It was November 2018.
I woke up on the floor after sleeping in a room in my house that I used as my office, instead of sleeping in my bedroom, where he was sleeping.
I felt scared, afraid to leave the room and confront the situation ahead of me, treading on eggshells as always and feeling like a shell of my former self. 🐚
It wasn’t unusual to be met with passive aggressiveness, being completely ignored for days on end until he needed something (usually money).
We’d been on/off for the entire eight years together; this was the seventh and final time I left him.
It takes an average of seven times to leave an abusive relationship, so I fit the statistics pretty well there.
I’d spent those years focusing on burying myself in my work, which has become my respite from my home life.
I was working full time as a parole officer, funnily enough being put in the role of being an expert in family violence while experiencing domestic abuse at home. 😖
I was also running a business working seven days a week, sometimes starting at 6am, finishing at 8.30pm, paying all the bills because he “never had any money” (even though he could buy booze every week, a new car, a dirt bike, a road bike, a boat…
I felt sick every time I tried to confront the issue of money, feeling like I was begging for him to help at times even though he was responsible for half the bills… and yet he always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t contribute.
He said to me once “you used to be fun, Carly”…. Well, the life I was living at that point didn’t feel very fun anymore. 😭
While he accumulated more dogs, I paid for all their food and vet bills.
While he sat there drinking on a Sunday watching TV, I’d realise I’d be the one to have to go out and get my stepson food for his school lunch, as well as drop him off at school and pick him up – an hour and a half away from where we lived at the time.
There were so many red flags all the way through that I ignored because (I thought) I was in love. 🚩
Everything I did was always wrong, and he told me regularly.
You’re hanging the washing up wrong.
Why are you putting the bins out like that?
You’re fucking up the dinner. 🍽️
Even now, six years on, I still hear him in my head whenever I put the bins out. 🚮
The first time I cooked after I left him, I cried and panicked I was fucking it up.
When I left that relationship I was $53,000 in debt, my house was in mortgage collections, I had multiple credit cards and loans and a new unfinished house build with concrete flooring, no landscaping and no window coverings.
But you know what? When I met him a month after moving to Australia from London, I thought he was awesome.
He felt like a massive upgrade on my last three year relationship with a man who had four manic episodes and serious psychosis plus major depression during our time together.
He was unwell, I have compassion for him, but he was also very manipulative at times and threatened suicide, knowing this was a trigger for me not to leave. 🤯
That relationship was spent with him very paranoid, suggesting I was leading guys on when I spoke to them, calling me at work to make sure I was there.
I was training to be a probation officer during the first year of our relationship and we were being trained in domestic violence.
I remember seeing the power and control wheel for the first time and was shocked to realise that I was in that kind of relationship.
My friends thought I was crazy for staying with him.
I started isolating myself from a lot of people and other than what my friends saw, I kept a lot hidden from them.
This became a pattern in all my abusive relationships.
Living with someone in psychosis is a very scary existence, with no peace and very little sleep.
And yet he had felt like a massive upgrade on my first ever love, with a man a few years older than me who was fucking a 54 year old behind my back for at least the last couple of years of our relationship (I finally left him when I was 21, with extremely damaged self esteem).
I learned later he was cheating on me for most of our four years together.
When I became suspicious of what he was telling me, he turned it back on me and told me I was being paranoid and crazy.
Interestingly I later found out this is called being DARVO’d – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
22 years on…. and they’re still together.
So, not crazy after all.
After I left my ex in 2018, I felt relieved.
I started to put my broken pieces back together and feel myself again. 💔
Only a few months later a friend introduced me to a guy she really vouched for, and before I knew it, I was in another relationship even though I had zero intention of getting into one.
It was seriously intense and almost love at first sight, with him saying he was going to marry me three weeks into it. 💍
But this quickly became a very codependent relationship, one that brought out my helper/rescuer side, one that wasn’t good for me.
One minute he’s love bombing me and declaring his undying love… the next minute he’s messaging me thinking he’s messaging a mate and saying how much he’s missing his ex-wife. 🤯
Next thing I know, one of my friends is telling me to “tell ya man to get off Tinder”.
I was so taken by him I thought it must be a mistake, maybe he just forgot to delete his profile.
But I was wrong.
I stayed committed to making it work.
Until he lost his shit on a massive drinking bender, smashing stuff around the house, calling me a c*nt one minute saying he wished he’d never met me, then asking me to come for a cuddle.
I finally got to sleep, and woke up with him next to me. I felt terrified. 😦
I couldn’t find my beloved bulldog for ages, until I found her cowering in my wardrobe, shaking. 🐶
I left and went to stay with a friend.
It was a whirlwind eight months that fucked with my heart and broke me like I’d never been broken before. 🌪️
All my core wounds of abandonment and rejection came up.
I was 38 by then.
I didn’t trust myself anymore.
Didn’t trust my judgment.
How could I?
I didn’t want to start all over again, I didn’t have it in me. I felt so broken. 🫠
What was so wrong with me that I kept getting sucked in to relationships where I was cheated on, mentally, financially and emotionally abused, coercively controlly and manipulated…and WHY THE FUCK did I keep letting them treat me like that?
Especially because I have THE BEST role models in my parents relationship – they’re on a pedestal for me in terms of the kind of relationship I wanted in my own life.
I felt so lost, confused, angry, sad, resentful, bitter, betrayed, in limbo, unsure of myself, I had zero self worth, self love or self esteem.
Where to from here?
From that first serious relationship at 17 all the way to 38, I realised I’d never been truly loved and never felt safe with that person.
If you put a frog in boiling water, it’ll jump straight back out to save its life. 🐸
But if you put a frog in cold water, and slowly bring it to the boil, it’ll boil to death.
This is what coercively controlling relationships are like.
They reel you in with love bombing and before you know it, you’re in love and committed.
It’s then way easier to ignore the red flags. 🚩
The red flags keep getting bigger.
Then they start telling you not to wear that, not to see that person, not to trust that friend.
They isolate you.
They control you.
And they turn you into a shell of yourself. 🐚
They don’t need to hit you for it to be abuse.
They just need to find where you’re vulnerable so they can coercively control you.
If this rings a bell, drop me a message and let’s chat as I have something huge coming up for anyone that sees themselves in what I’ve just shared.
Sending you the biggest hugs and loads of love,
“Love Coach Carly! I followed quietly, just watching for a while before reaching out. Carly has helped me to work through some limiting beliefs and thoughts and helped me to reflect on what was holding me back, and where I was being emotionally unavailable. Thanks Carly; wish I hadn’t watched and just dived in earlier!” – Tam W, Perth
