What being in a controlling and abusive relationship taught me

Looking in the mirror and into the future, I felt an optimism that was new and strange to me.

Best of all, I had a girlfriend. My first real relationship and the first queer girl I had ever been friends with. With that came not only the excitement of first love, but the heady mix of comfort and wonder at discovering our shared experiences, fears and hopes as young gay women. Like coming home and travelling to a whole new world all at once.

But the higher you climb, the harder you fall, they say. My crash back to reality was a sore one, with no visible scars but wounds so deep they would take years to heal.

Last week, Scottish Women’s Aid launched a month-long campaign called to amplify experiences of domestic abuse in Scotland. The campaign, called #HerFreedomScotland, asks supporters to share messages about what freedom from domestic abuse means to them, alongside photographs of shoes in a space that symbolises this freedom.

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This came at an interesting time for me because I had already been reflecting on that very question.

My first relationship of 18 months – plus an additional year of remaining “friends” – was incredibly controlling and abusive, and in the years since, far too many women close to me have experienced all manner of traumas because of the behaviour of abusive partners.

And although vast cultural, political, and legal changes have taken place in my lifetime to better reflect and protect against the realities of domestic abuse, there is still so much more that we can do.

When the cracks began to appear in the perfect, shiny relationship I had constructed in my mind – or, perhaps more accurately, that had been constructed for me – I had little to compare it to.

I knew not one other person in a same-sex relationship, and there was something about the feeling of being two solitary queer girls in a heteronormative society that made the “us against the world” intensity of our relationship seem almost natural – for a while.

Abuse in relationships takes many forms other than physical (Image: PA)

When I was eight, my mum began her career of more than two decades as a support worker with local Women’s Aid centres. So, I was taught about domestic abuse from a young age.

By the time I found myself cutting off friends, turning down invitations, changing my clothes, deleting pictures, anxiously checking my phone to make sure there wasn’t a text I hadn’t replied to, handing over my passwords so that none of my online communications were private, and crying on a near daily basis, I had already learned that abuse was neither only nor always physical, and that, ultimately, it was about control.

Discussions about women whose every move was controlled by their partners, and the calculating and dangerous men who harmed them, were commonplace in my household. I wrote in my diary with pens lying around the house embossed with the words “Domestic abuse: There’s no excuse”.

The rapidity with which this person took over my life forced me to choose between her and everyone and everything else; decimated my fragile self-esteem and wellbeing. I was making excuses for her all the time. She was going through a lot. She needed me. She knew that it was wrong. She couldn’t help it.

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Part of this was just the nature of how coercive control operates. A tale as old as time and one which is never as easy to define when you’re living it. It’s all too common for people to question if what they’re experiencing is really “that bad”. Another part of it, though, was that I wasn’t sure if what I was dealing with could ever be “that bad” if the person doing it was a woman. That wasn’t part of the script I had been taught about domestic abuse, or about relationships more generally.

When I reached my rock bottom, in desperate need of support and advice, I reached out – of all places – to the AfterEllen members’ forum. This was a website, originating in the United States, for fans of lesbian pop culture. I needed to hear from other women with experience of same-sex relationships in order to understand how my experience “fit”.

Looking back, this is one of the single biggest things I hope has changed for young people today, but on which I am certain we still need to work. In order to break free of abusive relationships, people first need understanding – within themselves and from those around them – of what a healthy relationship should look like.

An absence of representation and open discussion of queer relationships can leave people more vulnerable to abuse, and leave them isolated when what they need most is to know they are not alone.

When I checked back the next morning on that forum to see 18 replies from queer women urgently telling me to get out of this relationship and expressing genuine concern for my safety, it felt like a confirmation that my feelings were valid and that I deserved better. That made a world of difference to me.

In the years since, whenever I have seen someone I care about in the grips of a partner’s control, their sense of self and connection to the world around them fading, I have remembered that moment.

As silly as it might sound because I was so young, there was a time when I thought I would never get out of that situation. That fear, and the isolation that had been imposed on me, made me question if life was even worth living.

So, as hard as it is to know that everyone must reach their own moment of clarity – and safety – to leave an abusive relationship, I have always sought to share one message – as long as you’re alive, there is always another life to live.

Ultimately, that knowledge is what freedom from domestic abuse means to me. This, really, is the reason I am writing this now – because if one person can read this today and think to themselves “I deserve to – and can – live a life free from abuse”, then this might just be the most important thing I’ve written.