Moving On: Life After an Abusive Relationship

At some point in our lives, each of us will have an encounter with an abusive situation. You may not be the victim, but you will still be effected in some way by abuse.

When people think of abuse, they usually think about physical violence. However, abuse takes many different forms. There is verbal, emotional and sexual abuse. You can be stalked, tracked and even cyber stalked. People of both genders and from all walks of life can be victims of abuse. I should know it happened to me.

I had witnessed the effects of abuse before. I saw my friends and my students deal with the heartache and fallout. I never thought it would be me. I'm a twenty-something college educated girl with a pretty good start at a career in the academic world. I was pretty happy with my life when I met my ex-boyfriend.

It sounds cliche, but everything did start off well. He was bringing in decent money. He treated me well. He made me feel good about myself. I couldn't complain. Then things slowly fell apart. He became controlling. It was little things. We would only watch TV shows or movies he wanted to watch. Every time we got in my car, he would put one of his CDs in. He was critical of me. Nothing was quite up to his standards. He was negative about my career. He would have these wild mood swings. He threatened to kill himself. Anytime I tried to bring up something he didn't want to talk about he would get depressed. If I tried to do something that wasn't all about him he would have some crisis he needed me to talk him through. He stopped working all together, and I was supporting both of us. I thought that we were going through a rough patch. I really thought things would get better, but they only got worse. I was deep into a pattern of emotional abuse.