I have had many realisations recently about how I missed the initial signs of abuse in my marriage because of my conditioning to it whilst growing up. 

My father was extremely controlling and abusive. I didn’t know it at the time and yet as a teenager (even though by that stage I was already conditioned) I realised it was wrong but felt powerless to stop it happening.

For example, I couldn’t see my friends for too long on a Saturday morning when most of them used to go into town and hang out, or go to the cinema because he insisted I met him for coffee during his morning break (he worked in retail). At 11am precisely (woebetide me if I was late!), I would rush to his office and sit there for half an hour, drinking my coffee, whilst he sat reading the newspaper and totally ignoring me. I was very scared of my father so became adept at ‘pleasing him’ so that he would not become angry and aggressive or abusive. I see now that he just wanted to show everyone else that he (the big shot) had his family under his control! 

There was this one other time when he insisted I accompany him on a ‘works outing’ to the coast with lots of other staff members from his company. His only compromise was that I could take a friend. We went by coach. My friend and I had free time away from him during our visit and – as with many teenagers – we hooked up with a couple of young lads. Just having fun, experiencing the fun fair, joking around and eating candyfloss. They were nice lads and there was nothing sordid going on but on the way back to the bus my father caught me and my lad kissing each other. He went ballistic and kept me off school for two days and made me do chores around the house; cleaning the windows inside and out, washing inside cupboards, scrubbing floors, all the time he kept telling me how much I had let him down and how I had behaved like a whore! He told me that as soon as I was of legal age he would pack my bags and throw me out onto the street.

When I was even younger, my Dad had this ritual that he performed every Sunday and sometimes during the week too. After the meal (my mother cooked a fantastic Sunday roast), my Dad (who was quite a big and heavy man back then) would pin me down and basically treat me like some play thing; tickling me, scraping his stubble against my cheek and making it sore, kissing me all over my face, all the time whilst he had me pinned by my hands and legs to the floor. To make it worse, he placed himself between my legs and although I know it was not a sexual thing, it was horrendously humiliating for me – particularly as I got older. It went on for years and I hated it, hated it, hated it, hated it! I asked him to stop, begged, pleaded but he wouldn’t and the more I begged, the more he did it. It got the point where I could barely eat my Sunday lunch because I knew what was coming. Then I was in more trouble for wasting food! I tried to pull away from him but he was too strong. One time I screamed and screamed to be let loose and so he slapped me, really hard across the face. He said I had become hysterical. It was at that moment I stopped loving him. From then on, I let him do it. I was cold, motionless, there physically but not emotionally. This one Sunday, I finished my meal, got up and left the table, lay down on the floor with my legs apart, waiting for him to get on with it. He just looked at me and growled “Get out of my sight!”.  He never did it again after that but our relationship never recovered. From then on, whenever he went out, I hoped and prayed he would not come back. Sadly, he always did.

My mother tried desperately to protect me but she couldn’t. He was too big and frightening. She was beautiful, independent (like me) capable and talented. She was very creative, an accomplished artist and fabulous cook. She and I were soul mates, more like sisters than mother an daughter. I begged her to leave him once, said we’d go and live somewhere together, even offered to quit school and get a job so I could help pay the bills but she couldn’t. She said he would never let her go.  

She died when I was 22, from breast cancer. It was just me and the bastard from then on. I stayed around whilst she was dying, taking care of her and my Dad, doing what I could, cooking meals, keeping house, doing his ironing. I stayed around for three months after she’d died, doing the same thing. Then he ’suggested’ I leave, saying he wanted to be on his own. I was glad to go. 

So when my husband started abusing me, although I was shocked at first, I employed the same tactics to deal with it. I became a husband pleaser, and went along with it, whilst at the same time closing up to him.

The difference with my husband is that I can really push him out of my life. My Dad is an old man now. He is frail, fragile and weak. In that sense, he is no equal to me physically, mentally or emotionally and therefore, even though I have a much clearer understanding of his abuse now, there is no point in my having a go at him because I would NOT feel good about myself. He had no qualms about picking on and terrorising a defenseless child, but that is because he is an abuser. I am not an abuser. Unlike him I would have considerable qualms about picking on a weak, defenceless old man. 

I have spent my whole life protecting him and will keep on doing it until the day he dies. Don’t ask me why, he doesn’t deserve it but I can’t help myself.

