Megan's story
Trigger warning: Megan’s story details her experience of violent & emotional domestic abuse - including violent assault, manipulation, sexual coercion & ephebophilia (the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents). This may be triggering to readers with similar experiences. Please call our helpline if you need support. Cheshire East: 0300 123 5101 / Other areas: 01270 250390
“His name was Michael… I was 14 and still in high school.”
“I had a happy childhood. I grew up around music. It was always playing in the house. My parents were into some great bands, and I learned a lot from them. I’ve always had a close relationship with them and they're my best friends, even now. They really are the parents everyone would wish for.
“When I was a teenager, I went off the rails a little bit, especially when I found punk music and started playing in a band. I was rebelling against the dogmatic protocol of school and finding my own emancipation from what seemed to me a very rigid society.
“My parents really supported my nonconformist stance. I don’t think I’ve ever really fit in with the conventional constraints of our hegemonic society. I’m still a bit of a rebel these days and that rebellion is celebrated in our family unit.
“I always wanted to be a rock star, like my dad. I was playing a punk rock gig in a pub one night – this is 25 years ago - and this lad in a leather jacket looking very ‘punk-y’ came up to me and asked me out as I came offstage. His name was Michael.
“He took me out a few days later for drinks. He told me how old he was. I was 14 and still in high school. He was hitting the 30-mark. You can understand why he thought I was older, performing a gig at a pub on a Wednesday night. He didn’t seem bothered when I told him that I was so young.”
“I didn’t see Michael again until 2018, 25 years later.”
“I thought I was the coolest rock chick with Michael. This was the guy I wanted to come and pick me up from school so that my teachers could see me walk out of school and get in his car. I suppose there was a little bit of vanity in it… and the fact he was so much older, that was taboo as well. It was like the epitome of rebelliousness.
“I told my parents about his age. They were concerned. My dad told him he was too old to be pursuing me, and to back off and come back when I was older. I respected what he’d done – it was one of the few times my dad felt like a parent rather than my best friend – but I was not going to stop seeing Michael. I suppose there was a romance about it, a feeling we were star-crossed lovers.
“I often think about the day I ended things with Michael, all those years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just a gut instinct kicked in and I had to end it. I still can’t explain why. We’d had a brilliant weekend hanging out and everything had been great but there was just something that bothered me that I couldn't explain. He said he was heartbroken and walked away.
“I found out he’d started seeing a girl not long after who he eventually married. We lost touch over the years. He’d got married, had a child, got divorced. I lived in Germany for ten years, got married, had kids too. Then I didn’t see Michael again until 2018, 25 years later.”
“I’d never been unfaithful to my husband, but I couldn’t pull myself away from Michael.”
“After having three kids in quick succession, I put weight on and got body conscious. My husband, Jan, never made me feel attractive – not out of malice, he just didn’t think. I felt as if I was just a maid and mum. Over time we became more like friends – we still have a friendship now – but the love had gone.
“I’d been married 15 years and was back living in the UK when I bumped into a guy I knew who’d kept in touch with Michael. He must have mentioned seeing me as a friend request popped up from Michael the next day on Facebook. I was excited to be back in touch with him. I felt such a buzz. I accepted the request, and we had a couple of private messages about music and stuff, all harmless.
“After a while, he suggested we meet to catch up on the past 20-odd years, and I’d seen he was selling a record I wanted so I said I’d collect it from his house. I was so nervous but so excited.
“We chatted for an hour or so and, as I was getting up to leave, we hugged goodbye. But neither of us wanted to let go. So, we kept hugging. And then we ended up kissing. It was completely out of character for me. I’d never been unfaithful to my husband, but I couldn’t pull myself away from Michael. It was such a conflicting feeling of ‘oh my god! Somebody wants me!’ along with overwhelming, gut-wrenching guilt that I’d betrayed my husband.
Love bombing
“In hindsight, it was love-bombing. He would call me and leave messages saying ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to see you. Leave that idiot you’re with and be with me. I’ll never make you feel how he’s made you feel.’ Trying to be the knight in shining armour.
