The answer is “carefully”.
I can describe the feeling as metaphorically tiptoeing out backwards, smiling, and throwing rose petals and paper hearts before me. Then turning and running for my life. I tiptoed and smiled for a long, long time.
For a woman there is a time she doesn’t really think she HAS to leave and the tipping point where she does. She knows that staying will kill her. One way or another. The Femicide Census shows us that 41% of women killed by a partner/ex had separated or taken steps to separate, with 30% of them killed within the first month and 70% killed within the first year. The danger for women who work out they must leave is real and it is imminent. The following is not a definitive list or an accurate guide as all women are different and all circumstances vary. This is based upon my own experience and shared in the hope that it helps other women.
First part practical.
Many women being abused by men daydream. Inside their head they go to a place where he isn’t and conjure up a life for themselves that is not with him. They open up that dream often in order to cope. They use it to escape to. I did. I had a little flat all picked out. My chair was by the window and I could see right across the city as I wrote stories. My friend Helen would knock at the door and come in and I would smile and we would chat. I never knew how I would get to this place. I couldn’t make it real and I believed for a long time that I never would. Often his voice would wake me from the lovely daydream. It felt brutally cold to have to come back to the real world and the all-too-real him. His snarling twisted face issuing commands and destroying everything I was and wanted to be. Every time I felt like crying that I couldn’t stay in the dream and I couldn’t make it happen.
So, what about when you decide? What about when you think you really have to get away from him? What goes through your mind? You may need to make a leap of faith and trust the bits in pink.
1. I can’t. (He’s told you, you can’t and you believe him. This is control. “No one will want you!” “If I can’t have you, no one can!” “Without me you’re nothing and you will die in poverty alone” “You will never leave me!” But you can. You are a free woman. You have a right to be treated with respect. You have the right to leave behind those who do not.)
2. I will have no friends. My family have all but disappeared. No one likes me. (He did this. People loved you and they still love you. He made them go away even if you were the one who pushed them. When he’s gone, they will come back. New people will come into your life. People always liked you and they will flock to tell you how much they did NOT like him.)
3. I won’t be able to cope without him. (He has told you this too. “You’re useless. Stupid. Can’t hold down a job. Lazy. No good with money.” He’s lying. You stayed alive a long time before him. You were resilient and you will be again. Others will help you. Also, if you have survived him you are strong in ways you won’t know yet.)
4. I will be poor. The children will have less of everything. Where will we live? (Not going to lie. Yes. Probably. You’ll be poorer. Women have always relied upon men for financial support in a world where men hold the power and wealth and women do not. But the value of a simple bed in a room he can’t enter is worth the Earth and all its riches. It is hard to give up what you have but when he isn’t in your world the simplest things can make you happy. There are beds in refuges until you get on your feet. Women who used to be where you are have made sure they are there and we always will.)
5. He will kill me. (This is also a very legitimate fear. This is why you need a women’s service to help you plan, if you have time for safety planning. If you fear the danger is imminent you need to flee without telling him and get to a safe space. That may initially be by getting out and/or calling the police. Going to a trusted friend or family member if not. Get out and ring a women’s service who will be able to find you a refuge space if possible or pay for temporary accommodation if they can’t. Get the safety advice you need by calling them and asking what measures you should take to leave. I won’t put it here as an abuser may see.)
6. I love him. He can change. (If he could change, he would already have changed. He can’t. He doesn’t love you or he wouldn’t hurt you. You can’t make him love you. You can’t go back to the start when he loved you because that was all an act to get you to this point. As I was once told, it’s like asking him to grow a new arm. He just can’t do it. This next thing is really brutal. No matter what he says he actually hates you. He may hate all women. His problem is not your problem. You can’t fix him and you don’t have to try. Yes, you are kind, but he has not been. He does not deserve your compassion.)
7. My children will hate me for taking away their father. (If you were the little girl version of you and you were watching you being treated this way… would you want you to stay? They are your children. They love you. Also, being with him is hurting them too. They will in time forgive you and understand why you needed to leave. There is a good chance they will love you very much more when they do.)
