The Things I Didn’t Realise Were Domestic Abuse Until Years Later
There are some memories that don’t hit you until years later. Not because you’ve forgotten them. They’re still there somewhere, tucked away in the back of your mind. They just don’t seem important at the time.
Then one day you’re watching a television programme, chatting to a friend or reading something online and, completely out of nowhere, one of those memories pops back into your head.
You stop what you’re doing for a second and think, “Hang on… that wasn’t normal.” I’ve had that happen more times than I can count. Sometimes it’s something really small. A comment that was made. A look across the room. An argument that, at the time, I thought had happened because I’d done something wrong.
It’s only now, looking back with many years of distance between then and now, that I can see those moments for what they really were.
What I thought domestic abuse was
When people hear the words domestic abuse, they often picture something obvious. They picture bruises, shouting, smashed plates or neighbours calling the police.
That does happen, and it’s heartbreaking, but that’s not the whole picture. Sometimes abuse is so subtle that you don’t even realise it’s changing you.
It’s like someone slowly turning down the brightness on your life. You don’t notice it getting darker because it happens so gradually. Then one day you look around and realise you can barely recognise yourself anymore.
I certainly didn’t wake up one morning thinking, “I’m in an abusive relationship.”
If someone had asked me back then whether I thought I was being abused, I honestly don’t know what I’d have said. Probably no.
Because I thought abuse looked different, I thought it looked like the previous abusive relationship I had been in. I thought I’d know if it was happening again; I assumed it would be similar. I thought someone else would notice.
Instead, I spent years explaining things away, making excuses and telling myself every couple argued. I was often convincing myself I was just too sensitive or just didn’t have a sense of humour. But that’s what he told me; it doesn’t mean it was true.
Believing that if I could only become a slightly better partner, everything would be okay. Looking back now, I wish I could give that younger version of me the biggest hug. Not because she was weak, but because she was trying so hard. She was trying to make someone happy, to stop arguments, to keep the peace, and just trying to be enough.
She had absolutely no idea she was slowly disappearing in the process and becoming a shadow of her former self.
I honestly thought I was the difficult one
I used to spend hours replaying conversations in my head. Have you ever done that? Not just thinking about an argument, but analysing every single word as though you were trying to solve a puzzle.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Perhaps I sounded rude.”
“I should have kept quiet.”
“Maybe I overreacted.”
I’d lie in bed going over conversations again and again, trying to work out how I could have handled them differently. At the time, I thought that was just what relationships were like. I thought everyone analysed every disagreement.
I thought everyone worried about upsetting their partner. It never crossed my mind that I was carrying the entire emotional weight of the relationship on my own shoulders. The funny thing is, if a friend had told me they were doing exactly the same thing, I’d probably have told them to stop being so hard on themselves. Yet I couldn’t offer myself that same kindness.
Instead, every disagreement became another opportunity to find fault with myself. It didn’t matter what had actually happened. I’d always manage to convince myself, or he would convince me, I’d somehow caused it.
When you hear something often enough, you start believing it. You stop trusting your own version of events. Eventually, you don’t even need someone else to criticise you anymore because you’ve become so good at doing it yourself. That, more than anything else, is something I wish I’d recognised sooner.
I didn’t realise how much of myself I’d quietly given away
Nobody ever sat me down and announced that I wasn’t allowed to make my own decisions anymore. If they had, I’d probably have laughed and said there was no way that could happen. Unfortunately, that’s not how these things happen; it’s much quieter than that and so gradual.
It starts with little things, tiny compromises, tiny changes and gradually putting them before you. You decide it’s easier to let them choose where you go for dinner because you can’t face another disagreement.
Before you know it this becomes how everything is decided, what film you watch, what you wear, who you see and how you spend your money. None of those decisions seems particularly important on their own.
If someone had said to me, “Today you’re going to lose your confidence completely,” I’d never have believed them. But nobody says that. Instead, confidence disappears one tiny compromise at a time.
Looking back now, I honestly don’t know when I stopped trusting my own judgement. I just know that one day I realised I was thinking about someone else’s reaction before I’d even thought about what I wanted.
Even after the relationship ended, I found myself doing it.
I’d stand in a shop panicking about what to cook for tea. Worrying that what I choose won’t be right or that I won’t cook it adequately. It didn’t matter than he wasn’t around anymore, in my head I was rubbish and I would mess it up. It’s amazing how long those habits stick around.
Sorry started every sentence
I still apologise far too much; ask anyone who knows me. Someone walks into me and I apologise. Someone interrupts me while I’m talking and somehow I apologise. Most people laugh it off, but every now and then I catch myself doing it and wonder where that habit really came from. The truth is, I know exactly where it came from.
For years, saying sorry felt like the safest option. Sometimes it genuinely was my fault. Most of the time it wasn’t but it didn’t really matter. Apologising became less about taking responsibility and more about trying to stop things getting worse.
If I apologised quickly enough, maybe the atmosphere would lift, and the tension would disappear. Maybe we’d move on, and he wouldn’t take it out on me that something wasn’t perfect.
The strange thing is, I didn’t even notice I was doing it it became completely automatic. I remember apologising because I was poorly and hadn’t dusted the table. Imagine that for a second. Not apologising because I’d passed a bug on to someone. Just apologising for being ill and the fact that because of that the house wasn’t spotless.
If you’d asked me then whether that was normal, I’d probably have shrugged. Now it breaks my heart a little because nobody should feel guilty for simply not being able to do everything.
Walking on eggshells doesn’t feel like walking on eggshells
People use that phrase all the time.
“I was walking on eggshells.”
I used to think it sounded dramatic but now I realise it describes exactly how life felt. The strange thing is, when you’re living it, it doesn’t feel dramatic at all. It just becomes your normal.
