Surviving Intimate Relationship Violence

My story with Name started when I was in high school. The summer after my junior year, I accidentally commented gibberish on one of his posts, which led to him eventually messaging me. One thing led to another, and we ended up hanging out at my house. He came in and immediately wooed both me and my parents before spending hours talking with me in the backyard. I think that’s what made me fall for him in the first place—how easily we could talk. Months went by before we hung out again. By that point, we had been talking for two months—mostly on the phone, as he rarely spoke to me in person. When he came over, I could tell he was nervous. I knew he was either going to ask me out or put an end to whatever we were. He did the former. I said yes. He was everything I had ever wanted. He took me on all sorts of fun dates, picked me flowers, danced with me, and basically became the man I always dreamed of. Our "Phase One" started almost immediately after we started dating. Though I didn't know it at the time. He would ask for all of my spare time, and because I was young, and he was what I thought to be my first love, I let him take all of it. My parents could see that this was problematic and approached me about it several times. I, being a sixteen year old girl with mild rebellion issues, ended up ignoring their pleas. That was my first mistake. Soon, he started to pull away, making promises he wouldn’t keep. One instance was around prom—I had asked for a promposal, even though we had been dating, and he promised he would give me one. I waited and waited—leaving my car each day, going to lunch, lingering after school—hoping he would surprise me like he promised. But it never happened. In another instance, that school year, I tried to have lunch with him on several occasions, but he turned me down every time, saying he had other plans. I couldn’t see it at the time, but looking back, I think this was him testing my limits—seeing what I would put up with. Soon summer came and went, and my parents started noticing how Name was treating me, how disrespectful he was. They made me promise that we would break up, or I would not be allowed to attend college that upcoming semester. I was seventeen so they still had the ability to take that away. Well, I didn't listen. Yet another mistake. Name, his parents, and I came up with a plan to lie to my parents and pretend we weren’t dating until we got to college, where they wouldn’t know either way. The plan worked for a while, but it was later exposed when my roommate decided to text my mom about it. This sparked a new tension with my parents, resulting in isolation from them too, but I still can't decide if it's his fault or mine. Later that semester, he and I started to approach phase two. I think the first time I really felt the emotional slap to the face was when he promised me that he would take me on a lunch date the next day because I had been feeling down, and when the time came, he never showed up. Hours went by and I began to worry. I called and texted, no response. Finally, several hours after our date was planned he texted me, telling me that he had too much homework and that I shouldn't nag him. I was mad, just not enough to leave. Another mistake. The last instance before things really started to escalate was when he was back in our hometown for his brother’s football game. On the day he was coming back, he promised to take me out since he had been gone—and because I had just spent the weekend with my mother, who could barely look at me. Once again the time came and went and he never showed up. I would later come to find out something that would inevitably send our relationship into hell and turn him into the monster that he became. I was in my dorm when he got a text on his phone. I went to hand it to him and saw that it was from a girl he had been friends with since before high school. The message was a bit flirtatious, and despite my better judgment, I opened it—only to discover that every lunch he hadn’t spent with me, he had been spending with her. He had been buying her things and taking cutesy pictures of the two of them, which I later found saved in his 'Favorites' folder. I also learned that the reason he never showed up for our date the night he came back to college was because he had been with her at her college, taking her to lunch. With a little more digging, I found that he had been exchanging nude pictures with women online and was active on several dating apps. To say I was infuriated would be an understatement. I told him to leave, that I never wanted to see him again. But just before I shut him out for good, he started crying, swearing he would never do it again—and I believed him. By that point, I had already moved past phase one. I was dependent on him, and I didn’t have any real support outside of the relationship at the time. So, I took him back. That was my biggest mistake. Tensions were high, and we were arguing regularly. One time, it got so loud and intense that someone in the dorm called the cops, and we had to talk to them. Things simmered down after that, but I was still pretty messed up. He had been my everything, and he broke my heart. Soon after, I once again decided I couldn’t handle the pain of knowing he couldn’t love me, but something stopped me from leaving—his house burned down. We dropped everything, packed some