I’ve been watching a few period dramas on TV recently. Charles Dickens and the like. And it has made me realise how far we have come – in terms of male/female relationships – nowhere! Nowhere at all!!

Back then, society gentlemen (I use the term loosely) married society ladies (again, I use the term loosely) to become or remain acceptable to – society! The aim was to impress, influence and ultimately increase one’s wealth through marriage and acceptability. What is different today with our celebrity culture in which women are acknowledged, first, for their beauty and men for their ability? If a woman, today, happens to be smart, that fact will have less influence over her ultimate success – no matter what industry or profession she works in – than her looks. In my country, there are several female managing directors of football clubs but the one who is best known is the one who is, by society’s standards, the most beautiful. 

I never wanted to be a feminist or be labelled as such but the more I learn about abuse (of any kind – domestic abuse, slavery, child or animal cruelty and so on), its origins and purposes, the more I realise I am a feminist! I HAVE to be to stand any chance of playing a part in ending this vicious, vindictive, destructive force. I can see that women have moved on – A LOT – since Dickens’ time but men have not. And why would they? They are scared stiff to let go of a way of being that brings them so many benefits. What would they do if they couldn’t bully people into submission? How would they assert their will? How would it be for them if women and children really did stop obeying? I can see that it would be a very scary world indeed for them.

Feminists have long been portrayed as anti-establishment, unfeminine, aggressive, brash and generally trouble-makers but I wonder who ignited that rumour in the first place? Was it a woman do you think? To me, Germaine Greer is one of the greatest thinkers of our time and yet she has endured dismissal and ridicule throughout her career. 

I think men fear that what feminists want is to take over when in actual fact – we don’t! Men think we are like them, that given half a chance we will take over and take control – wrong! But that’s why they [men] don’t want to support feminism because they do not want to lose control. But if only they would get it that this control thing is a myth. Men are not actually ‘in control’ at all, it just seems that way if we women (and children) act as if we are obeying. Outside of oneself, it is impossible to be in control of anything in this world but it’s a scary thought so most people (men and woman) block their ears and shut their eyes to it. But that’s a whole other blog!!

So, as a feminist do I want to ‘take over’? No, absolutely not. In fact, if it were a choice between taking charge myself or having a man do it, I’d far rather he did it. That’s just my personal view. I know there are a great many competent women out there capable of taking charge but I just don’t want to. What I do want, however, is (this is only a ‘for starters’ list): 

• to have my views and opinions sought, listened to and respected and – if appropriate – acted upon. 
• to be treated with respect and accepted for who I am not what I am.
• to have equal opportunity and to have my work acknowledged and rewarded equally to a man’s 
• to have everything that is considered ‘women’s work’, and for which women are gifted, lifted to a higher status so that nurses are paid as much (if not more) than engineers and ‘mothering children’ becomes an acceptable and highly regarded career choice!
• that men and women, the world over, realise that we are ‘complimentary’ not opposite sexes. 
• that women, the world over and from all religious cultures, stop being blamed for men’s reactions to them (and be shamed into covering up!). 
• that women turn away from using their objectivity, their bodies and sexuality to get rewards and favours in life.
• that men and woman can be naked with each other, in private, and feel good about themselves.

But twice as clever!

I was invited to a party by a girl I met since moving into my new place and away from my abusive husband. I got chatting to some people I know and these other two women I don’t know. One asked me what I do for a job, so I told her – I’m a journalist. She then asks me what I specialise in so I replied – information technology. The other one, who had been quietly staring me up and down, pipes up “Oh, that sounds really dull and boring to me”. Now, a year ago at this point I would probably have agreed in a very apologetic tone that communicated how very sorry I was to have offended her by bringing my lowly self into her presence – but instead I quipped:

“Actually, it is extremely interesting but you have to be young and savvy to understand and appreciate that. Excuse me ladies, I must go and talk to some other people.” 

You can imagine how wonderful I felt.

I saw my abuser yesterday. He wanted the dog for the w/e. “Our dog” he calls it, although thankfully he has been with me since I left the abuse. Whilst I was with my husband, he never bothered with the dog but now he says he “needs to see him”. 

