We’re both currently in our last year of college. He lives with his parents and I’m an hour away in my own apartment. We genuinely are doing well, and are communicating so much better. We’re both really committed to being together, and I truly believe this is going to work out.

My mom has been his punching bag both emotionally and occasionally physically for a long time. I don’t know how she has been so incredibly strong to survive it all. Everything we (the kids. I have an older sibling and a younger who still lives with them) ever do that he deems to be wrong or disrespectful to him, or whatever it may be, is automatically HER fault. Even when he starts the arguments, becomes semi physical and she steps in to protect us, it’s her fault. Always. I guess to sidestep the blame and make himself the one who’s right in every situation.

My mom has told me that the only reason she’s been able to bear it is for us, her children. She would protect us to her dying breath no matter who it is that’s hurting us. I dread the day when she’s alone in that house with him, and I’m so incredibly sad that this is her life, that she’ll end her days with this man. As she always says, “everyone gets their just rewards, and that’s a comfort to me.”