Claire's story
Trigger warning: Claire's story details her experiences of emotional abuse - including manipulation (e.g. gaslighting) and financial control. Please call our helpline if you need support: Cheshire East: 0300 123 5101 / Other areas: 01270 250390
First impressions: “Oh my goodness me – you’re amazing.”
“I grew up in the 60s. Things seemed a lot easier then. Mum was a nurse; dad was a carpenter. My dad was everything to me, absolutely everything.
“I met my first boyfriend at 16 and ended up marrying him at 20. That’s what you did in those days. You didn’t live with them. My dad thought things had to be proper, you did the honourable thing.
“In my early twenties I was diagnosed with MS. I didn’t pay much attention to it or realise the severity of it at the time, I was so young. But then I had my first child, and my MS didn’t like it. We chugged along. I ended up going on a drug for my MS and it was brilliant, and I had two more children.
“Life was just rolling by as it does until my dad got cancer. He was 66. I never thought my dad would die. I thought he’d be the one who survived cancer. But he didn’t. When dad died, everything seemed to go a bit skewwhiff. My MS was stable by then but the reality of it hit me. It was a low time. And then, after 25 years together, my husband left me for my next-door neighbour.
“She was my friend. We went to her wedding. I went to her hen party. We went on holiday with her and her husband. I didn’t believe it had happened. It took me a good six months to accept that he’d done what he’d done. We divorced. I felt low and worthless. It took me a year before I even began to think about having another relationship. But after a year, I managed to pull myself up, I joined an online dating site and thought ‘right, ok, let’s go’ and that’s when I met John, my soon-to-be-ex-husband.
“Steve, my first husband, was only a small of stature kind of guy. He wasn’t very manly. More like a boy. So, I thought I wanted a man’s man – like my dad, a proper man. John completely bowled me away. He’d been in the military for decades and was quite senior. He was big and manly, and I just thought ‘Oh my goodness me – you’re amazing’. Everything he told me at the time I believed. I had no reason to not believe him.”
“You are either very, very stupid or easily manipulated.”
“I first told him I loved him, and he said ‘Well I don’t love you yet. But when I do, I’ll tell you and I’ll mean it.’ I’m thinking ‘Well that’s fair enough, he doesn’t want to lie to me.’ That was the very start of it.
“He’d tell me awful stories about his past relationships. His first wife had had an affair. He had a son with her but she wouldn’t let him see the kid. All I heard was how horrible she was for leaving him, that all she did was take his money. Yet he’d tell me she was the love of his life.
“He’d also had a daughter with another woman he was married to briefly – six months or so. She moved to Portugal when their daughter was only a baby without John knowing. I’m thinking ‘what a nasty woman’. I’m totally outraged for him.
“I’d met his mum, he was living with her at the time, and she confirmed his stories. She was a very hard woman. She’d sent him and his sister away to live with family at the age of six after his father had left them and she’d kept the two younger children with her. John never talked about it.
“I remember one day we were at his mum’s house and his daughter had come to visit from Portugal. She’d flown to the UK with a guardian. There was a knock on the door and there stood three policemen. Apparently, John’s ex-wife had called the police from Portugal to say she was scared John wasn’t going to send her daughter back on the airplane. That she was concerned for her daughter’s safety. He must have reassured the police as they eventually left but, while he was speaking to them, his ex-wife called his phone and I answered it. The first thing she said to me was ‘you are either very, very stupid or easily manipulated’.”
“He was going to section you.”
“I’d been with John for four years and I was well and truly sucked in. I bought a house and he moved in. Then he asked me to marry him. He was very moody, but I kept thinking ‘once the issue with his daughter is sorted, he won’t be as moody’, ‘once we’re married, he won’t be as moody’.
“Covid happened and my MS made me vulnerable. His job meant he was out in public all day. At the start the guidance was ‘when you come home through the door, take all your clothes off, put them in the washing machine, have a shower’ and he’d just say ‘I’m not doing that. I’ve washed my hands. I’ve not touched anybody’.
“A friend of mine was immunocompromised and every night I’d see her praising her husband on Facebook for following all the guidance to the letter, that he was looking after her. And I’d think ‘John isn’t looking after me, he’s not even getting changed.’ But if I said anything, it would just cause an argument, so I kept quiet.
“The manipulation started after we got married. My part time job disappeared with Covid, so he became breadwinner. When I was working, he said it was ‘tinpot money’. He’d leave me without my mobility car for two weeks to drive to work. He’d say, ‘whose job is more important, yours or mine?’. I’d say, ‘well yours, because you earn more’. He needed to pay the mortgage and bills. So logically, it made sense.
