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I Honestly Didn't Know It Was Abuse: Refusing to Give Up

Sarah McDugal

I honestly didn't know.

I didn't know it could be abuse unless you had visible bruises. I'd never heard of coercive control.
Or triangulation.
Or gaslighting.

Terms like Compulsive Entitled Sexuality and Integrity Abuse Disorder didn't exist back then. (Read more about the Deceptive Sexual Trauma Model, by Dr Omar Minwalla here.)

For years... my devoted religious beliefs served as powerful arguments to gaslight myself into believing that the things happening in front of my eyes couldn't possibly be real... couldn't possibly be causing as much damage as it felt in my body and soul.

I refused to consider giving up on the vows I had sworn,
...on the future I had committed to,
...on the family we were building.

I was NOT a quitter.

For a while, my dogged perseverance was a matter of personal honor... flatly refusing to admit that this life was killing me slowly. Because admitting this... would mean acknowledging a sense of defeat... would mean accepting that my own determination and loyalty was insufficient.

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I already felt so keenly that I was not enough.
Not enough to keep him faithful.
Not enough to make him honest.

By the time a decade had passed, I felt mostly numb inside. I did not sense anticipation or excitement anymore. I did not feel joy. I held no dreams. My active, vibrant brain faded into fog.

I had no fight left.

All the sparkle and verve of the vibrant girl I had been... dulled.
No... it was dead.

He noticed.
He liked it.

"I'm so proud of you lately. You've finally become a good, submissive wife."

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I stared, trying to comprehend his underlying message.
This was what he wanted all along?
To crush my soul?

I gathered my wits, and my courage.

"No. You're wrong. I simply have accepted that you've chosen this path and you're not going to change. I'm silent -- because there's nothing left to fight for."

He looked at me like I had three heads, then turned on his heel and walked out.

If I had known... more... sooner...
If someone had charted out the patterns...
If...

So I decided to do this exact thing myself, and make it available for others.

Because somewhere, there is another woman in that same situation.

She keeps asking herself what she's done wrong.
She keeps trying to untangle the dissonance and make sense in the fog.

She can't quite put her finger on it, but something isn't right, and whenever she tries to explain it she falters, because there's nothing tangible to point out, and the conversation drifts elsewhere...

She doesn't have the terms for it, lacks the language. She knows that if she told each small story of the things that seem "off"... she knows she'd sound crazy. They're all such innocuous individual events. She doesn't know how to pull back and place it all into the overarching pattern.

And this woman?
She's never heard of coercive control.
Until now...

She deserves to know... IS IT ABUSE?

Tell her she's not crazy.

Show her a reason to hope.

Share truth with her so that she doesn't spend ten more years (or even one) without the clarity she desperately longs for. Send her this free crash course on the tools of abusers and the red flags of abuse, so she can find her way out of the fog and set aside the self-recrimination as she seeks safety.