I have agreed to it, purely because I know that if I don’t he will kick off. But I have asserted some very clear ground rules: he must buy his own dog food, instead of relying on me to provide it; we do the handover in public (I wont go to his house); he walks him and takes care of him (doesn’t just dump him at his parent’s house for the w/e) and that he hands him back on time, clean and well.  

I thought about just ignoring his request but I knew he would make it impossible one way or the other. I see it as a small price to pay for keeping the peace. Also, I’ve told him that if I do this and he pulls any tricks or the dog comes to any harm whilst in his care, it will be the last time he sees either of us. We met in the car park of this local centre. I had thought about just handing over the dog and leaving but I couldn’t. I’m curious and I can’t help it. So we went and had a coffee. 

The great thing is, I have read all these books, talked to all these people who know about abuse and got so much support from blogs and people who read this one that I am a whole different person now. He doesn’t know that, of course, but I do. And I can feel it. 

We sat with our coffee and he starts telling me this story about his most recent drama (don’t get me wrong he is not an actor but he is addicted to adrenalin and to get his fix he continually creates dramas in his life, which he used to use as a perfect excuse to blame and abuse me). I just listened to him. After a while he realises he had forgotten this great opportunity to arm himself with ammunition about my life so he says: “What about you? What’s going on with you?” Thankfully, armed with all this information myself, I didn’t fall for it. I did talk but I tactfully diverted the conversation back to the subject most dear to his heart – himself! He took the bate and back he was, chatting away, telling me how much he has taken onboard what I have been telling him all this time and how he is a changed man and has changed his life. I just listened. All the while I knew what he was doing and I did not weaken, not one little bit. I stayed constant in my resolve that I am right to not be with him but I could also see with all the charm and attentive conversation and sweetness and the loving way he had about him why I had fallen for him in the first place. He was, yesterday, the man I fell in love with and the man I married. It’s me who is different now. It is me who is stronger, more aware, less taken in, less needy, more independent. It is me who has really changed so much so that I am impervious to his charms. I am not even anywhere near the person I used to be. Part way through the conversation, he casually starts talking about his new “friend” (purposely didn’t say if it was male or female) who had recently accompanied him on an overnighter in our capital city. S/he had left their car on my husband’s driveway whilst they were away, which my father had commented on when he went to deliver the Christmas present. I could tell he desperately wanted me to enquire about who s/he was, but I didn’t. I stayed quiet for a moment and then suddenly remembered something important  I had to tell him about the dog. 

It wasn’t until I was in the car on my way home that I started thinking about this mystery person and who they might be. I’m not sure how I feel about it, if indeed he has a girlfriend. I am suspicious and think it more likely that it is perfectly innocent, that someone from the same work thing as him travelled with him to the capital and parked their car on his driveway (the house is right next to the station but our driveway is free to park and secure whereas the station is not!). I suspect he wants me to ‘think’ he has a girlfriend but that he actually doesn’t. Even if he does, I don’t think I would mind except that I would desperately want to warn her off him. The problem with that, of course, is that if she is ‘in to him’ like I was she may not believe me and then I will be accused of trying to sabotage his new relationship because I am bitter and jealous. But isn’t that what these abusers want us to think so that we don’t take action and they keep on abusing? Then, there is this other part of me that is quite pleased at the prospect of him having someone else in his life because it’ll give him someone else to abuse instead of me. 

I was talking with a friend about it last night. She has also recently split from her controlling husband (although he was not physically abusive and she is someone I have not disclosed the full extent of my problems to) and she asked me: “Do you think you would ever go back to him?” to which I replied without hesitation: “Absolutely not!” She then said: “Oh, I’m sure you’ll feel differently in a year’s time.” To which I replied: “Oh, yes, I will feel differently about him in a years’ time. I’ll be even more sure that I will NEVER go back to him – EVER!” She didn’t seem convinced, but, and then I got it: “Would you ever go back to your husband?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I would.”

I saw my father at the w/e. He and step mother came down to stay with my brother and sister-in-law. They don’t stay with me anymore, since I separated from my husband. It’s not that he liked my husband but I was more acceptable to him, being married, than I am being single. It’s always been that way.

Inevitably, he brought up the subject of my ex and was asking me had I heard anything more or seen him? I didn’t really want to dominate the evening with talk of my awful relationship. Truth be told, I didn’t really want to talk about it at all but he brought the subject up. 