“I once ended up in hospital for eight days with a very serious infection. I was put on morphine, and I hallucinated and tried to pull out the wires around me. I remember thinking the nurses were selling body parts. I was terrified. When I came round, my mum was scared. She said ‘Claire, he was going to section you. John said he needed to section you’. I said ‘no, he wouldn’t do that’, but she was adamant he’d been deadly serious.
“I had to have keyhole surgery after that, but there was still no sympathy. He’d say ‘If you’d had your leg blown off, I could see that. It’s not major surgery like it used to be.’ My pain was just trivialised. Yet he was so charming to everyone else. Nobody saw his other side but me. Even the nurses in the hospital would always say, ‘oh your husband is a lovely man, isn’t he?’ My daughter still thinks he’s wonderful to this day.”
Using silence as a weapon
“He drank like a fish. I tried to keep up with him and piled on weight. I felt anxious the day after drinking but he’d never comfort me. He’d say ‘What’s the matter with you? What’ve you got to feel anxious about?’ But I was anxious because of him – because of the things he’d do and say. He’d often say ‘I am me. I’m not going to change. You met me like this. I know I’m difficult to live with, what’s the problem in that?’
“He used silence as a weapon. At night, he’d sit for hours with his face in his phone in silence playing on a mobile game. Once the divorce proceedings came through, it turns out he’d spent £7,500 in a year on that game. It was money we didn’t have.
“He used to go into silences for weeks on end. He just wouldn’t talk to me. I drove us to see his son miles away. He spoke to me once during the total twelve hours of driving that day. And that was only when my card was spat out on a toll road and he’d said, ‘oh for god’s sake!’ That was it. And I just thought ‘That’s it. I’m done.’ That’s when I called the solicitors.
“I went to see the doctor and they said I needed to go to the NHS Talking Therapies. The lady there said my anxiety was stemming from my relationship and the abuse. I said, “no no, it’s not abuse because he doesn’t hit me and what he says, there’s logic to it” and she said “No, that’s manipulation.”
“She recommended Cheshire Without Abuse and gave me the number. It took me a good couple of weeks to call. I felt I was making a big thing out of nothing, that it wasn’t that bad, that a lot of women have it so much worse. One day I rang and started the conversation by saying “I don’t think it’s abuse because he doesn’t hit me” but they asked me to start by explaining how I’d got to the point of calling them and it just went from there.
“Collette from My CWA went through all the points on a circle of abuse. She got me writing down every day what the day had been like - what was good, what was bad, what had triggered it. Then she simply said, “You have 20% nice times with him, 80% not – do you want to live like that for the rest of your life?” And I thought ‘No, I don’t’.”
Moving on: “It was terrifying. But I did it.”
“All the weight that I’d put on in our relationship, I thought ‘I’m going to lose this’. He knew my downfall was sweet foods – cakes and chocolate. So, he bought an overload of them. And when I said, ‘Can you please not eat those in front of me, as it’s really difficult?’ he’d say ‘Why should I suffer? You’ve just got no willpower’. His mother was very critical too. She’d say, ‘She’s too big. She shouldn’t be eating that. What is she eating that for, she can’t be hungry already?’
“I lost the weight. He never commented once. With weight loss, people don’t notice then suddenly, it’s ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve lost so much weight’. Loads of people were saying it but he didn’t say a word. I thought ‘Right, I’m getting the old me back’. The strength was there. But it can easily get squashed.
“I had to get my money sorted. I didn’t think I could cope financially but My CWA gave me so many different people tools and information – how I could phone my bank and explain my situation, that I can speak to citizen’s advice, that there was a way around all of this. Don’t get me wrong, it was terrifying. But I did it.
“One day, I told him ‘That’s it, I want you out’. He refused to leave my home. It took seven months. I had to get a court order. Up until the last minute, he was playing mind games. Telling me he was taking my furniture, my mattress. It was his final attempt to grind me down. In the end, he only ended up taking a book – one he knew I liked, just to spite me.
“He’d say, ‘I’ve never cheated, I never hit you, what more do you want?’ But he’d mentally abused me. My CWA, the solicitors and the judge all saw it for the abuse it was.
“I was lonely even when I lived with him. It’s only been four weeks since he’s gone and it’s just lightness now. I do question if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone every again. But I’m more excited than I’ve been in a long time. I love waking up and not feeling anxious. I feel hopeful. I’m looking forward to what might be out there.”
If you’ve been affected by domestic abuse and need support, contact My CWA today. You’re not alone.