth control; “we” decided to get an IUD, but I came home with pills. He fell into a dark mood and became so upset for my deviance that he left the house and walked the neighborhood aimlessly for hours. The lesson was clear: making my own decisions, even ones about my body, ruined his day.
I was naive, so I just felt bad for making him upset, apologized, and tried to make it up to him. But I also remembered how lucky I was to have such a great boyfriend.
While coercive control was happening inside, from the outside we looked normal. We bought an apartment at 21, married at 24 and settled into our careers.
Wedding Day, Age 24, 2009
I was a really good high-school teacher. However, by the age of 26 I had to quit my full-time position after only three years because of mental illness. This furthered my financial dependence and low self-esteem. What I didn’t realise was that I had all of the symptoms from long-term abuse.
Age 24 During my teaching practicum
The next day, my parents came over while he was at work. I had never told anyone about what living with him was really like – my muscles tightened and I had trouble breathing. It caused a full body panic attack.
How could I not know I was in an abusive marriage? It was not obvious because it was not physically abusive. Before this, abuse was done through emotional, mental, and financial control. The first obvious physical violence happened in the last week – when he started hitting the walls and destroying my belongings. He was losing control over himself, because he was losing control over me. Two weeks before, I made a vow to stop reacting to him with anxiety and control myself with calm, loving responses.
Of course, these relationships don’t start like a nightmare; they often start like a dream.
We met in university when I was nineteen. Everyone told me how lucky I was, and I felt lucky. He seemed so nice, almost innocent. He was an athlete, very intelligent and had inspiring career goals.
The control mostly started when we moved in together a year later. Like when I went to get birth control; “we” decided to get an IUD, but I came home with pills. He fell into a dark mood and became so upset for my deviance that he left the house and walked the neighborhood aimlessly for hours. The lesson was clear: making my own decisions, even ones about my body, ruined his day.
I was naive, so I just felt bad for making him upset, apologized, and tried to make it up to him. But I also remembered how lucky I was to have such a great boyfriend.
While coercive control was happening inside, from the outside we looked normal. We bought an apartment at 21, married at 24 and settled into our careers.
Wedding Day, Age 24, 2009
I was a really good high-school teacher. However, by the age of 26 I had to quit my full-time position after only three years because of mental illness. This furthered my financial dependence and low self-esteem. What I didn’t realise was that I had all of the symptoms from long-term abuse.
I felt worthless, like I could never do anything right. I apologized for everything. If there was silence, I just said, ‘I’m sorry,’ as if I thought my mere presence was upsetting others.
I required constant emotional support and validation. My once non-addictive personality became increasingly addictive and needy. I was not only addicted to party drugs and alcohol, but to anything that gave me a surface feeling of pleasure including dieting, running, social media, and shopping. Before the hard drugs, it was just escapism through unhealthy levels of masochism in BDSM.
I had emotional breakdowns over the smallest things. Sometimes my anxiety attacks would last for days. At my worst, I screamed, cried, hyper-ventilated on the floor and hit myself. I heard voices in my head, telling me how pathetic and useless I was. With extreme insomnia, sometimes sleeping less than an hour a night, I found it a struggle to keep suicidal thoughts at bay.
I was becoming estranged from my family – visits became less frequent and I no longer joined them at their summer cabin.
I was physically sick all the time. Regular colds, upset stomachs, UTI’s and throat infections to the point where I almost got my tonsils removed.
Even if the abuse wasn’t physical, it was slowly killing me. Domestic Violence destroys a victim’s independence and ability to function.
With all these symptoms, how could I not know something was wrong?
Well, one reason is abuse cycles and the sheer fact that it is not bad all the time. The relationship becomes its own cycle of addiction and dependency, with extreme lows, highs, and systems of rewards. Psychological abuse also builds slowly, over many years with consistent gaslighting. The source of my problems was always pointed elsewhere, like at my family, my teaching career, university pressure, and my history of being bullied when I was young. However, most of the time I was made to believe I was the problem.
The relationship becomes its own cycle of addiction and dependency, with extreme lows, highs, and systems of rewards. Psychological abuse also builds slowly, over many years with consistent gaslighting.
If someone is just slowly destroyed like this, they wouldn’t last very long. A critical part of psychological abuse is while the original self is undermined, a new identity is created by the abuser. They shape a victim into something they were never supposed to be.
