lillamy

There were many.
The last-last straw was having AXH threaten to kill me and the kids and then commit suicide.
That kinda did it for me.

Never looked back. Not for a second. Not for 1/100th of a second. Ever.

Carlotta

The last straw for me was that the abuse kept escalating until that evening he punched me in the face and I went stumbling down the stairs. Those were high steep stairs and I could have been killed that day. It was like a light bulb went up in my head and all the hopes for a future together I was clinging on left with that punch.
I pressed charges, took a restraining order and went permanent no contact.

amberly

Wow- when I read these things posted by others, I think about how extreme and scary that situation is. But when I've been through it myself I keep making excuses for why it's not so bad. Thank you for being brave enough to share these experiences.

lillamy

Exactly. You and, I bet, most of us. I lived through stuff that was, in retrospect, horrific -- but when it happened, it felt so much like a bad horror movie that my brain sort of just refused to acknowledge that it happened and it was part of my reality. I kept thinking "this cannot be happening to me." Yet it was.

theuncertainty

My thought process simply was, "It's really not _that_ bad. I'm just being over-sensitive," which, of course, is what he was always telling me. Even realizing that I was thinking about suicide didn't *really* make me realize how horrid what he was doing was.

FireSprite

Mine was more of an awakening - a realization that he was never going to change until he wanted to & that I had less than no control over that.

I had a horrible mental flash of what my DD was witnessing in MY behavior & how it was going to shape how she valued herself as an individual as well as in a marriage/partnership. I started to judge my words & actions in relation to her, what was she seeing? hearing? learning?

I did NOT like the thought that she could/would likely imitate my own dysfunction, just like I did with my mother before me (although in different ways, the core was the same).

Has anyone ever seen that old movie from the 90's called Labyrinth? It was a corny musical fantasy piece with David Bowie as the Goblin King & Jennifer Connelly as a young teen trying to rescue her brother from the King before he turns him into a goblin. She keeps getting transfixed with his charm & power & then finally the AHA moment when she wakes up & announces, "You have no POWER over me!" and the fantasy shatters like glass at her words, leaving her standing in her own living room. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emebPH6ysRU

THAT'S how it felt to have that realization. It just crashed down around me & the fantasy melted away leaving me to really SEE my life.