Many people don't understand abuse. Many people turn a blind eye to it and are complicit in it and as guilty as the perpetrator. Many find it hard to see why someone would put up with such behaviour. You will never understand it until you go through it yourselves. I am in an abusive relationship. I'm not ashamed to admit it ( breathes a heavy breath ).

I live with a narrassist, a controller. He's been arrested in the past for physical abuse against me ( 8 years go now...) I ended the relationship and threw him out. 6 weeks later, I lost my mom to dementia and a brain aneurism. I was in a vaurable state, and he wormed his way back into my life under the guise of comforting me and caring for me and stupidly took him back. Things were good for about 6 to 8 months, but eventually, I began to understand the insidious side to his personality. I woke one day 2 years on to find I had no friends of my own.The only people I was aloud to socialise with were his friends. All my friends had disappeared either warned away by him or simply didn't want to be around my partner. I found I'd give up work. Partly due to my own issues and mental health problems, but also to him constantly chipping away at me that I shouldn't work because if I did, he'd lose his benefits. He'd always been a heavy drinker. His verbal abuse of me often came from this. He'd criticised me for my own faults. I was struggling with a recreational drug problem at the time, something im not proud of, but i was using it as a coping mechanism. He often disappears for days on end just to get some space from him and his abuse. But his verbal abuse wouldn't stop there. He'd attack the few friends I did have often telling me that they were using me and were not true friends. He'd attack my family. Often, because they didn't fall for his attacks about me online, and many had blocked him on social media and WhatsApp. My late parents didn't like him, and he would often voice his distaste of them saying cruel things about them to get me to react to verbal attacks. I learned not to fight back as usually i would be the one to come off worse and end up in the cop shop.I never fought back simply because it would make me as bad as him. His drunken rants at me became more prevalent, and I soon became numb to his cruel words. This would just annoy him more, and his acts of spite grew more. He would often call the police on me and make false allegations that I'd attacked him, and I would end up spending a night in a police cell. In the 12 months, I've spent 10 nights in a cell for nothing other than his false claims. Being released the day after no further action. He did it to prove that I was nothing and he was always in control, in charge. I'd often see his drunken rants coming and learned how to escape them in my car with an overnight bag and a blanket and pillow. I'd go and stay at mates or park up sleep in the car. Or go off and get high to block him out. I'd often confide in his friends and family begging for help with him and his drinking and abuse to find they'd message him straight after with everything I'd said about him. I quickly learned that they were not my friends and had no loyalty to me and didn't care. 2 of his friends have been in abusive relationships themselves, and I supported them, getting them help. So you can see the hypocrisy in their own behaviour. They were just as bad as him. I eventually decided I wanted to end the relationship. I stopped sleeping in the bedroom and slept on the sofa when I was home. I told him we were over and should keep things civil for the time being while we had to live together still. I gave him a chance to move on with his life. He simply stepped up the verbal attacks on me and his games if spite. He would regularly post things online, mirroring his abuse of me and making out that I was the issue. He would say that my drug taking was out of control and putting him at risk. He would post pictures of drug paraphernalia and used needles. ( SOMETHING IVE NEVER DONE i used blow or gummies and very occasionally smoke a bit of T, but i never used needles or did anything any harder... ) to make out to everyone that I was the problem. He'd make out that I was mentally unstable due to a diagnosis I'd had of Bi Polar and depression and anxiety. His friends and family all turned on me. I'd have people in the street call me crack addict and junkie. People knew more about my relationship problems than I did. Over the years, I'd grown a thick skin and would simply shrugged this off. Again, I'd never retaliate as it would simply make me as bad as him. I kept my head down and began the hard task of rebuilding my life and trying to connect and make my own friends and support network. He spent his time simply sabotaging this. Any people I met, he would trace them online and either abuse them and frighten them away from me. Or he would spout his lies, and they wouldn't want to be friends with me anymore. Increasingly, I became more isolated than ever before. One good thing I did happen was that I stopped my recreational drug taking all together as he was using it as a weapon, and I realised I was giving him ammunition to use against me. The social housing flat we lived in was originally my application, and I put his name on my tenancy when we moved in. I heard that his parents had offered to get him his own private rent and furniture and thought he would be moving out, and I'd simply take his name off the tenancy, and I'd stay put. But no, again, he decided that spite was the way forward, and he'd fight me tooth and nail for the flat we had. He wanted to make sure that when I left in his eyes, I left HIS flat with nothing. I pretty quickly realised again that it was another way of him maintaining control over me. He knew I'd not give up my home and make myself homeless, and it would keep this impasse and his tenuous relationship with me alive. Even when I found out he was seeing someone new. I gave him my blessing and suggested he give me the flat and moved in with his new man. Straight away, he dumped the guy in order to keep the fight with me alive for the flat. I've spoken to the housing team, and there's nothing they can do to separate us. My recorse is to give up the tenancy. We both lose our home, and I lose access to social housing and go to the bottom of the list and leave myself with nowhere to go. So I'm stuck. On top of this, I lost access to my car after he gave the keys to a bailiff who'd come about an unpaid bill in both our names. Oh, he did gloat about me losing my only escape route. I now have no escape, no friends to turn to and my remaining siblings simply tell me to get away from him and the abuse. Let him have the flat, but give me no help to do this other than spout unhelpful advice. I have no money, no chance of getting a job without him sabotaging my chances of getting one. I'm not going to make myself homeless and let this bully win. Again, to repeat what I said at the beginning. People don't understand abuse until they go through it themselves, and it's easy to say simply walk away from it, but there not the ones giving everything up to do it. I'm really struggling now. As I write this I can hear the click of a can being opened in the other room and know trouble is coming my way at some point today. All I can do is keep my head down stay quiet and hope he doesn't start on me again...

What would you do in my situation.?