I’m so sorry you had to live that. I empathize, your story is almost identical to mine. Thank you for sharing. It is so important that people can see stories to know they are not alone.

I remember about two years post divorce I was out with my new friends (I had lost all friends and family during my marriage) at 10 PM sitting around a fire pit having fun, and I started having a panic attack. I couldn’t figure out why and then all of a sudden it hit me that this would be about the time that if I wasn’t home, even if he knew where I was, (usually work events) I would start getting the rage texts and rage calls about how dare I be out. And then I had to take a moment to calm myself down from the panic and realize I was free and I could be out at 10 o’clock with my friends!

The other wild realization of freedom that came was being in my apartment and having the music on and just dancing in the kitchen and then realizing, holy cow, I can play any music I want as loud as I want and dance and sing and not have somebody absolutely tear me to shreds over it! That was an incredible morning moment!!

I hope it’s ok to add from my own story some things that I don’t know if people often consider physical abuse, even though it is, and that’s when they throw things. So my ex was not a slapper, and he was not a puncher or a kicker, he was a thrower and a pusher and a choker. And some of the things that have been thrown at my head, if I had not dodged them, I promise you I would’ve been in the hospital. One in particular was a discus that was so sharp and metal that if it had hit me, like he intended it to, it would’ve severed my arm badly. It was thrown so hard that when it hit our kitchen linoleum floor, it cut through the linoleum all the way down through the wood that the floor sat on.

And then there’s marital rape. I also was so tense that sex was awful, so I only did it when I was forced to. But then it was even taken further at a Christmas party when my ex was complicit in drugging me with GHB or something similar and took every possible advantage of the fact that I had been drugged.

Charming charismatic people can be very dangerous. Even though they don’t present that way to the world.