“When I got upset, he told me it was my own fault”

front of me and when I told him it made me uncomfortable, he’d insist I was imagining things. He convinced me that none of our colleagues liked me because I was “difficult to get along with”, and wouldn’t allow me to text my friends when we were together.

Then he began to control what I ate. One morning after we had sex, he pushed me in the stomach and said, “What’s all this?” When I became upset, he told me it was my own fault. We fell into a cycle of him insulting me, then calling me “psychotic” when I challenged him. During arguments, he’d put in his earphones, face the wall and refuse to speak to me, a practice I now know to be called “stonewalling”.

Three years in, the abuse became physical – he would drag me by the wrists, pin me to the floor and shake me. When I tried to leave, he physically harmed himself and told me I was making him “unwell”.

I felt hopeless as I’d been so isolated from my friends that I didn’t feel I could turn to anyone. I was ashamed and began thinking that suicide was my only option. Reaching that point made me confide in my best friend, who helped me buy a car and move back to my mum’s while Oliver was away. He begged