Real Stories: I reported my abusive husband, and my family begged me to go back

The first time he hit me, I was more shocked than hurt. I remember sitting on the edge of our bed, my cheek still burning, his voice shaking as he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. I just… lost it.” 

I forgave him before the handprint on my face faded. I told myself it was stress, marriage pressure, a bad day, anything but a sign of who he truly was.

Little did I know, this was the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.

At first, the violence wasn’t physical. It was subtle. He monitored who I talked to. He sneered whenever I laughed too loudly on the phone. He started deciding what I wore. Then he began controlling money. If I needed anything, even sanitary pads, I had to ask properly, like a child.

The day it turned physical again, I had simply questioned him coming home at 2 a.m. He grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into the wall like I had no bones. I remember clawing at his arm because I feared what the world would say if anyone found out.

“Marriage is endurance,” they would say. “Don’t provoke him,” they would say.

So, I kept quiet. I adjusted. I wore long sleeves to cover the bruises and repeatedly said to myself like a mantra, “it’ll be fine.. It’ll be fine…”

Until the night he beat me in front of our son.

Our little boy, barely five, was screaming and trying to pull his father off me with his tiny hands. I saw myself through his terror. I knew that if I stayed, I wouldn’t be alive long enough to celebrate his sixth.

So I left. I went to my parents’ house with bruises still dark and obvious.

They were sympathetic for exactly 48 hours. On the third day, my aunt arrived with Bible verses and one phrase on repeat, “Marriage is not sweet every day. Go and fight for your home.”

My mother’s eyes were already softening. My father didn’t even look at me when he said, “You have to go back to your husband. You young people of nowadays don’t have patience.”

When I told them I had gone to the police station and made a formal report, the room went cold. My mother gasped like I had confessed to murder. My uncle shook his head, whispering, “You want to ruin your husband?” No one asked if he had already ruined me.

Suddenly, I wasn’t a victim, I was “a stubborn wife who wants to scatter her home.”

They told me to withdraw the complaint. They told me to think about my child. They told me he was still my husband. They told me to forgive and return to him.

Not one of them asked about my well-being.

Now I am living in limbo. We’re still separated, but I’m terrified he might show up and ask me to go back home with him. I’ve decided I’m never going back to that monster. I won’t have my son growing up in such a toxic environment.