“The first night we spent together he told me he loved me. I realise now, that in itself is a big red flag, but I was feeling insecure and in such a vulnerable position. He said we were twin flames, that the universe had brought us back together after all these years, that we should have got married when I was 16, what a better life we’d both had had if we’d stuck together, let’s not waste any more time… Within three weeks I was moved into his house.
“He had a friend he worked with called Sarah. She was younger than him. They used to go to gigs together. He told me she was a lesbian. I was fine with them being friends. In fact, I got to know her and the three of us went to gigs together.
“They’d bought tickets to a festival before Michael and I had got back together. I didn’t have any problem with them going. But, when they’d gone, a couple of mutual friends told me they suspected it was a dirty weekend away. I eventually found out that Michael’s exact words were ‘I’m going to take her away and f*** the lesbian out of her’.
“I asked Michael about their suspicions. He wouldn't engage in a conversation on it. He said ‘you’re f****d in the head. She’s a f*****g lesbian, why would I want to f**k that weirdo?’ He stormed out of the house and came back later with a bottle of whiskey. He downed the entire bottle, threw up, smashed up a chair and passed out on the living room floor.
“I never got to find out exactly what happened with Sarah. I never got a denial or an admission. He simply said, ‘I’m never going to see her again. I love you. She doesn’t mean anything to me’ and shut it down. If she ever came up in conversation around us, he’d say ‘well, you told me I couldn’t see her anymore’. But I’d never said that. I’d never asked him to stop hanging out with her. I’d just wanted to talk about it, to know the truth.”
“My behaviour became toxic…”
“He had a jealous streak in him. He made me go through all my male Facebook friends individually and tell him how I knew them all. I quite happily sat down and told him ‘That’s my friend’s brother’, and even ‘that’s a guy I dated for six weeks in the 90s’. I was honest and told him ‘These are the people who have made up my life. I’m not going to stop being in touch with of any of them for you’.
“The next day, I felt uncomfortable and thought ‘I’m going to get him to do the same to show him how it feels’. I knew he had about 150 friends on Facebook. And guess what had happened overnight? His friends dropped to 80. All the women had been unfriended and there were only three women left – his sisters and his best friend’s wife.
“I’d started to mistrust him, and my behaviour became toxic. I occasionally checked his laptop when he was out. He’d let me use it for work, given me his password, said it wasn’t a problem. One week something wasn’t right. He’d been looking shifty. I checked his computer and saw he’d been searching for porn. When we first got back together, he told me he’d used porn when he was single, but he didn’t need it now. So, I felt that conversation was done.
“I looked at his activity in case they were from years ago when we weren’t together, but they were from the week before. I thought that was bad enough. But it was far worse. I was teaching private lessons at the time, and I’d had a kitchen full of teenagers. I could see the time stamp. While I was teaching, he’d been sat in the next room looking at porn of girls in school uniforms.”
“The pain was excruciating.”
“I was screaming at him to get out of the house and trying to push him out the back door. But he’s a big guy and he didn’t move. He turned around, picked me up, threw me against the cooker and my finger just snapped. The pain was excruciating. He grabbed hold of me by both of my wrists, pinned me up against the kitchen counter. I couldn’t get away from him.
“Eventually he let go. I threw up on the floor from the pain. I managed to get some ice out of the freezer and gently placed my hand on the kitchen countertop and put the ice on top of the snapped finger. I told him ‘This really hurts. You’re going to have to take me to hospital. Can you get my handbag and the car keys?’ He went and got my handbag and slammed it down on my hand that I had the ice on.
“He took me to hospital and wouldn’t leave my side the entire time. I must have told three or four people in the hospital it’d ‘been a domestic’. Not ‘abuse or violence’ because he was close by. Still, I’d tried to get them to realise what was going on. But they sent me home with him.