8. No one will believe me. (There are domestic abuse services up and down the UK. Pick up the phone to one. I guarantee they will believe you. Let’s start here. I believe you.)
9. Am I being abused? (Yes. Or you wouldn’t be asking. There is no scale of abuse. From the insults designed to kill your confidence to the woman’s dead body in the street. It is all abuse and you do not need to judge whether it is bad enough. It is all bad. You deserve help.)
10. No one will ever want me again. (Right now, you don’t need another lover. You need to find you again. When you have then you can decide what YOU want. If you want someone you will find them. He has made you feel worthless. You aren’t or he wouldn’t want to control you so badly. There are good men or women out there and when you are healed you will find love if you want it. I recommend reading “Dangerous Men. How to Spot One Before You Get Involved” )
11. Social Services will take my children. (They may take them if you stay. He, may paint you as a bad mother and tell you how you are a failure. He lies. You are a good mother and will be an even better one when you can devote more of your time to thinking about them, rather than thinking about him all the time which you have had to do to survive. No woman who has been where you are will ever judge your parenting. You may have to fight for your children. You will have more strength when you are free of him. It doesn’t feel like it now, but you will.)
12. I like things as they are. (You like things. You don’t like him. Which would you prefer to be without? Which makes you happiest? It is okay to worry about losing things you love like the car or your personal possessions. That is normal. But the way you are being treated. That is not normal, and no car or holiday or money in the bank will make it normal. You deserve to be free and you deserve to leave. There are resources in you that you haven’t tapped into yet. You might get more education. You might get a job and you might be really good at it. The possibilities without him are endless. With him you have all that you will ever have. This is it. It isn’t right is it? There has to be more to life. There is.)
13. I will be seen as a failure in my relationship. (He is the failure. You are the success waiting to happen.)
14. He’s had a terrible upbringing. His last wife was awful to him. He was abused as a child. Etc etc. (An abusive man will blame everything but himself. His last partner probably suffered as you are doing. His past or present hardships, stresses and problems are not a reason to abuse you. You aren’t medicine. You aren’t a bandage. You’re a human being.)
(I think I could carry on forever here. There are so many conversations you would like to have with an abused woman. I hope these ones help.)
Second part. Personal. How I Got Out. (The personal is also political).
Some people hate this kind of outpouring and sharing of our experiences. Women did it in the seventies and it is still powerful today however many stories we read. It is a political act to say out loud what men have done to us. Women have no obligation to keep the secrets of those men.
This isn’t a full account of what happened to me. It’s an account of how I worked to make it stop for me. The memories may not always be in the correct chronological order as we forget. There are lots of things we don’t remember and every abused woman is grateful for that.
The eternal question is “why doesn’t she just leave?” Or as Baroness Nicholson said, I was “crazy to stay”.
I nearly left abuse many times. I have slept in my car. I have slept in the spare bedrooms of friends. I have gone to my brother’s. I always went back. For all of the reasons listed above in this article. All of these things were questions I asked myself every time. Without help you might ask yourself these questions forever.
Don’t forget that abused women rarely get time to breathe and think. Every moment of an abused woman’s life she is thinking of him. Of his reactions to what she is doing. She tries to stay one step ahead. She is always guessing what he will find she has done wrong. What he will criticise. What will “set him off”. The answer once you’re out is easy. It’s nothing. There is nothing you can do, or not do to stop him. He is going to abuse you whatever moves you make to try to avoid it.
Many of us walk out. Then, often, go back again. We walk off in the night desperate and crying and we return when the tears dry up or our temporary bravery does. We go to friends or family and go back the next day. Mostly because we just aren’t ready or we just don’t know what is happening to us. No, you often don’t actually know the first time the fist connects. It isn’t one light bulb moment. It’s many. It can take years of the most horrific physical, sexual and mental abuse until you finally know you must leave. This is all discussed elsewhere. This is some of what happened to me in case it helps a woman to recognise that she is being abused and gives her hope. I hope it also lets women know that they need feel no shame for the things they did to survive.
