Relationships are supposed to be places where we feel loved, respected, supported, and safe. They aren’t supposed to be perfect, because two imperfect people trying to build a life together will inevitably disagree, misunderstand each other, and go through difficult seasons. But there is a difference between a relationship going through hard times and a relationship slowly destroying the person you are.
I know that difference because I’ve lived it.
There was a time in my life when I was in a domestic violence relationship, and looking back now, one of the hardest things to explain is how gradually everything changed. People sometimes imagine abuse beginning with one obvious, unmistakable moment. They wonder why someone didn’t recognize it immediately or why they didn’t simply leave when things became unhealthy.
But sometimes it doesn’t happen that way.
Sometimes it begins with little things you convince yourself aren’t that serious. A comment that hurts, followed by an apology. Jealousy disguised as love. Control disguised as concern. Being questioned about where you’re going, who you’re talking to, what you’re wearing, or why you didn’t answer quickly enough. Slowly, you start adjusting your behavior because avoiding an argument feels easier than having another one.
And eventually, you can lose pieces of yourself without even realizing they’re disappearing.
I remember what it felt like to constantly wonder what version of the person I loved I was going to get. I remember learning how to read moods, tones, facial expressions, and silence. I remember trying to prevent situations before they happened because somehow I had started believing that if I just said the right thing, acted the right way, stayed quiet enough, or loved hard enough, things would be different.
That is one of the most painful things for me to reflect on now.
I spent so much time trying to figure out how to keep someone else from hurting me that I stopped asking myself the more important question:
Why am I having to work this hard just to feel safe around someone who says they love me?
When you’re living inside an abusive relationship, your world can become incredibly small.
You stop talking about certain things because you’re afraid people won’t understand. You might distance yourself from people without even realizing it. You become embarrassed about things happening behind closed doors. Sometimes you defend the person hurting you because admitting the truth out loud would mean admitting it to yourself.
And sometimes you stay because you remember who they were in the beginning.
You hold onto the good moments.
You hold onto apologies.
You hold onto promises.
You hold onto the person they swear they’re going to become.
You convince yourself that the person you fell in love with is still somewhere underneath everything that’s happening, and if you can just love them enough, forgive them enough, or wait long enough, maybe that person will come back.
But love cannot change someone who refuses to change themselves.
That lesson took me a long time to understand.
For me, leaving wasn’t as simply as waking up one morning and deciding I’d had enough. I had been in that relationship for years. There was fear. There was isolation. There was emotional attachment. There was the constant cycle of pain followed by moments that made me believe maybe things were finally going to get better.
Until eventually, things reached a point where I genuinely feared for my life.
There is something indescribable about realizing that the person who tells you they love you is also the person you’re afraid might kill you.
That realization changed something inside me.
The future I kept imagining with that person suddenly didn’t matter as much as whether I would even be alive to have one.
Leaving didn’t instantly erase everything that happened afterward, either.
Walking away from abuse and healing from abuse are two completely different battles.
You can physically leave a relationship while parts of your mind are still trapped inside it. You can be somewhere completely safe and still feel your body react as though danger is nearby. You can hear a certain tone of voice, experience conflict, or see someone’s expression change and suddenly feel yourself again.
Healing taught me how deeply relationships can shape the way we understand love.
After experiencing abuse, I had to relearn things that should have been simple. I had to learn that disagreements don’t have to make me afraid. I had to learn that I don’t have to immediately apologize just because someone is upset. I had to learn that someone’s anger isn’t automatically my responsibility to fix.
Most importantly, I had to learn that love and fear should never feel like the same emotion.
My experience changed the way I look at relationships now.
I pay attention to how someone makes me feel when things aren’t going well, because almost anyone can be loving when everything is easy. Character becomes clearer during disagreement, disappointment, stress, jealousy, and anger.
Can we disagree without destroying each other?
Can I express something that hurts me without being mocked, threatened, intimidated, or made to believe I’m crazy for feeling it?
Can I have boundaries without being punished for them?
Can I maintain friendships, interests, opinions, and an identity outside of the relationship?
Can I say no?
Can I be myself?
Can I feel safe?
Those questions matter more to me now than grand gestures ever could.
I’ve also learned that surviving an unhealthy relationship doesn’t automatically mean you’ll never tolerate unhealthy behavior again. Healing isn’t that simple. Sometimes familiarity patterns can feel strangely normal because they’re what your nervous system learned to expect.
That’s why I’ve had to become more intentional about asking myself what love actually looks like to me.
Love should not require me to disappear.
Love should not constantly leave me questioning my worth.
Love shouldn’t make me afraid to speak.
Love shouldn’t require me to sacrifice every boundary just to keep someone from becoming angry.
Love isn’t supposed to hurt you and then use the good moments as proof that the painful ones don’t matter.
My past relationship took things from me, but I refuse to let it take my ability to believe healthy love exists.
I don’t want my story to end with what someone did to me.
I want it to continue with everything I learned afterward.
I’ve learned that I deserve communication without intimidation. I deserve disagreements without fear. I deserve affection that isn’t conditional. I deserve honesty, consistency, effort, respect, and accountability.
And I’ve learned something else that might be even more important:
Being alone is better than abandoning yourself just so you can say you have someone beside you.
If you’re reading this and something about these words feels familiar, I hope you know you don’t have to have everything figured out today. I won’t tell someone living through abuse that leaving is easy, because I know firsthand that it isn’t. Fear, finances, children, housing, isolation, threats, emotional attachment, and countless other circumstances can make leaving incredibly complicated.
But I will say this:
The moment you start wondering whether what you’re experiencing is love or control, don’t silence that question.
Pay attention to yourself.
Pay attention to the person you’re becoming inside that relationship.
And remember that being deeply in love with someone does not mean you have to accept being deeply hurt by them.
When I look back at the version of myself who survived that relationship, I don’t see someone weak for staying as long as I did.
I see someone who was trying to survive something she didn’t yet know how to escape.
And when I look at myself now, I see someone who understands love differently because of it.
I know now that love isn’t proven by how much pain you’re willing to endure for another person.
Sometimes the greatest acts of love you will ever choose is finally deciding that you deserve to be safe, too.
Until next time,
Between the Words
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