There are five words I hesitate to say. Five words that reveal a powerful truth, but they are words that must be declared.
Leaving is not the end.
It took two attempts, but in 2006 I successfully escaped an abusive marriage. It was a relationship that persisted for twelve years and produced two beautiful children.
They were three and one when we fled to live with my parents in our small town.
Disclosing abuse to his family and mutual friends meant that in the span of months I was labeled as a liar by many. My circle became much smaller. It was painful, but I held onto the hope that I was finally free.
Or so I thought.
In my mind, an order of protection, the temporary custody arrangement, and the eventual divorce decree meant the abuse would stop.
I was wrong. The term post-separation abuse was not part of my vocabulary until around 2019, but for the thirteen years before that, I lived through it, despite not knowing what it was called.
Post-separation abuse can be defined as a sustained campaign of harassment, intimidation, coercive control, manipulation and abuse by an abusive ex-partner. It can affect survivors who do not share children with their abuser, but it is highly prevalent within the dynamic of survivors and abusers who have children.
In my daily life, post-separation abuse manifested as the abuser using our young children as pawns. He attempted to turn them against me and told them it was my fault that our family was split. It meant anxiously waiting at our third-party location for custody exchanges where I was forced to face and interact with the person who abused me for twelve years. Was he bringing them back? How late would they be?
Post-separation abuse meant a multitude of family court filings and petitions as he spent years attempting to change our initial agreement. I spent thousands on lawyer fees to fight against his demands for more custody so I could keep our children out of an unhealthy environment as much as possible.
Post-separation abuse looked like our eight-year-old tasked with carrying a child support check to school in her lunch box as courier because he refused to provide that on the day it was due and often withheld it to exert control.
Post-separation abuse affected our children’s peer relationships and extra-curricular activities as they grew because anything scheduled when it was “time with Dad” meant there would be stress and anxiety involved. They learned to keep the peace as he began to morph them into small versions of me. Instead of growing up carefree, they grew up realizing safety meant hiding their own emotions, desires, and needs to walk on eggshells around a volatile father.
Post-separation abuse meant receiving angry phone calls, texts, and emails from an abusive ex-partner while I was at work teaching six-year-olds how to read. An abusive ex-partner who still desired control of me even after he remarried.
Leaving is not the end because the abuse does not end; it merely changes form.
Several months after escaping, I received a phone call.
“You should be here, Mommy. Can you come to the zoo with us?” My four-year-old daughter used her father’s cellphone to call me at his urging so she could remind me that our family wasn’t whole. The three of them were at the local zoo on a beautiful Saturday, and I wasn’t there. The tears flowed as I sat in my car contemplating if I should go back.
Interactions like that persisted for far too long, and without my strong support system, I surely would have returned under the mental pressure of post-separation abuse.
I hesitated to say “leaving is not the end” because I did not want to scare victims. Leaving an abusive relationship is mentally and emotionally exhausting. I feared that victims may decide not to leave if they knew the abuse would continue anyway.
Now, I take a balanced approach when I speak to victims who are wondering if they should leave or if they should continue to give the abuser another chance.
I answer honestly that leaving is hard and the abuse does not end, but there is a beautiful life waiting on the other side of escaping abuse.
Because I left, I was able to experience and discover a healthy love and a second marriage that is now in its seventeenth year.
Leaving is not the end, but when we name post-separation abuse and provide survivors with the tools they need to overcome it, we equip and empower them to move forward in their lives. We must balance the facts of post-separation abuse with the knowledge of practices such as parallel parenting and gray rocking to ensure survivors can keep looking ahead and not return to the abuser.
Leaving is not the end, but leaving is the start of a new life where survivors are free to live in peace within their own home and begin their healing journey.