“Now I see that the hospital had failed to safeguard me. They should have separated us, talked to me individually, and got the hospital security involved. I believe that if the staff acted with more social responsibility, none of what I went through after would have happened.”
“I told everybody I’d been doing DIY…”
“I came home from the hospital, and I remember lying down on the sofa. I didn’t cry. I just stared at the wall for two days.
“As soon as we got home, he asked me not to tell anybody. He said he was ashamed to have watched that porn and didn’t want people to know. I don’t even remember him looking that remorseful about hurting me.
“I told everybody I’d been doing DIY and a shelf had fallen on my finger. Everyone took that as fact. I just did whatever Michael told me to do. I was in shock. It felt like a fog. I stayed in it for quite a long time. I felt numb. Like I wasn’t letting myself feel anything. It was then that Michael started trying to gaslight me about the incident.
“When you’re in that state of shock, you need a leader. You need someone to tell you what to do, to take control. And in a domestic situation, the leader becomes your abuser. The term ‘gaslight’ is something I’m familiar with now because of the work I’ve done with My CWA, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time.
“He made out that the whole thing was my fault because I’d ‘found a bit of porn on his computer’, I was the ‘nagging woman’ who ‘couldn’t handle a little bit of porn, I was being jealous’… I was in such a fog at the time that I guess there was a real blur between the reality that I remembered and the narrative that I was being fed by him.
“When you’re being gaslighted, it’s an easier narrative to go along with because the true narrative of what happened that day is something I’d have to do something about. I would have to leave him or go to the police. I don’t think you ever totally believe the gaslighting, but you also don’t have the strength to think critically about what they’re saying to you.
“It just becomes easier to accept the narrative you’re being fed and not argue with it. And because I didn’t have that support, and nobody picked up on what was really happening, I thought ‘it was horrible, but I can just forget about it and move on. I don’t have to face the reality of it’.
“There was a period of quiet. The second attack happened about six months later.”
“I probably wouldn’t have called the police, but my kids were there…”
“It had been a weird day. He’d ignored me for most of it. I’d gone to bed early and was reading and he came in and said, ‘oh we’ve definitely got problems in our relationship if you’re reading at bedtime.’ Bedtime was for sex, in his mind. It waned a bit during the bad times but there must have only been a couple of weeks in our relationship that we didn’t have sex at least once a night and a few times during the day if we could.
“Because I wasn’t paying him any attention that night, because I was in bed reading, he got up and said he was going to sleep in the spare room. He said our relationship was ‘completely f****d’. I texted him - I was probably being a bit lazy and not wanting to get out of bed – and said he should come back to bed and that I loved him. Then I thought ‘why am I doing this?’ So, I went to the spare room and said ‘give me your phone, I’m going to delete those messages I just sent you’. I was being silly. Maybe I was feeling hurt and frustrated. I was being toxic too.
“He said ‘I’ve hidden my phone’ so I started looking for it and he jumped out of bed and pushed me across the room. We had some step ladders next to the door and I went flying into them and I ended up with them on top of me. I’d screamed out loud as he pushed me across the room. My kids were in the house and heard it.
“He’d started ranting and raving so my eldest – who must have only been 10 at the time – had got up to see what was going on. I grabbed hold of her and went into my bedroom and we both sat with our backs to the door as a barricade as he tried to get into the room. I think if it’d just been me, I probably wouldn’t have called the police, but my kids were there, and the maternal instinct kicked in.
“The police came. He got taken to his parents’ house and told not to come back to me that night. The next morning, his mum called me. She said ‘how dare you call the police on my son! He is not a violent man…’ That was the point I blurted out ‘well he did break my finger six months ago’. I think she was the first person I’d told the truth to. And she said ‘I don’t believe you. You’re full of sh**.’”
“I got ignored for two weeks.”
“He came back. It was almost Christmas. December’s a weird time. You put that mask on, a smile. I knew if I started challenging him, it could mess things up. It could ruin Christmas.