My pop and step mom always come down sometime in November to bring us Christmas presents (they tend to get organised with it all in September each year and as they are from the North they don’t like to travel in December because of the weather prospects so they come in November and bring presents. Very kind. Well, I say that but actually it’s one of those things that is foisted on us so in that way it isn’t really giving at all, like when your Grandma used to knit you a sweater each year, which you neither wanted nor liked but because she’d spent the last six months putting her heart and soul into it you had to be thankful and gracious. Because of the nature of what it is, you can’t complain without being made out to be a completely ungrateful git. 

So, we’re sitting in my brother’s house, talking, and my Dad says: “Well, I’ll tell you this now so that you do not hear it from anyone else.” and I’m thinking Jees! What’s he gonna say? and he says: “We took [my ex-husband's name] a Christmas present too. We have dropped it in at the office. We went to the house and his car was on the drive but he didn’t answer the door so we dropped it in at the office on the way by. We didn’t want his family accusing us of not doing the right thing.” 

So, I am thinking “what the **ck did you do that for!!” and “right, so now I am going to fall out with my Dad too!” but then I remembered the one piece of enlightenment that I have come to rely on more than anything recently and that is ‘DON’T REACT!’ So, I stayed calm, took a breath and kindly tried to explain to my Dad why what he did – although with the best of intentions – was so wrong. He didn’t get it. He just could not understand why it was so wrong. In his mind, doing an act of kindness like that could never be wrong. I tried to explain that any act like that will be taken out of context by my husband and used against me. That he will say to me: “I told you that your Dad thinks we should still be together. Look, he bought me a Christmas present. I know he misses me.” And, he and his family will see it as a gesture of reconciliation!

My Dad just couldn’t get it. He just refused to see the problem and I could see that any effort was wasted because he just didn’t want to see it. My sister-in-law even tried to explain it to him by saying that he should be more bothered about doing the right thing by his daughter than his ex-in-laws but he refused to see that too. He kept saying that, in his day, when people got married, two families joined and it was for life and that he understood that my husband has hit me and that was wrong and in his day my Dad would have given him a good “seeing to” and made sure he didn’t do it again and……………………It felt like he was saying ‘well I know he has hit you but it wasn’t that bad and we used to do it all the time in my day and we just got over it and got on’. It almost felt like he was condoning what my husband has done and justifying it because it used to go on in the olden days. I felt really hurt and upset. I wanted to scream at my Dad and shout “well if you weren’t such an abusive father maybe I could tell the difference!!!!!” But I didn’t. I just sat there listening to him drone on about the good old days where people did as they were told and responded with fists. Then it came to me. I realised that what my Dad was saying was that abuse was part of his life, his upbringing, his understanding of the world because that is how he was brought up and what he was refusing to hear, what he absolutely definitely didn’t want to hear was that his generation has now been caught out because my generation of women refuse to accept it. Eventually, I got through by saying: “So, if my husband had actually killed me and he was now languishing in gaol, awaiting trial, would you have taken him a Christmas present?!” My father fell silent at that.

Leaving an abusive relationship is not easy. In fact, it is one of the hardest things anyone could ever find themselves having to face. Imagine you’re in prison – stop imagining – YOU ARE! What you are up against is tantamount to escaping from Alcatraz. Firstly, you need to find an escape route, whether that is through friends, family, private means or with the help of a DV support centre. If you’re in that position now, always keep in the front of your mind the fact that there IS an escape route – somewhere. Even if it may seem to you right now that there isn’t. Once you’ve found the escape route that suits you, you then need to plan the escape. If you had to, how would you escape from Alcatraz? What do you need to take with you? Who do you need to inform so that they can be ready to help you? What help do you need and where will you get it? What tools do you need to make the escape? Money? Mobile phone? Transport? And most importantly – how are you going to cover your tracks so that the abuser cannot find you? The key to a successful escape, in my experience (one in which any problems or backlash from your abuser are minimised) is to take time to plan it properly. Conversely, it is not a good idea to use this as an excuse NOT to go. Because it is so hard to escape, it is often tempting to see staying as the easy option. Believe me, as someone who has recently escaped, it is not! But I do understand that it can seem like that, particularly as your abuser has been working hard to perpetuate the situation and make you believe that it is better to stay. That’s what s/he wants. 