When you look around you and think you can bear it no more. You consider the basics. What do I need? Many women don’t get much further. Because you need a place to live for you and children if you have them and you need money. It stops most women in their tracks. You can go to family if you have some perhaps. But mine were old. Or didn’t really understand what was happening to me. Or blamed me for staying. Or just blamed me. “What’s a strong woman like you putting up with that for?” (My aunt) or “you’ve made your bed you have to lie in it” (My brother).
So, let’s look at some of my failed attempts. I won’t count the times on holidays when I would try to leave, he was always the worst on a holiday. I once or twice went to reception and got myself a separate room while he slept off his nasty buzz and the next morning I would go back. I would apologise. Because I just wanted to have a nice holiday. Sometimes he would act like I hadn’t even left. I would play along. So many of the times when you have an inkling you should leave, you just want it to be “normal”. You know it is his fault but doubt yourself and think it might be a bit yours. You know he’s a beast but people also say you are “difficult”. (FYI, it is “difficult” being with an abuser and your reactions are sometimes to fight back. It is ok. Do not feel guilty for this. It makes you a survivor not an abuser). But you think you can turn the corner of it. You can make it ok. It is down to you to work harder. Be less sensitive. Drink less yourself, to cope when he is drunk. Not talk back. Not talk about things he doesn’t like. Not wear the things he hates. Not talk to strangers. Be more interesting. Wear sexier clothes. Look prettier. Laugh more. On and on.
Once he went on a bender in the afternoon and came back drunk and banging on the windows making threats and I was terrified to let him in. I called the police. They attended and he obviously stopped when they arrived. They asked me to open the door. I remember the policeman saying “He’s just sat here quietly now eating his chips. Can’t he come in?” I refused. I knew what would come. So they agreed to take him off to his friend’s house. The next day he came back. My daughter was 3 months old. I looked at her. I wondered what would happen to her. How I would raise her alone. The copper should have helped me. He did not. The next day social services called and said that if this happened again they would need to investigate me to see if I was providing a stable environment. I was terrified. He held this over me. He repeated “they will take your daughter from you” for a decade. I believed it. Why wouldn’t I?
You consider getting a job. He says you aren’t fit for work. Who would employ you as you are lazy? You weren’t good at your last job. For me I was a teacher. A really good one. When my daughter was injured at nursery before she was one years old, I fell apart. I felt I couldn’t go back and leave her and he had made me feel guilty for what had happened to her. If I didn’t want her to be hurt again, I should be with her always. He said I should work in the family business. I agreed and handed in my notice. Overnight I then had no way to leave as all my independent resources had gone. I had no way to support myself. Or so I thought. I could have left at this point. The house was half mine. I could have got maintenance. Etc etc. But you can’t think that far ahead. Especially if you don’t know you are being abused.
When I joined a playgroup with her, my daughter made friends and it was obvious to me that I was different to these women. They had kind, successful husbands who turned up to children’s parties with them and didn’t get drunk. None of them liked my husband who looked exactly as he was. Scowling, ugly and unkempt. But they looked down their noses at me too. I felt ashamed to be with him. He is coarse and he is stupid. I used to make excuses for this. That he was funny and likeable. He isn’t. He’s just stupid and arrogant. He would tell me how clever he was. I believed him. When I confided in these women how he was treating me, they didn’t help me. They judged me. One of them said she couldn’t allow her children to come to my house any more. She was sorry for me but it wasn’t safe for them. I understand now. But at the time it was humiliating. I felt dirty and ashamed. I gradually stopped seeing them all. When this happened I saw it as me and him again. I had to make it work. I had to unite with him. I was “part of it”.
I won’t discuss the sexual stuff and the humiliation – though this is often the very worst part. I just don’t want to share it. I don’t want that record here for my daughter or husband to see. But please know that most women experience routine sexual violence and humiliation when being abused. It takes many years to process this aspect. It is the thing we bury down deepest.