bags, and went to the remnants of his home. He was distressed, so I put my feelings aside and focused on taking care of him and his family. During this time, I formed a bond with his patrents—my first reprieve in months. Things really calmed down after that, and I thought we were finally going to be okay. That summer, I moved in with his family. But then my parents started texting and calling me, telling me how horrible and ungrateful I was. They reinforced my already fragile self-confidence, and Name saw the opportunity and stepped in to take care of me, which brought us even closer. Then he started drinking, and he hurt me. I don’t really remember how the argument started, but I do remember how mad he was. I said something he didn’t like, and suddenly, I found myself being kicked off the bed. Literally. When I tried to get back on, he pushed me so hard that I hit the wall, broke the corner, and ended up with a nasty cut on my leg. I slept on the floor that night. The first time he hurt me wasn’t physically severe, just a cut, but the fact that he was willing to hurt me in the first place cracked something inside of me. I just couldn’t believe it. That was the start of many. Soon, I was hiding black eyes and bruises on my arms and legs. And the worst part? I didn’t even know it was wrong. In my head, I probably deserved it for getting riled up over so many stupid things. I mean, I obviously stayed with him, so how was he to blame. One instance I remember, well, I don't actually remember what happened. That's the funny thing about all of this, is that even though it was probably the worst thing I have ever faced in my life, I can't remember. Anyway, I do remember getting him a promise ring. I had wanted one, but he hadn't gotten me one, so I decided to surprise him and give him one first. That night, I found him looking at other girls. We fought. Once again, I 'tried' to leave, but then he started crying, saying he had been doing so well and that I just needed to give him another chance—and I did. That next year at college the first few months were great. Then Valentine's Day came. We had gone to dinner and had a wonderful night and he had been drinking but was still being so nice. When we got home, I mentioned engagement, and how we had been together for so long that I was ready, I didn't know how delusional I was. He got extra mad at that, and stormed off into the other room. I decided then it was a good time to whip out my new 'outfit' and try to make some sort of reprieve. It didn't work, he got more mad. So I changed into pajamas and told him I would be sleeping in the guest room. Oops. He grabbed me before I could leave and threw me into the nightstand. I laid there for a minute, and the next thing I remember, I was standing up with a headache, but I didn’t know why yet. Then there was blood. Blood on the walls, blood on the bed, blood on the floor, and blood on the Valentine's Day stuffed animals he had gotten me. I ran to the bathroom, crying hysterically because I didn’t know what was happening. I checked, and sure enough, he had cracked my head open. He came in and got even more angry because I was crying. He kept yelling for hours. He wouldn’t even let me leave to get band-aids, let alone see a doctor, so I had to hold my cut closed that night. The next morning, I wouldn't talk. I was scared and hurt. Of course, he didn’t remember because he had been drunk—he never remembered, because he was always drunk. Despite this, he saw the blood, saw me, and remorse—whether genuine or not—spread across his face. After that, he was amazing again, sending me into another spiral of confusion. Another instance a few months after that, we had once again gotten into an argument about something, probably something stupid, and I remember the look that crossed his face. I knew it was going to be a rough night. I ran. I ran to the bedroom, because in my head that was the best option at the time. I tried to cross over the bed and hide behind it, but I didn't make it far before he had made it into the room and grabbed me by the ankles. He tried to hold me down, but I fought. The next thing I remember was him biting my back—yes, biting. He broke the skin through my thick crewneck, and I had a scar for over a year after. When he bit me, I screamed. I wanted anyone to hear me, to save me. He stood up, and I thought I had scared him off. He yanked me off the bed and onto the hard concrete floor. I don't remember the next few minutes after that. After that small snippet of time, stuff started coming back, and it took me a moment to realize he was absolutely pounding into my back—punch after punch after punch. For some reason, this time I couldn't even find it in myself to scream. My precious dog then came in to save me and was punched himself. I think this struck something in Name because he stopped. He stood up, kicked me, lifted me by the hair, and said, "You're just a worthless bitch," then slammed my face back into the floor before spitting on me. I stayed there that night. The next morning I woke up to McDonald's Breakfast and a bouquet of flowers waiting for me. The most excruciating instance was that March. I had come to find out I was pregnant. This, despite the horrible circumstances, gave me so much hope. I waited a while to tell Name, because at this point, he was plowing through twenty-plus beers a night, plus scotch, plus brandy, plus whatever else