I understand that for some people who are in real, physical danger from their abuser, the option to take time to plan the escape may result in further physical abuse – and that must be avoided at all costs. In that case – just go! Seek Police protection, seek whatever help you can and get the hell out! You can deal with the details later, when you’re in a safe place. Believe me, once you are out of your situation and away from your abuser you will begin to see things from a whole new perspective. In my case, all the doubts I had about the depth of my own situation disappeared and I began to realise that what I had actually been tolerating was unbelievably awful and that no-one should ever have to put up with it. Whilst with my abuser, I always had this nagging feeling that perhaps it wasn’t so bad; that perhaps I was over-reacting and maybe it was me and my issues and perhaps all relationships, secretly, were like this. Since leaving, I have realized that I put up with an unbelievable amount of cruelty. All of the feelings I had on a daily basis that created those negative self-images have gone. I no longer wake up feeling impotent and diminished; I no longer experience anger and frustration; I no longer get pains in my gut from the sheer stress of simply ‘existing’. I’m not existing now – I am living. I am alive! I feel vital and in control again. 

Of course, my problems have not ended. They have not gone away just because I am no longer living with my abuser but I can deal with them because I’m in charge of me and not constrained by someone else taking complete control of me and everything I do and say. 

It’s My Life Now! (this is another great book I am reading, by Meg Kennedy Duggan and Roger R. Hock.

This may seem weird but I have been practising low-impact visualization techniques to manifest things I want. Just small stuff at the moment (I’m practising) but I am aiming for some big stuff soon. I used to do this a lot before I met my husband five years ago. Back then I was into ‘being the source’ of my own destiny and ‘creating my own reality’. That disappeared early on in our relationship. I asked myself why and it came to me whilst I was reading Emotional Vampires by Albert J. Bernstein and it is all to do with hypnotism. 

I’ve always been suspicious of hypnotists, stage hypnotists that is not the ones who try and help you quit smoking or overcome phobias, but the ones who get people up on stage and make them eat a raw onion after convincing them it’s an apple or make them wander around the stage clucking like a chicken. Those type I don’t like because, to me, they are blatantly exploiting someone else’s vulnerability to make themselves look good. Well Hello! Isn’t that what abusers do? I’ve seen stage hypnotists perform several times and I have noticed that they choose only certain types of people to go up on stage, usually they are the type who want their moment of fame so badly that they are willing to go along with the hypnotist and eat the onion/act like a chicken to get it. The price they pay for that, however, is to surrender control of themselves and their actions to the hypnotist for however long the performance lasts.

Targets of abuse (I wont us the word ‘victim’) face the same dilemma. The motivation is different; it is not fame and adulation they want, but the abuser’s love/agreement/approval/acceptance/respect or some such and the abuser, like the hypnotist, makes it impossible for that to happen without the target surrendering complete control over to them. 

In my case, my husband very quickly got to know my weaknesses and vulnerabilities and began, subtly at first but as time went on more obviously, to exploit them. For example (and this is only one of dozens of examples I could give), he knew that financial stability was extremely important to me (I went bankrupt several years ago and it has taken until very recently to get back to normal. I made it clear how important it was, to me, for it NOT to happen again). That is how my husband stole control of the business and our finances. He kept hypnotising me by telling me that if we didn’t do it his way we would go bankrupt. So, we always did it his way – and his way was to ensure that we were only inches away from bankruptcy the whole time so that I would keep agreeing with him and we would continue doing it his way!

When I realised that, through reading Bernstein’s book, it was a real ‘light-bulb’ moment. 

But what has that got to do with visualization and being the source? Well, whilst you are hypnotised you cannot do anything other than what the hypnotist instructs you to. And that’s why it is impossible when you are in that situation to be the source or creator of your own life. You just can’t! You are in a straight jacket – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. 

Well, now I am out of the trance – and the straight jacket – I can begin to live again and create whatever I want. That’s the next challenge – deciding what that is! But, compared with being in an abusive relationship, what a lovely problem!

Since I left my husband in July I have read some extremely informative books on domestic abuse, emotional abuse, violence and abusive people. One of the most awful characteristics of abuse is that, as a sufferer (I hate the term ‘victim’), whether you leave or not you have this permanent, overwhelming confusion and lack of clarity about what is happening/has happened. This is because abuse is irrational. It makes no sense to anyone other than the abuser. I wanted and needed to make sense of it – for me! So, I started reading books.