You notice things other people don’t, for example the way the front door closes or his footsteps on the stairs.
The expression on their face when they walk into the room can instantly tell you if it is going to be a good conversation or not. Without even realising it, you’re constantly collecting information because you’re trying to work out what sort of evening you’re about to have.
It’s exhausting and your body never really relaxes. You don’t even notice how tense you’ve become because you’ve been carrying that tension for so long.
When people talk about feeling “safe” in a relationship, I never really understood what they meant, not back then. Now I do; now I am in a completely different relationship, and I feel completely safe.
Safe isn’t never arguing, it is knowing an ordinary disagreement won’t leave you questioning your entire worth.
Safe is being able to say the wrong thing without wondering whether you’ll spend the next three days trying to make up for it.
Safe is being allowed to be human.
My world became smaller because of domestic abuse without me noticing
One of the saddest things, looking back, is how much of my life quietly disappeared, not overnight but over the years I didn’t realise quite how small my world became.
Nobody banned me from seeing people, not specifically. He didn’t lock me in the house as a previous partner had done. It was far more subtle than that. Sometimes going out just didn’t seem worth it. It was easier to cancel plans than deal with the atmosphere afterwards.
Sometimes I simply couldn’t face explaining where I’d been, who I’d seen or why I’d enjoyed myself. I didn’t want the accusations and arguments that came when I was home or the difficult conversations with friends about why I hadn’t driven there myself and had to be dropped off and collected.
Little by little, I stopped saying yes and friends stopped asking. Family saw less of me because when I did see them, I was often quiet and probably seemed disinterested. Looking back I think it was actually that I knew everything I said was being watched and would be criticised and pulled apart later.
My world became smaller and smaller, and because it happened so gradually, I barely noticed and certainly wouldn’t have considered it domestic abuse. That’s the frightening thing about emotional abuse. It quietly changes your life until your new normal would have seemed completely unbelievable a few years earlier.
I believed I was the problem
For years I genuinely believed that I was the problem. After all, if only I had made his cup of tea right, everything would be ok. Only it wasn’t just the cup of tea; I had to ensure the table was in the exact position on the rug, I had to only see approved friends, and I must have intimate time whenever it was requested.
By approved friends, I don’t mean I had a list; no, that would have been far too easy. Instead, I had to tell him who I was seeing and be dropped off to see them. If, when I arrived, there was someone I hadn’t said would be there, for example, if I was going to see my sister and I hadn’t said her boyfriend would be there, he would be moody and nasty until I apologised for lying. I hadn’t lied, but that was how it was seen. These situations were regular.
If someone spoke to me in a shop, I had to be careful how I replied because I could easily be accused of flirting, so I had to be careful what I said to them and if I smiled, for example. All these things are exhausting when they happen regularly; it is domestic abuse. You may not see it, but it is.
Leaving wasn’t where the healing started
People often think the story ends when someone leaves a relationship with domestic abuse. I wish it did. Leaving was one of the hardest things I ever did, but it wasn’t the finish line. In many ways, it was the beginning.
For around a month after I ended the relationship, I was bombarded with messages and visits from him trying to get me to reconsider. He tried to manipulate people to believe I was a bad person and thought that by doing that I would want to end it and would get back with him. It was relentless, and the police had to be involved.
The police classified me as high risk from him after working through domestic abuse questions with me. He had threatened me with weapons before (and had those in his possession), as well as having a history of abuse in a previous relationship; it was clear he wasn’t a nice man. Not one of those things would be obvious by looking at him. He looked normal. The relationship from the outside probably looked normal. No one would have known that he had threatened me with guns, why would they? I never saw anyone on my own anymore, and even when I did, I never imagined anyone would believe me; after all, everyone seemed to like him.
Finding myself again
After leaving the relationship, I had to work out who I was again and not who he had wanted me to be.
The real me took time, years, if I’m honest. In a new relationship, I was learning that it was ok to disagree and ok to accidentally burn the dinner. There were times when I would apologise for nothing and my lovely partner had to remind me I didn’t have to apologise. Those moments probably sound tiny. To me, they felt enormous.
Because every single one of them was a little reminder that I was finding my way back to myself. Every disagreement we had and got through was like a reminder that my life is different now.
Looking back now
For a long time, I was angry with myself. How did I not see it? Why didn’t I leave sooner? Why did I put up with so much?
Those questions used to go round and round in my head.
Now I don’t ask them anymore. Instead, I look back with compassion. I wasn’t stupid or weak, and I wasn’t choosing that life because I enjoyed it. It was abuse; I had been controlled and was trapped in a relationship that wasn’t safe or healthy.
If you’ve found this article because you’re looking back at your own relationship and wondering whether some of it was abuse, I can’t answer that for you.
But I can tell you this.
If you’re suddenly remembering things years later and seeing them differently, you’re not imagining it. Sometimes healing gives us the distance we need to finally understand what we couldn’t see while we were simply trying to survive.
And if there’s one thing I’d love my younger self to know, it’s this…
She deserved so much more than just surviving. She deserved to feel safe. She deserved to laugh without worrying. She deserved to be loved without having to earn it.
So did I, and so does everyone else.
A few of my articles you may want to read
Here I have a few articles that may help if you want to read more about my story, or perhaps you are in a similar position and would like help to move on.
My history of abuse
These are previous posts I have written sharing my experiences.
Another abuse experience
This is a male’s experience of domestic abuse from a female to a male.
Rebuilding confidence and self-esteem
If, like me, you have been a victim of domestic abuse, you may find that you are looking for support to move forward, increase your confidence and boost your self-esteem. My wellbeing section is perfect for this, but here are a few posts I recommend in particular.
