I became very close friends with a woman who had spent 23 years in an abusive marriage. She had fled at dead of night with nothing but a few smuggled items, leaving a son and two daughters behind. Her husband was a vicious, manipulative bi-polar sufferer. Who had not only run over her cat, given away her most treasured dog, beaten her black and blue but had also managed to turn her daughters against her so that they would not go with her. Her son had to move in with friends because males over 14 are not allowed in a refuge.

In order to be safe, she not only had to leave her home and all her friends, but she had to leave her children behind as well.

When I met her she had already been at the refuge for three months and in that time she hadn't seen her youngest daughter. This hurt her very much. She couldn't see her just in case she let something slip to her father about where her mum was living. She just couldn't take that risk.

He had threateened to kill her if he found her and she had every reason to believe this was possible. He had tried every method he could to try to track her down and resorted to every form of emotional blackmail to get her to come back. Using her children as pawns in his controlling games.

She was very traumatised.

This was a professional woman who had run a care home, worked all the hours God sent to keep her family (he wasn't working) and yet she had put up with years of abuse.

Why, you might ask?

Because she felt sorry for him, because she believed in her vows of for better or for worse, because he had done such a good job on her that she no longer knew her own mind?

He had managed to make her believe she was in the wrong all the time.
He told her every day of their twenty three year marriage that she was fat and ugly and thick and that no-one else would ever want her. In the end she believed him.

She was not allowed to sit in the same room as him. He cut her off from nearly all her friends and when she was at work he would make her come home at lunch-time to cook him dinner. He would ring her at work and threaten her if she didn't come home immediately and so she had to make up excuses why she had to pop out at a moments notice. She was in constant fear of losing her job over this.

She was suffering from OCD. Constantly cleaning and tidying.

Interestingly three of the women I met at the refuge also suffered from this dis-order.

One area of their life where they believe they have control I suppose. Ironically, the disorder, without them realising it, soon begins to take control of them.

She tried to get him sectioned once. She failed. When she was waiting for the doctors verdict he told to her in whispers what she could expect from him when she got home. After that particular beating she left him.

She returned a week later when her daughters begged her to come home. Telling her he had changed and that she was cruel for leaving him when he was ill.....