
Trigger Warning: Emotional Abuse, Trauma, Betrayal
When I met my husband, I thought I had found my forever—someone who would stand beside me through life’s highs and lows, someone who would protect me as fiercely as I loved him. I was a senior manager at a successful software company, independent and thriving. I never imagined that years later, I’d be questioning my own reality, wondering how the person I trusted most could hurt me so deeply without ever laying a hand on me.
Abuse doesn’t always come in punches and bruises. Sometimes, it comes in words, silence, and the slow erosion of who you are. Emotional abuse is insidious. It creeps into your life, masking itself as love and care, until you wake up one day and don’t recognize yourself anymore.
The Slow Unraveling
The signs weren’t obvious at first. They rarely are. When my husband became dismissive, I chalked it up to stress. When he started snapping at me, I thought maybe I had done something wrong. But as the years passed, the cracks grew deeper.
I remember the first time I questioned his relationship with a woman I thought was my friend. She had stopped talking to me suddenly, and I didn’t understand why. My husband spent more and more time with her, and it made me uncomfortable. When I brought it up, he told me, “I just need someone to talk to sometimes.”
I felt dismissed, like my instincts didn’t matter. I asked him repeatedly if there was anything more to their relationship, and he always had an excuse. “You’re overreacting—none of our problems have anything to do with her.”
Every time I tried to voice my feelings, I was met with defensiveness, deflection, or silence. I started to feel like I was losing my grip on reality.
The Truth Comes Out
When he finally admitted to the affair, my world collapsed. I had spent so long trying to convince myself that I was imagining things. But I wasn’t. He admitted to me, “It was like a life raft I swam to sometimes to avoid drowning.”
Those words broke something in me. I was drowning too—drowning in loneliness, confusion, and pain. But instead of throwing me a life raft, he swam to her.
Even then, he minimized his actions. He said he didn’t understand why I “hated” my friend, as if I was the one being unreasonable. The betrayal wasn’t just about the affair—it was about how he made me question my intuition, my worth, and my reality for years.
The Abuse After the Affair
The affair wasn’t the end of the abuse. If anything, it intensified. After our separation, I started to see the full picture. His words were like daggers, cloaked in concern but meant to wound.
When I expressed my emotions, he told me, “Please stop lashing out at me and then getting angry it’s taking longer. If I don’t have the lash outs, I’m 100000% better and able to make progress.”
When I brought up our financial struggles, he turned it back on me: “Stop blaming me please. I can’t take it anymore. If you continue to insist on taking it out on me anymore, why should I keep paying the bills?”
He painted himself as the victim—overwhelmed by my “reactions” while ignoring the pain he had caused me. My valid emotions became the problem, not the years of gaslighting, betrayal, and emotional manipulation that led to them.
The Breaking Point
The weight of it all became too much. I stopped eating. I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts spiraled until I didn’t know what was real anymore. I ended up in the hospital twice, fighting for my mental health.
A doctor looked me in the eye and said, “You’ve been emotionally abused, and it has caused neurological damage to your brain.” I didn’t believe her at first. How could I? I loved him. He said he loved me. How could I love someone who abused me? It took two doctors and three therapists to convince me that what I experienced was real.
I remember one doctor telling me after I kept refusing to name it as abuse, “He treated you like an object.”
Those words stayed with me because they finally made it clear: I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t overreacting. And it wasn’t my fault.
Why I’m Sharing My Story
Starting “It’s Still Abuse” was both terrifying and empowering. I want others to know what I didn’t—that abuse isn’t always physical, but it’s always damaging.
Emotional abuse is in the way they make you doubt yourself. It’s in the deflection, the gaslighting, and the blame-shifting. It’s in the lies that make you question your own reality and the silence that makes you feel invisible.
If my story resonates with you, I want you to know: you’re not alone. You’re not overreacting. And you’re not crazy. Abuse doesn’t have to leave physical scars to be real.
Your Voice Matters
This platform isn’t just about my story—it’s about yours too. Sharing our stories is how we heal, how we find strength, and how we help others recognize the signs.
If you’ve experienced emotional abuse, your voice matters. Your pain is valid. And you deserve to be heard.
Let’s break the silence together. It’s still abuse.