Can I say first of all we don’t always have perfect recollections of our abuse. It is really hard to remember some things and it is hard to remember the order of events. Or the exact dates. This is common with a trauma response. When my abuser punched me hard and broke a number of my ribs one night, I think it was autumn 1999. I had just moved in with him. I took myself off to the hospital the next morning in shock. I didn’t tell them what had happened. I rang work and didn’t tell them either. I can’t remember now what excuse I made. I think I said I fell. I went straight from the hospital back to his. He didn’t really acknowledge what he had done. He was sorry I had “got hurt” but after all “you were shouting at me and pulled at my shirt”. I could still see the fist, flying into me with his full weight behind it. I had grabbed his shirt to hold myself up,, try to stop him. But I still questioned myself. I became quiet. He looked after me. I didn’t leave.
So, the years passed. I pinned it eventually to a six-week cycle. He would explode quickly and violently. Not always physically but sometimes. There would be a tirade of name-calling and insults, swearing and smashing things. He might grab my face or throat. Punch a wall or a door. Throw something near me. Drag pictures from walls. Overturn chairs. Once he urinated on my daughter’s toys after I had left the room. Then he would be sorry. He was drunk; stressed; money worries; pushed into it by me; jealous; provoked; abused as a child; abused by police and prison services. I heard them all over the years. He would promise to change. He would buy something nice. A watch, a car, a ring, a holiday, a camera. I had some very nice things after being abused. Then he would begin to wind it up again slowly over the weeks. The odd criticism. Something I’d forgotten to do. Something I wore or bought. I was on my phone after 8pm and he felt neglected. I drew up a ‘bucket list’ and this was selfish. I wanted to see family and this was selfish. I didn’t want sex and this was frigid. I didn’t agree with a political point and this was stupid. I began to watch myself. I worried about doing things wrong but I didn’t know what. I checked for things I thought he might “find’ to hold against me. I cooked food he might like. He never did. I said things he might like. Things I did not believe. About myself. About friends. About the news. Anything and everything to placate. But it would happen anyway. Almost on the dot. He would drink, a comment would ignite him. The attack would come. The crying and pleading and trying to keep my daughter quiet. None of it worked. On and on the cycle went.
For years.
Until around 2008 I decided I’d had enough. Each night he was coming home drunk and I hid away downstairs when he got home. I started trying to connect with old friends and people online. Each night I would wait until he fell asleep drunk and then I would go up to the lounge and sit quietly on the sofa hoping he wouldn’t wake up but knowing I had to be there when he did. Often, I’d fall asleep before he woke. When I opened my eyes there would be violent porn on the TV. He did this to wake me. He would just smile as he watched it. I would retreat to bed and pretend to be sleeping when he came up. It was vile. The six-week cycle now included this new hell.
At this point some friends from my youth who live in Greece asked me to come to them for a break. I hadn’t told them much. They are kind and wonderful people. I was desperate. I decided to go. I had to lie horribly. My best friend covered for me. I didn’t know what would happen beyond getting away. I booked a flight. I lied and said I was going on an exam marking course. I knew I would have to leave my daughter behind for now. He would never let me take her. But I was making plans to get us both out. I’d also managed to get a job behind his back. I just needed the space to breathe and I couldn’t do that around him. I ran away in the middle of a blizzard and drove to the airport. I had only just landed when his phone call came. He knew where I was, he said. He had opened my bank statements. He had called the police. I had not even made it to my friend. I called home but he would not let me speak to my daughter. He just hurled abuse at me. Threatened to kill me and my friend. Said he was coming over. That I was a slag. That he had checked my drawers and knew what underwear I had taken and this was proof I was cheating on him. I was terrified. I held it together in front of my friends who were kind beyond measure. They tried to help me plan. They fed me and hugged me and told me I could come to them anytime. That’s what Greeks do. They make a fuss of you with food and generosity. The police called. He had reported my car missing and asked them to find me. I explained I knew where my car was and told them where I was. They said they would prosecute him for wasting police time if he persisted. I wonder now why they didn’t ask more.