By the time I was 25, he wanted to open our relationship and have group sex. I said no because I’m monogamous. This was listened to at first, but his desires were always more important than my boundaries. Brainwashing doesn’t feel like brainwashing when it’s happening. I just remember the long talks where my ‘no’ slowly became a ‘yes.’
We started swinging (also called “the lifestyle”), which eventually became full polyamory. Years later, poly operated more like a cult with rules, policing and conformity. Cult mentality also doesn’t feel like a cult when you’re in it.
So here I was, brainwashed into living an alternate cult-like reality, with a controlled identity. This extreme lifestyle had an extreme fallout when I left.
I wish I created an escape plan. I left with $400, my clothes, my cat, and my car. I was confused, traumatized and dysfunctional in normal life and everything was a mess. My car needed desperate repairs, I was sick, and my work clothes were ripping. I had trouble with simple tasks that I once knew how to do, like operate a bank account or even basic communication. It was embarrassing.
He cut off the credit cards after I paid for car brakes and new work clothes. Our bank account was also drained. It all felt so hopeless.
I also wish I knew the extent of my trauma and addictions. This is a potentially deadly combination.
I was scared, paranoid, grieving and angry. The emotional pain was excruciating and I got lost in addiction trying to cope.
Over the course of 4 months I fell into a psychosis and lost touch with reality. Psychosis involves periods of clarity and altered reality, so during this time some terrible things happened and some things I made up which were still traumatic. To feel safe, I left home on a camping road trip. I grew weaker, continued to use and had a spinal cord injury where I lost the ability to walk.
I was admitted to a rehabilitation ward as a psychiatric patient for a month and started learning to walk again. My time at the hospital was also traumatic, as psych patients with addictions are treated differently. The drugs were the focus, not the underlying trauma. I received no counselling or therapy in the hospital.
The real healing started when I got home on bedrest. Art was an important part of healing in the hospital and when I got home. I was able to process and express things that I was not strong enough to put into words yet.
I discovered art five months before I left and it helped undermine the control in my relationship. It was empowering, which was very threatening to him.
Art also bypassed the gaslighting and created a channel to my inner spirit for the first time in years. Everytime I drew, it gave me new thoughts and perspectives. My inner voice was so strong that by my third sketch I called my artwork Girl with Many Secrets.
My third sketch, a self portrait that inspired the name for my art, ‘Girl with many Secrets’ (Oct 2017)
However, anything that helped me feel good about myself, that was not under his control, would be insidiously undermined. I left my home to save both me and my art.
I had to leave the storage unit behind that held my drawings when I left that Friday. I was worried he would destroy them. I looked at them, and whispered, ‘I can just start over, I’ll just make more.’ Thankfully, my original drawings arrived safely at my parents a week later.
The day I got my art desk, in my old apartment
I consider myself lucky to come back from such a dark place. We do not often hear cases like this because women stay in addiction or psychosis, become homeless, or end up dead. If it wasn’t for my parents’ unconditional love, support, and advocacy, I wouldn’t be here telling this story.
My wish is more people work on healing after trauma and abuse – to not hop into a new relationship or even full-time work. It’s important to heal so we do not accidentally perpetuate abusive patterns or attract people who would take advantage. With healing and spreading awareness, abuse prevention is possible.
Coercive control can be hard to recognize. If you suspect someone may be in an abusive relationship, I would not recommend telling them right away or making any negative comment about the abuser. The victim has been trained to protect their abuser. They will both reject any person or threat on the bond. The biggest gift you can give a possible victim is genuine time and conversation. To give them a feeling like they are worthy of attention just for being who they are. Giving them inspiring books to read or inviting them to fun activities could also help. This may provide enough contrast for a victim to start lifting some of the fog in the dynamic themselves first. Only they can do this; no one can do it for them.
It’s taken 4 years to recover after 13 years of domestic violence. In the end, I feel grateful for my sharpened instincts to abusive behavior, for my resiliency and repairing the relationship with my family. I also have a second chance at life with real joy and peace. With ‘Haunted’ (Nov 2018), a painting that describes the burden of trauma from emotional abuse
Anything that shapes us can be turned into a positive and sometimes it takes a lot of darkness to appreciate our own light. In sharing my story and art, I hope to inspire others that it’s possible after abuse not just to survive, but to thrive.
Sarah