I thought the guy was nice at first, but to cut to the chase, after moving in for a few months with him he had become so increasingly jealous and possessive that I was at the point where I was pretty much a prisoner in my own home in a domestic violence situation.

He would do things such as let the air out of my car tires so I couldn’t leave when he went out drinking.

If I didn’t “go upstairs” with him, he would take that to mean I was “getting it somewhere else” and go into a frenzy of screaming, shaking me, and choking me. As bad as it was, it wasn’t as bad as going up there with him and enduring the nasty critical things he would say about my body, I’d just have to fade out and pretend like it wasn’t happening, the same as I would do if he was choking me.

It was so horrible that one day I had the epiphany that I realized I was tolerating the physical abuse over the coerced sex if I had the energy to endure it. I called my mom for help with a damage deposit to get an apartment, but my mom wouldn’t help me get out, she said “you chose your bed, you sleep in it.” So I was entrapped, as he’d drained all my accounts,including my emergency money, on drinking with his friends.

He insisted he believed he was infertile, and didn’t need birth control, but I would sneak on a diaphraghm and spermicidal lubricant to protect myself anyway. I didn’t know weather he knew about it but it never got mentioned.

One time I barricaded myself in my bedroom (we had seperate bedrooms as he liked to smoke in bed and I didn’t want to sleep in a smoky room) by putting a plank off my brick and board bookshelf under the doorknob. He went ballistic and smashed the door in, hinges-first. I’d never been so terrified in my life. (He later justified the damage to my door to his friends by telling them I was suicidal and he’d saved my life.) After getting in, he was in such a rage he smashed a few things that were precious of mine before calming down enough that he would talk. He then pulled the drawer open and showed me that he’d poked a hole in the diaphraghm.

It was stupid of me, but I threw it out. I grew up in a very psychologically abusive home and believed I had no rights inside and that nothing could or would be done about that. I didn’t also know that all these things were rape, I mistakenly believed that since we were living as a couple I had to cater to his whims even if it was under threat of physical violence. (As bad as all this sounds it actually at the time was not far out of my realm of “normal” for abuse in a home.)

So I learned I was pregnant. Even though we had a verbal agreement that if “something happened” along those lines, if I would get pregnant, that he would support a termination.

But like everything else, that was a lie too. He suddenly became very “pro-life”. He tried to reason with me but in my mind the relationship was already over and I was just looking for a safe place to get out and away from there.

I finally found some friends that would let me stay with them and let me bring my animals so they would be safe from him too (I couldn’t go to a shelter because I would have to leave my animals behind and he would abuse them to get me to come back, a common tactic.) This lady was even going to take me to the clinic.

I stupidly accepted a “peace bond” invitation from him to go out and talk it over. Even though I wasn’t going to change my mind and he was now my ex, I felt he had he right to say his peace so that he could get it off his chest. But when I was dropping him off at home, he managed to grab the papers for the procedure the next day and partially barricaded himself in the house. I say “partially” because my arm and leg got in the front door, and then the door was slammed on me. For 45 minutes in the rain I was held, in the rain, with my arm twisted behind my back and my kneecap locked between the door and the frame. I called for help- the next door neighbours even came home and I was yelling for help whenever a car went by, but no one stopped to help. After 45 minutes I managed to get free, and he pushed my down the concrete stairs.

I went to the nearest phone booth and called the police. They were pedantic and patronizing and sardonic with me. I had a bruise for his perfect hand print in my upper arm, as well as other bruises littered all over my body and scrapes from the fall. I was holding onto the last of my energy to go to the police station and have the bruises photographed and to tell my story. But the police in the car wouldn’t even let me write a report because it would “ruin his life”. It was like a balloon burst and all the energy I’d been holding onto disappeared.

But at least I was out of the situation and got the papers back. I couldn’t imagine carrying this monster’s offspring to term and chasing him down for child support for 18 years, I’d had more than enough of him.

Since it was my second termination, I had to endure this silly lecture on how to use birth control, even though both times they were a result of the guys deliberately sabotaging the birth control to impregnate me against my will. The clinic didn’t explain to me that sabotaging birth control was rape, I didn’t learn that until many years later.

So that was that. (This happened in Canada)