“Life is a treadmill and you’ve always got plans. You keep going for the sake of the nice stuff that’s planned. You get to a point of ‘shut up and put up’, not just for your partner’s sake but for your own sake, the sake of the kids and your sanity. There’s almost a defiance in ‘I’m not going to let that argument affect my Christmas or my lovely plans’.
“However, that Christmas, my dad got diagnosed with cancer and I was an emotional wreck. I wasn’t getting any love or emotional support from Michael. One day, we started to argue, and he said ‘you’re too emotional for me. I can’t handle you’ and walked out of the door.
“He wouldn’t take my calls for two weeks. This is one of the abuse tactics I’d gotten used to, ‘withholding’ they call it. That was the first time he walked out, disappeared for more than a day, and didn’t come back. I was beside myself with worry.
“He eventually came back, and we picked things up again, slowly. He suggested couples counselling. I saw this as an encouraging sign. This was during lockdown, so it was on Zoom. The first session was about the things that were positive in our relationship and went ok. The second session was about things that we would want to change. I mentioned the violent incidents and he got angry with me. After the session finished, I sat outside in the garden because I was too afraid to come into the house. He still looked really angry. Eventually I came inside. He didn’t attack me, but I got ignored for two weeks.
“He was nicer to me when he wanted sex. But he was still cold and distant. Then, one day, he completely ignored me. He hardly said a word to me all day. That evening, I sat by myself in the living room. I drank a bottle of wine for Dutch courage then went through to the kitchen to tell him to get out. He tried to convince me we could work it out, but I said ‘no, I’m done. Just go. Now.’ He could see I was serious. Finally, he said ‘OK, I’ll go. I’ll go and throw myself off one of the bridges in town.’”
“He said he missed me. He promised me he’d change.”
“He’d said he was going to jump off a bridge and wasn’t answering any of my calls. I called the police. They drove around town trying to find him and eventually found him at his parents’ house. It was a control tactic. He was hoping I’d say ‘ok, stay, let’s talk about this’. But I was so determined by that point.
“I made it clear he had to pick up his stuff. He collected it, moved out and we didn’t see each other for a few months. I started moving on, met some new friends, had a couple of dates.
“He must have found out that I’d been trying to move on and was doing well as he got in touch. He said he missed me. He promised me he’d change. That he’d be different, he realised what he’d lost - all that bulls***. A week later we decided to get together. I’d missed him. Despite everything, I was still very much in love with him and finding it hard to move on.
“But not long after we got back together, he was arrested. I’d asked him if he was still looking at porn. He said he wasn’t. I tried to look at his laptop and we had a tug of war with it. I was once again pushed across the room and ended up a heap on the floor, by the wall. He called the police and said I was trying to steal his computer, but when they arrived, they saw the situation for what it was. I had bruises all down my leg, my ankle was a bit messed up.
“I gave a statement. He was released on bail on the condition he was not to come anywhere near me or contact me. But he’d still call me. He kept asking me to drop the charges – that was his main motivation. He’d say, ‘this is stupid, this is silly’, making out like it was my fault. He told everyone that I was drunk and had fallen over.
“He’d be sweet to me and every few days drop into conversation that I had to drop the charges if our relationship was ever going to work. One night, I agreed. I phoned 101. They asked me, ‘is he there right now?’. When I said he was sitting next to me, they said ‘we’re sending a patrol car now and he will be arrested if he is found at your property.’ He ran.”
“I was just an absolute wreck.”
“I saw him a week later at his house. His friend was there when I arrived and started screaming at me about Michael’s arrest. He stood over me screaming ‘you’re a c***!’ Michael just sat on a chair and didn’t say anything. I took a barrage of verbal abuse off his friend for 20 minutes and was trapped at the back of the house, in his kitchen. Once I saw a clear exit, I escaped.
“I didn’t speak to Michael for another few months. I tried to move on again. I met a guy through online dating. But, once again, Michael found out I had a new fella and reappeared. He invited me round his house. I went round. I'd started working with My CWA by that point and had began to understand his abuse. I was being quite defiant that evening.
