I know how it feels to be trapped at home with your abuser
By: Susie Beever
Tags: Mental Health, Feminism, Domestic Violence, Domestic Abuse, Relationships

I know how it feels to be trapped at home with your abuser susie beever Feb 18·6 min read

Anyone can end up in a toxic relationship — and it’s terrifying

Picture: Canva

As a journalist, I’ve written countless stories about domestic violence, sexual abuse and men who abuse positions of power and trust. One of the golden rules in my industry is to never make the story about yourself. But what do you do when the person you’re interviewing is telling you how they felt terrified in their own home, and all you can think is, ‘I know exactly how that feels’?

This story has been nagging at me like a pet nuzzling at my arm for a while, but I’ve decided to just tell it. Not to point a finger, but to serve as a reminder of how common domestic abuse and toxic relationships are. To society, a woman who has faced domestic abuse is the archetypal female victim, sitting in a darkened room, head in hands, hiding bruises under fluffy cardies, depicted in the media in silhouette form. Not a twenty-something-year-old in a stable job who is outspoken and determined about what she wants out of life.

Wrong.

I’m here to tell you that you probably know someone right now who is or has been in some form of an abusive or toxic relationship. They’re the women helping you at the self-service checkout, the woman who doesn’t realise she’s on mute on a Zoom call, or maybe the woman carrying out your smear test. I say women, because if you do know a victim, it’s far more likely than not that she’s a woman. One in three females have experienced intimate partner violence, according to a recent survey by Yves Saint Laurent and Women’s Aid.

Over the past 12 months we’ve been bombarded with grim statistics and headlines about domestic abuse to the point that — as with most grim news now — we are numb. But after FKA Twigs bravely spoke to Elle magazine this week about being in an abusive relationship, I felt compelled. So I wanted to take a moment to articulate, first person, what it’s like to feel unsafe at home. To be treading on eggshells in the place where others put up their feet. To feel truly socially isolated.

I don’t have any physical bruises or scars to show for being in an ultimately toxic and psychologically abusive relationship with Harry*, but I think about it almost every day. In her interview, twigs states how ‘if you put a frog in a boiling pot of water, it’s going to jump out straightaway. Whereas if you put a frog in cool water and heat it up slowly, that frog is going to boil to death.’ I felt that. With Harry, the relationship was great. I was young, not naïve, but not worldly either. But as things began to break down, there grew tiny acts of control and comments which, somehow — and you can never put your finger on exactly how, make you feel small and stupid. Being the butt of the joke. Being pressured into doing things you don’t want to do, but being gaslit into thinking ‘that’s the reality of being in an adult relationship’. Being forced to hold his hand to put on a masquerade. It ended with me fleeing my home in fear for my safety after he yanked a pan of boiling water from a hob and hurled it at me.

But what happened in the interim? My relationship had already broken down and it was not amicable. Arguments had descended into screaming matches in which I was reminded just how much I was hated and that I should kill myself. Somewhere, I still have the recordings in my phone. Snide remarks making me feel stupid had turned into full blown insults. It was moving things around in my bedroom. It was shaming me for being on my period. It was banning me from certain rooms in the house. It was hacking into my laptop and disabling the internet. It was following me to the gym. It was constant servings of guilt-tripping smothered in pathos, manipulating me into thinking I was some nefarious villain. The archetypal bitch. That I had scribbled over his painstakingly drawn-up plans like a messy child with crayons. And it was almost always followed by self-serving apologies.

I was lucky though. This was only a relatively short but tough episode of my life, and escaping each day to work or the gym meant I wasn’t locked inside. I am in the privileged position of being financially independent, having a car and no children, and having a family to whom I could escape. Many, many victims have none of these and feel they have no option but to stay. Add to that the fact the vast majority of them are living this 24/7 now. No one is seeking refuge in the gym or pitching up at their parents’ house — makeup smeared down their cheeks and with just the clothes they are wearing — anytime soon. Home is the safest place to be right now, but for some it’s a war zone strewn with hidden grenades.

After the dust settles, it’s easy to assume that people who have experienced toxic relationships just move on with their lives and no longer have to be frightened — like Julia Roberts escaping to the quiet suburb in Sleeping With The Enemy. Sometimes control continues long after a relationship is over. Months after I moved back to my parents’, I received a birthday present from Harry. A personalised notebook, complete with a letter of apology that said he would continue to send me a present every year from now on, and that there was nothing I could do about it. There was. I burned the letter and moved out. The notebook was used to write down all the reasons I had made the right decision in leaving.

It took years to trust anyone. I know that’s a cliché, but sometimes things are clichés because they are the simplest ways people can describe confused and entangled experiences which are intricately different for everyone but with the same common denominator.

So my purpose in writing this is not to paint myself as a victim or garner sympathy, because although one of the darkest chapters of my life, I’m actually glad it happened. I now know that if a situation is toxic, it’s time to get out. I also know that this can happen to anyone. Naïve or worldly, dependent or independent, single parent or childless, young or old, unemployed or CEO. And, I’m sorry to say, there is a good chance it’s happening right now to somebody you know. A friend, a relative, a sibling, a colleague. Someone you admire on social media and whose life you wish you had. Society has always turned a blind eye to domestic abuse with our “what happens behind closed doors” mentality and the way we downplay celebrated figures who are known to have been abusive as merely “problematic”. We still jokingly refer to sleeveless vests for men as “wife beaters” and we laugh at marital abuse as entertainment in Victorian seaside puppet shows. We think of perpetrators of abuse as men with mummy issues, dictated by principles of toxic masculinity and usually with a can of Fosters in their left hand and the TV remote in the other — not as the likeable and charming people they usually are in real life. An abuser is just as likely to be in a suit as a gravy-stained vest.

If you think your relationship is toxic, here is a checklist compiled by the brilliant Yorkshire-based charity IDAS on the components of a healthy relationship. Call out your friends if they make disparaging jokes about their partners, and listen if you think they are unhappy.

Now, more than ever, we need to stop giving these people a place to hide.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.