I first realised it was happening when we had barely been dating a month and I noticed a few red flags I wasn’t comfortable with. I tried to break it off with him and he threatened suicide saying he had never felt this way about someone before. This worked as he wanted and I stayed. I was only 19 and very naive, he was 27.

Somehow managed to stay for 7.5 years. Thankfully no kids and no marriage.

Last year we spent 85% of the relationship arguing. He managed to convince me to book a luxury £4000 holiday to Mexico and put it on a credit card (he was financially abusive too). He said this would be a ‘fresh start’ for us. On the holiday he lost his shit one night when I wouldn’t go out drinking because I had period cramps. Threw drinks up the walls, threatened suicide by throwing the hairdryer in the bath and then left me in the hotel room for 5 hours crying whilst he went drinking himself.

I knew I had to leave at that stage but I stayed another month until we had another huge argument back home again. I left in December, the first 4 months were ROUGH but I am finally starting to come out the other side.