My friend Helen called me. She said he had been to her house crying and pleading with her to get me to come home. She was frightened but stood up for me and said it was my business to decide where I lived and went. She told me that when I came home to come directly to hers. She didn’t trust him. I was terrified. I went to her. He called me as I sat shaking in her kitchen not knowing what to do. He had already called my friends’ home in Greece and threatened to kill one of them. He told me to come home and it would all be ok. That it could all be sorted. That he would leave my friends alone and that I was going to be safe. That my daughter needed me. So, I went home. I stood up for myself and said it was over. That I wanted to leave. He refused to let me and said he would leave instead. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as he left. But he hadn’t really gone. It was all a lie. Over the next few months there was an onslaught of stalking and control. He hacked my computer. He even stole it in the end. Thre was threat after threat. Endless texts and calls. The police cautioned him but nothing more. I had no freedom. He still saw me as his. Over the weeks he wore me down. I was tired, confused, anxious and suffering trauma I didn’t understand. My daughter was young and wanted a “normal” family. Eventually, I’m afraid I agreed to try again. He came home with promises to be different. I tried to keep the job and the friends I’d built up. He gradually tore it all up again. Within weeks the abuse began all over again and so very much worse this time. I was hospitalised unconscious after he threw me to the ground in the street one night. The day before he had visited a prostitute and left his phone on in his pocket after dialling me. He was arrested. I looked at the state of my life. I had nothing financially if he went to jail. I did not know how I would live. I refused to support the prosecution even though there was an eye witness who had seen him attack me. The police accepted this. Why did they? I wonder now why they didn’t help me. I was abused. They had seen me in the street unconscious with him standing over me. I needed help. No one should have listened to me protect him. They should have banged him up no matter what I said. They released him. I had to go and pick him up from the cells. When they brought him out a police officer walked him back to the car and looked in at me. I smiled weakly. He did not come up to the car. He simply walked away. When the abuser got back in the car he said “Do you know what he was checking for? He was checking you to see if he needed to commit you for reporting me! HE thinks you are insane. If you had made a fuss, he would have taken you to the psych ward.” I was terrified. I know now the officer was checking to see how I behaved and if I was scared. He didn’t check closely enough. I’ll never forgive him for that. The abuser came home. I was back in jail with him again.
I did terrible things to survive. I did anything I could to try to feel like I was human. But I wasn’t human anymore. I was a robot. I was just going through the motions. I felt I’d had my chance and I blew it. He severed my ties with the friends in Greece with his threats of violence towards them after stalking their Facebook profiles. He eventually cut off my best friend Helen by saying she took advantage of me and didn’t like me really. He said my other friends hated me. Everyone hated me. I was lost. I’ve written about all this before. I will not apologise for the awful things I did to survive and to please him. I will not apologise. But women should not throw those things in my face. I have seen that recently. If you think that the worst thing, I did was spout his nasty politics and really briefly join the Tory Party to appease him and get him to show me respect, I’ll tell you this… I did far worse to destroy myself. Being with that man and smiling in his face and watching him turn me into a puppet for his fun. The shame of that never leaves you. You are shameful women indeed if you use a woman’s abuse to hurt her.
In 2012 I began listening to a woman I met online. She was a feminist. She told me I was being abused. She told me how. She was always listening and always telling me to leave. I think now she just liked being bossy about it all. I was her project. But she gave me the number of a women’s service and for that I must always be grateful. By early 2013 I could stand it no longer. I called the women of VIDA in Sheffield. They talked to me a lot. They put me on a 12-week course. I kid you not I turned up to the first one in a Range Rover and designer clothes. I thought, “I shouldn’t really be here. These women aren’t like me. I’m not really being abused. He’s just difficult. I can change him” . Etc etc. I was a bit of an arse all round at that time but I was also being abused.