Why Does He Do That? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men by Lundy Bancroft. Is a fantastic read for someone trying to understand abuse because (as the title suggests) it explains exactly why these men are like this and why they do what they do. For me, it answered the extremely vexing question: WHAT DID I DO? Bancroft has worked with abusers for almost two decades and understands the mindset so well he has even categorised different types of abuser, like the Demand Man, who feels highly entitled to abuse or the Water Torturer (my husband!!) who can assault his partner psychologically without even raising his voice. I figured that my husband is primarily one type but also displays many of the character traits of at least another three of the categories. How Bancroft’s book helped me was to see how much blame I had absorbed through my husband’s sustained campaign of accusation and manipulation but that, in actual fact, I was not to blame. Bancroft concentrates very much on the perpetrator and is adamant in his philosophy that there is no excuse, no justifiable reason for this type of behaviour. After reading his book I felt validated in my decision to stand up to it and refuse to accept it. 

The next book I read was: Finding Your Way through Domestic Abuse, by Connie Fourre. A sweet book, it gives many practical tips on getting out of an abusive situation and starting the healing process. Connie has lived through it herself and this empathy and understanding comes through. She talks about faith and how this helped her but in a non-preaching style. I was not put off by any religious reference. What I found particularly supportive about this book is that it explained every feeling, emotion and process I was going through during my journey and helped me to realize that even the most uncomfortable feelings are all part of the healing process. She also devotes a chapter to the process of mourning the relationship and the life that’s gone, which was extremely empowering. 

Along with you guys, these books have become my friends.

The Verbally Abusive Relationship, by Patricia Evans delves more deeply into non-violent, emotional abuse rather than physical abuse but for me, who suffered both, it was comforting to once again have my feelings and beliefs about how relationships should be validated. Evans describes the different realities in which abusers and their ‘victims’ live, which absolutely clarifies why it is IMPOSSIBLE to communicate, negotiate and reason with abusers. They are just not living in the same world as us! This helped me to clearly see that each time my husband abused me verbally and emotionally, thus sending me into a frenzy of defensive explanation and action, I had been wasting my time – totally! Because my husband is living in a different world to me, his motivations are totally different to mine and so nothing I said or did, no amount of justification or explanation would have made any difference at all because he did not WANT to understand me, he WANTED to destroy me (or that which he saw in me that was painful for him). 

The one I have just finished: Stalking the Soul, emotional abuse and the erosion of identity, by Marie-France Hirigoyen, has been extremely powerful! Hirigoyen is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and family therapist. She has also spent years studying ‘victimology’. There are many aspects of this book that were useful but most of all for me was that it clear, concisely and from an enlightened perspective answered that most perplexing of questions that well-meaning, personal-development-junky-type people outside of (and with little comprehension of abuse) always ask: “So, why have you brought this into your life?” To make sense of abuse (because it does not make any sense), some people ‘need’ to find a weakness in the victim; something that they pin it on and say “Ah ha, that’s why it happened to her. She is weak and unassertive!” But this is so not true, as I found out from reading this book. The truth is that abusers target those people whom they see as extremely strong and capable. Often they have a very strong work ethic, which makes them work hard and the abuser (like the proverbial Vampire) has to feed off that. Often, the ‘victim’ in these cases has suffered abuse in the past, in childhood, for example, but it doesn’t make them weak. In actual fact, it may actually make them stronger. However, (and here is the million dollar crux for me!), because of their past experiences they have been conditioned over time to be extremely tolerant of behaviours that other people would not tolerate. So, whilst they are blameless in ‘causing’ the abuse, they will put up with it because they feel ‘duty-bound’ to do so. They even think that if they take care of the abuser, he will change, which is another reason why they stay, which answers the other, commonly-asked but inappropriate question: “Well, why doesn’t she just leave!?”. 

I can see this so clearly in my own life. My father was/is an unreasonable man and he was abusive toward me because he resented women. Over the course of my childhood, teenage and young adulthood, I conditioned myself to tolerate his behaviour and much of the time, I defended him. It has been extremely liberating for me to see this, in black print, on a page in front of me in Hirigoyen’s book because now I know what I have to do to stop this happening again. And it’s simple. I wont tolerate it. I wont put up with it at all. I will walk away.

If you can afford to buy them or get them from the library, I am sure these books will help you as they have me.