A huge sign that you are in an abusive relationship is that the person abusing you tries to isolate you. This is usually before any physical violence has started, but not always. In my case it was before he started hitting me. Why didn’t I see this as a sign or at the very least, [...]

In the 16 years that have passed since I left an abusive relationship I have thought on many occasions it was like being in a cult. So I’ve been doing some research on cults and what causes people to join them and came across this paper written by Fanita English, M.S.W. In it she makes [...]

My daughter turns 19 in just a few days. I look at the young woman she is now and I am so amazed. She is full of confidence, energy, and joy. She has a zest for living and reaching for her dreams. I think about the young woman I was at 19, and the contrast [...]

I had a most unpleasant interaction with a man who beat up his fiancee in the comments of this post. My goal with this blog is to understand why I was a willing participant in a sick relationship that nearly took my life. Not to explain the viewpoint of someone who was willing to kill [...]

When I think back on the abusive relationship I was in, I wonder at how addicted we were to the sickness that permeated out relationship. I often claimed to fear him and hate him and want to get away from him. He often claimed to hate me and want to kill me; it was like [...]

I remember one time the abusive man I was involved with told me he hated me in front of one of my friends and I actually laughed it off like it was a joke. I was so surprised at how shocked she was, like doesn’t every one’s boyfriend say they hate them sometimes? That’s how [...]

A frequent email I get is a question from a woman asking me how to leave an abusive relationship while causing minimal havoc or drama for the child or children involved. I am always stunned and surprised by this question, because living in the situation is already causing extreme damage and havoc to the children, [...]

I read this over at Why Can’t the Past Just Die? a blog on abuse recovery I recently came across: For those of us who have grown up in families where there was abuse, neglect, alcohol/drug addiction, mental illness or any other circumstances that can create the kind of fear that may distort or prevent [...]

This month in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month What About Our Daughters is featuring posts from Black men on the subject of DV. Another brave brother has agreed to wade into the fray. This week’s post is courtesy of Gunfighter. Here’s a snippet: Instead of raw numbers, I am going to talk about DV [...]

What do you do? I have a sister who is involved with an abusive man. I am so hurt over this. It’s one thing to talk about what happened to me, I’m re-hashing it over the distance of 15 years. It’s all fine and dandy to post advice on the blog and via email to [...]

Johanna Orozco is a young woman who was raped and then shot in the face by a former abusive boyfriend. She is 18-years-old. She survived being shot but the lower half of her face is destroyed. The Plain Dealer has been doing a series of stories about this young woman and what happened to her, [...]

It is hard for me to understand how/why I was in this sort of relationship. But when I was in an abusive relationship, I had a totally different spin on things. I can’t describe it other to say that it is like being brainwashed or hypnotized or something, like being in a cult, but if [...]

I wish I were a strong woman, but I am not. I don’t think I have the inner strength and mental stability that most women have. Part of the reason I stayed with the man who abused me was because I was not strong. I was so afraid of the world, of making decisions, of [...]

I wore my broken heart like a badge This was how I used to be. I was such a martyr. It was like I thought people would like me better or think better of me the more I suffered or something. I really got a lot emotionally out of having people pity me or feel [...]

I am getting my story out in bits and pieces…truthfully it is very hard to re-visit the mental state I was in at the time but I am finding it therapeutic. I left after a ‘minor’ beating, meaning no skin breaking/bleeding,and no kicking. He ‘just’ pushed me into a wall, smacked me really hard several [...]

When I think about being with somebody who abused me I wonder why I stayed. There are many reasons why, so many I need to break them up into separate posts. Here’s one reason: I stayed because I had extremely low self-esteem and believed everything bad he said about me before he even said it. [...]

I am tired of feeling haunted by this experience. I’m tired of the flashbacks and the quiet uneasy feeling of never feeling safe. I started sleep with a knife under my pillow again, and I begged my husband to keep a gun in the house. I don’t even ‘like’ guns but there it is. When [...]

It was December 1989 and cold. We were on the highway driving back from somewhere in his old rusty car when the car started making noises. He pulled over and the car rattled to a stop. He got out and started messing around under the hood. Then he came back to the car and told [...]