CCChat-Magazine_Issue-13

So you are talking about psychological
abuse?
Yes, definitely. Nowadays of course, I know it to
have been textbook psychological and economic
abuse.
So in 2013 you read ‘Not Too Posh to Punch’
and it brought it all to the fore for you?
Yep, the article was (as, sadly, is still too often the
case) about physical violence, hence the word
‘punch’ in the title, but it was tackling a taboo
about who it happens to. More importantly, it
made mention, even though this was still two
years before the Coercive Control legislation was
passed, of the, then, recent change in March
2013 to the non-statutory cross-government
definition to include controlling behaviour. It was
an ah-ha moment for me as it came to my
attention exactly at time when I was seriously
struggling with life.
Tell me more.
So, I entered into this relationship with this
charming lawyer. He was older than me and
because of his maturity and the profession you
automatically assume integrity and honesty –
especially if that’s what they are telling you. He
was very clear he was only looking for something
serious.. However, the way this relationship
unfolded was so insidious - in fact almost sinister.
I now look back and feel I was targeted. I can only
describe it to people as like being caught up in in
a spin drier. You know, one that spins you wildly
then slowly turns everything this way, then that,
then suddenly gives a final super-fast spin. It was
like that. It was the gradual, yet seemingly
random, wearing down of my sense of reality, my
will and my spirit: the lies and gaslighting, the
cognitive dissonance, the smears, the intermittent
physical violence. It still makes me shudder to
think how under his control I became. It was very
different to my father’s abuse too as he was totally
inconsistent.
“I still have a great deal of disbelief about this”
Still struggling with being a child of an
abusive parent you mean?
No. I still have a great deal of disbelief about this,
but I was struggling with an abusive partner.
Somehow, even though I had, by then, worked
through all my parental issues, I had still managed
to swop a childhood with an abusive father for a
relationship with someone who gaslighted and
controlled me, to the point that I didn’t recognise
myself. It shook me to my core. In fact it collapsed
my very foundations because he was my first
partner after my long (and happy) marriage ended
and it came out of left field. My marriage had
ended really amicably by most people’s standards
- and at my behest. Even so, I’d deliberately taken
a few years out to ensure that I was healed from
that and not on any rebound. Plus, I’d already
completed years and years of therapy,
psychology courses, residential courses like the
Hoffman Process and been deep ‘down the rabbit
hole’. Indeed, by the time I met this partner I had
been coaching others for a living for a number of
years and was pretty respected for my advice
about the importance of good values and solid
self-worth. So, if anyone was the very definition of
‘sorted and ‘self-aware’ at that stage, it was me.
It was the never knowing which way was up or
which way I was going to be ‘spun’ next (or why),
that so destabilised me. This along with the fact
that he had cleverly coerced me into a position
where I lost my financial independence, while
swearing that he had my back and asking me to
trust him, destroyed my equilibrium. In fact it had
followed an exact pattern. He put me way up on a
pedestal and adored me, then started devaluing
me in private so that I lost my confidence, coerced
me to keep spending money, then triangulated
and engineered me to cast him aside when I’d run
out of money. I felt like I’d been in a war - totally
shell-shocked. If it had just been violence, I may
have easily recovered. The problem is with the
economic abuse, it follows you into the future. I
knew I’d never be able to recoup what I’d lost. By
far the worst of it though was the post-separation
control. That truly ‘did me in’. No one should be
able to physically abuse, coerce and control a
women with a young teenage child and then use
the law to avoid accountability and to perpetrate
further psychological abuse. He tried. He used
legal letters to try and silence me and threats of
huge cost sanctions if I spoke out. The coercive
control law couldn’t be used as it only came on
the books in late 2015.
Making The Invisible Visible