he could get his hands on. I waited a couple weeks and at some point, he had laid off the drinking and had been fine, so we were just talking before bed, and I thought that things were looking up, that we could make it work. Then I said something, and he punched me. I ran to the bathroom, locked myself in, and found blood waiting for me. I lost the baby. No, he took my baby away from me. I can't remember much after that. We soon scheduled an OB/GYN appointment because the pain from the 'miscarriage' wouldn't go away. When I went in, I should have known it was going to end poorly because the nurse didn’t even ask if I was sexually active. When the doctor came in, he asked what brought me in, and I froze. I came up with some story about MMA club, a club I hadn’t attended in months, and mentioned I was feeling pain and that I had bled and wanted him to check it out. He didn’t. He said it was just abdominal bruising and that it wasn’t his problem. At this point things with Name had been too difficult to argue let alone formulate a conversation, so tensions went away, and I went back to his family's house that summer. That summer I had gotten a phone call, my dad had been arrested. And my mother, as much as I love her, doesn't handle pain well. She shut down, which meant that I had to help move everything from the closest thing to a childhood home I would ever have, to my moms new house. This was difficult because I was also struggling, but Name, being the valiant person he always was, helped me move everything out. The night after we finished, I had been so mad. I went into the bathroom and I threw my straightening iron to the ground. It broke and that caught Name's attention. He came in and made a joke about why we couldn't have nice things. I was in tears, and mad, so I asked him why he could never be there for me. He then came in for a hug. Well I thought it was for a hug. He grabbed my head and slammed his forehead right into my face, breaking my nose. After that, things got progressively worse until the last major thing he did. I remember, like always, I did or said something he didn’t like. He decided that was a good enough reason to pick me up by the neck and slam me into the doorframe. My head hurt so badly; I remember that much. But I couldn’t scream because I couldn’t breathe. He was squeezing so hard. I can remember it all so vividly, except for his face. I started to pass out, but just when I thought I was finished, his mom knocked, and he dropped me. Then I started screaming. He opened the door, and his mom came in. They started fighting, and he hit her. Name's dad came in and pulled him away, trying to get him to talk. Name's mom instantly became the center of attention, but later, we all talked, and Name's dad had told him he shouldn't hit girls. His mom told me it was my fault he did what he did because I started so many arguments. That was really the last big hurt he caused me. Of course there are tens of times if not more in there that he threw things at me, broke locked doors to get to me, beat me, and yelled at me for hours, but the beatings ended there. What do I remember feeling during that time? Honestly, I don’t remember feeling much for a long time. I was so messed up about it all. I remember hours where I would just stare at my hands, usually after a beating. I remember taking long showers that, in my head, helped wash what I was going through away. I remember spending days and days wishing he would just end it so I didn’t have to deal with him anymore. But honestly the worst part was after I left him. In May of 2024, he left for home early and I saw that as the perfect opportunity to end things. When I got home myself I had been in such a dark place, I was so depressed that people around me began noticing. My parents mostly. They still don't know anything about this though so I tried to be better in order to keep them separated from that part of my life. I continued long showers, and hours upon hours of just grieving the person I was before. Grieving my baby. Grieving everything. What has my healing journey looked like? Well, at first horrible. Like I said I didn't really feel much when I was with Name, but when I left? It hit me all at once. I remember feeling so lost, and so alone. I was the only one who knew what happened at first, I remember feeling so bitter that Name had memory loss when he drank, because I was stuck with every memory, and he wasn't. Eventually things started getting better though. I stopped replaying his hands around my neck or his fists in my back every time I closed my eyes. I stopped freaking out when people went for high-fives. I stopped flinching when ever I heard loud slamming or when someone started to yell. I started seeing the light in things, I learned to smile again. Looking back, I see pictures where I have a black eye or am twitching excessively from the trauma, and I still struggle to process that that was me. But now, I’ve found so much more joy in my everyday life. I’ve rekindled hobbies I had lost interest in for so long, I have an amazing roommate and best friend, and most importantly, I am able to have and maintain a romantic relationship again—a milestone I never thought I would reach. Sometimes, I still panic. I still have nightmares and go through periods where I zone out and vividly relive him hurting me. But it’s not nearly as bad now—which means it can only get better.