After that first session I knew I was exactly like every woman in that room. We were all very different women and we were all exactly the same. After 2 weeks it was clear I was in such trauma and danger that they appointed me an IDVA. The abuser once called in the middle of a session and I literally melted in tears and fear. The support worker took me into a separate room and that was my awakening. I knew I was programmed. I was his entirely. I had no freedom to think or feel or be anywhere he didn’t know about. I met some incredible survivors on that course. Some terrible stories. All with hideous men. Some were already free, some like me were still trapped, and some eventually left the course and went back to him. I hope they are free now. I really hope all of them are alive and free. If you get on a course please keep going. Please trust them.
I wasn’t ready to try to leave again at this point. I kept going to see the IDVA but I still needed to plan and think. In order to get to these meetings, I had to tell him that I was seeing a therapist to “become a better wife”. Yes, I actually said that ,and he seemed so happy with it. The woman who had pushed me to attend the course promised to be there for me. She said I could bring my daughter and we could go to her house whenever I was ready and I could take it from there. She would support me. She kept begging me to leave. She upset me at one point saying she knew that my daughter was doomed to have an abusive future herself if I stayed. I hate her still for saying this. It didn’t help me. One night after he got drunk and was verbally abusive, I called him a bully and he went crazy. I went up to bed. It wasn’t such a bad incident compared to some of them. But he must have seen a change in me. He saw some strength back. Some fire in my eyes. I should have known not to show him the things I was learning. The next morning, I came down to find the largest carving knife we owned on the bookcase at the side of the door where he would stand to smoke. I knew what the knife was for. I knew what he had been thinking and luckily for me he did not follow through. But I waited for him to go to work and I packed my things according to the plan I’d been given by the IDVA. I texted the woman to say I was ready to come and was it still ok. She didn’t reply. I was anxious. I then emailed her and didn’t get an answer. But she had promised me. She was my lifeline. Something gnawed in my gut. I collected my daughter from school and drove to the shop for a treat for her. While I was in the supermarket a text came back. The woman had thought again. She had to protect her family. She thought he was too dangerous. Especially the thing with the knife and that she simply couldn’t take me in after all. I sank to the floor. I had never had a panic attack before. I sank to the floor in the door of the shop and I am not exaggerating when I say I made my way back to the car on my knees and hyperventilating. I was in shock. I sat and cried but had to pull myself together for my daughter. I went back. Where else could I go?
It was a month or so later that I finally threw him out. I knew he would kill me if I didn’t. The night before he had been out all night drinking and taking cocaine. He told me, and I can still see his face, “women are only good for 2 things, sex and cooking and you aren’t providing me with either so what’s the point of you?” I knew. I just knew that this was the day I had to stand up. He said he still expected me to go to lunch with him with his parents. I went and all the time I knew. I was ending it. I cried outside during the meal. I went back inside and tears kept running down my face but no one said a thing. I got back in his care and I was numb. My daughter was with me when we entered the house and my strength came from somewhere. I said “You have to leave. I don’t want to call the police but you do have to leave.” My daughter was screaming and crying and clinging to him. But I stayed firm and repeated myself.
He stormed out. I think he probably expected to be back the next day. He commanded me to book him a room in a hotel. I did. I was still being controlled. The next day he said it wasn’t a good enough hotel room and I should get another. I was still being controlled.
I took him in briefly in at one low point for me a year after this when he was becoming worrying in his addictions and I felt I had to help him for the sake of my daughter. Incidentally she begged me not to. She had realised life was much better without him around. It was a foolish move and I was soon hoping to die again. I became depressed with him around. I stopped being able to speak much. He eventually left again. I think he felt he had won at this point. He found a new woman.
The abuse didn’t completely stop. It never does. But I was free.
I found my Helen again and I loved her so hard. We were inseparable and went all over the place together. Oh the laughter. I met Sidekick. We got married. I lost Helen to cancer. I got cancer. Life is up and down. Life is still life after you’ve been abused. It isn’t suddenly perfect.
But I smile every single day at the sky that I am now free to look at and I am free under it. The bike that I am free to ride. The things I am free to say. Like this.
The rest of the life I have left, and oh it is such a beautiful life, is devoted to making sure other women can be as happy as I am now. I ride for you. I ride for the sisters who didn't make it.
Love Jean Hatchet. (Vonny)
