‘His cruel words stung like a slap’

Imagine being taken apart, piece by piece, by the person who claims to love you the most. Here, Francesca* reveals the mental health fallout of being on the receiving end of emotional abuse

You’re grinding the salt wrong,’ my boyfriend snapped, as I cooked him dinner. Moments earlier, it had been the onions I was doing wrong; before that, the potatoes. But it wasn’t only the way I moved around the kitchen that seemed to irk him. From the little rituals I held dear to how I chose to spend my weekends, he would grind me down – like the salt in my dinner – until I felt worthless.

I can pinpoint the moment when the man I loved started emotionally abusing me. It was six months after we started dating, post meeting the parents and ‘I love you’, when he came home from a night out to tell me he’d kissed someone else. ‘It’s not great,’ he said, without a shred of remorse. ‘But it’s not a dumpable offence.’ That wasn’t his call to make, of course. But I agreed, and I forgave him.

It could be a coincidence that his night out the following week coincided with my first panic attack. But the crippling selfdoubt and insomnia that came with it makes me think it wasn’t.

In the months that followed, he cheated on me three more times, and still I stayed with him. His confessions were clever; and they were supplemented with a campaign of manipulation designed to undermine me. He’d claim to have told me things he hadn’t, from being busy after work to wanting to move abroad. He’d go for days without replying to my texts. After an evening with my friends, he would float the idea of a threesome with the one he was most attracted to.

There’s a word for what he was doing – when I learnt it, it made me shudder. Gaslighting

– a psychological term for the process of sowing seeds of doubt in someone’s mind until they begin to question their memory, perception and sanity.

We’d argue, and sometimes

I’d hold my own. But I’d always wind up believing I was to blame. It was a belief that culminated in a visit to my GP, who prescribed CBT and beta blockers for anxiety. But with the source of my deteriorating mental health still in my life and in my bed, it was only a temporary fix.

All couples have their ups and downs, I reasoned with myself. And our ups really did feel amazing. Some days he’d be the loving, supportive, interesting man I first fell for – just long enough for me to remember he could be. Memories of lazy afternoons laughing together have the power to raise a smile to this day. For all our problems, it was incomprehensible to me that this constituted abuse. I thought abuse looked like bruises covered up with concealer; like cowering in a corner, never knowing when the next punch would come. I knew he would never hit me. And yet, sometimes, having him scream in my face and walk away stung just like a slap.

Sadly, this story doesn’t end with me coming to my senses. After two and a half years, he was the one who called it a day. I think he was fed up with the arguing. I was devastated. But it was nine months before I realised I couldn’t continue to write off my feelings as break-up blues. Unable to move forward, I asked my family for the first time for their thoughts on my ex, and absorbed every brutally honest word.

I cut off all contact with him and started counselling, and it’s slowly shifting the way I think. It was there I first heard the term ‘emotional abuse’ and began to understand all the ways he took me apart, piece by piece.

It’s been a year since it ended and I’m now seeing someone. Dating hasn’t come easily. I live in fear of my new partner realising I’m not fun, interesting or sexually ‘enough’. But my confidence is growing. After I spend time with him, I leave on a high. That’s what I deserved all along.