“It soon became apparent that I shouldn’t have been there. We started arguing. I was telling him I was sick of his bulls***, his abusive behaviour, the backing and to’ing in our relationship. I called a taxi to go home. As I went to leave, he picked me up from behind and threw me on the pavement outside his house. It was as though he didn’t like that I was walking away from him. He wanted to make it look like he was throwing me out.
“I screamed when he’d picked me up and his neighbours called the police. The police took me home but I went to hospital an hour or so later to get my wrist x-rayed. He was arrested the next day. It eventually ended up that we were to go to court. By this point, I was on antidepressants and anxiety meds. I couldn’t handle the pressure of the court case. I decided to withdraw the charges. I was just an absolute wreck.
“The court case seemed to set a boundary. There haven't been any violent incidents since. But the manipulation and mental abuse is horrendous. It’s like being swung around like a rag doll. One minute he wants to pick me up and play, the next minute I’m being emotionally thrown on the ground. It’s as though he gets off on hurting me.”
“I’ve found the words, terminology and knowledge to understand the abuse.”
“He’ll swear ‘til he’s blue in the face that none of the violent incidents happened. And if they did, in some way, any injuries I sustained were my fault. What’s more, he doesn’t recognise the emotional abuse he’s put me through.
“He is so controlling that one day, he phoned me and demanded that I stand in front of his family and tell them I made everything up. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I hung up the phone and called My CWA to chat things through.
“Through My CWA, I’ve found the words, terminology and knowledge to understand the abuse. I recognise when he’s trying to gaslight or manipulate me. I recognise that it’s not my fault. I’ve spoken to other women who’ve been made to feel that they’re the ‘crazy b****’. He uses that term a lot to describe me and all his exes. Because I’ve admitted to having depression, if something he says upsets me or I get emotional, he’ll say ‘oh have you not taken your meds today? or ask me if it is ‘that time of the month?’ It totally invalidates my right to have an opinion or voice a concern.
“My CWA has also taught me to use the time out technique so when he tries to provoke an argument, I go and sit in another room until I’ve calmed down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do the same. He has seen that I refuse to argue so he tries to upset me in other ways. He’s walked out in the middle of us making love. No reason given. He just got up and left and refused to speak to me for weeks. I felt so hurt and used. The day after that happened, my son was taken seriously ill and got rushed into hospital. I texted Michael to let him know. He’d lived with my son and I for years. He didn’t even call to ask if he was ok. I know now that this was his way of trying to get me to do something 'crazy' that would add fuel to his narrative.”
"They call it trauma bonding."
“The pull towards him is something I still don’t understand. They call it trauma bonding. I know he can be a good person when he wants to be. When he is being nice, we have a great time together, but it’s like living with two different people. When he changes, it is really scary. His behaviour becomes completely unpredictable. I wish I could just walk away, but I keep on going back to him.
“I know it takes two to tango. But while I’m able to grow and learn from my mistakes, he refuses to engage in any reflective practice. I was so happy, last summer, when he agreed to take My CWA’s Lifeline course. I thought that he’d recognise how toxic he had become and would change and grow – but he pulled out after a few weeks. He said he wasn’t abusive and that it was a waste of his time. I know now that he only agreed to do the course to keep me 'on a hook'. I think the staff at My CWA saw through it.
“It feels as though for a long time, I’ve held on to a glimmer of hope that one day he might turn around and become reflective, but I’m knowledgeable enough now to realise that it is fools' gold. And I know that whilst I’ve been trying to help him become reflective about his toxic behaviour, it’s been killing me.
“I've recently gone back to university. It’s helped focus my attention on other things. It is helping me to feel more ME again. I’m feeling strong and more positive about life. I have great support from My CWA, and from my family and friends. My rational thoughts tell me to accept that I have no future with him. My goal now is to get my brain to convince my heart to stop loving him.”
If you’ve been affected by domestic abuse and need support, contact My CWA today. You’re not alone.