When domestic abuse doesn’t look the way people expect

If you had met me a few years ago, you probably would not have guessed that I was living in an abusive relationship.

I am a solicitor. I had worked hard for this career and I was proud of it. I went to work every day and earned a good salary. I was meeting deadlines, advising clients and, to the outside world, I was capable, confident and in control.

This is where one of the most damaging myths about domestic abuse stems from; that a victim has a particular look. Society thinks that victims and survivors fit one stereotype and that abuse is always visible or that somehow, an education, professional success or financial independence provide protection. They do not.

Domestic abuse does not discriminate. Sometimes it looks like chaos, sometimes it looks like success.

Behind closed doors, my life looked very different.

I was living in a relationship characterised by coercive control, verbal abuse, physical abuse and financial abuse. Throughout the relationship, there were suicide threats and attempts. I lived with the fear, responsibility and uncertainty that came with this.

For a long time, I did not have the language to describe what was happening. I only knew that my world was becoming smaller.

Looking back now, I can see that this is one of the most defining features of coercive control. It rarely begins with obvious violence. It begins quietly. The confidence is chipped away by every remark, every slur used against you. Self-belief gradually replaced by self-doubt. The decisions became harder to make because you no longer trust your own judgement. Over time, you stop asking what you need and you start asking what will keep the peace.

Without realising it, I was implicated by, and responsible for everything. Their emotions, their wellbeing and the stability of the relationship. It became my responsibility to prevent the crises that I was threatened with. In the years that I was treading on egg-shells to uplift someone else’s life, I did not realise I was slowly losing my own.

The Wrong Question

One of the questions survivors hear more than almost any other is:

“Why didn’t you leave?”

This was never a helpful question to me. It assumes that I had a level of freedom that often does not exist within an abusive relationship.

A better question is:

“What happened to you that made leaving feel so impossible?”

Simply leaving was never one decision. It was hundreds of internal negotiations, each shaped by fear, guilt, responsibility and confusion. Every attempt to establish a boundary carried consequences. Every step towards independent felt uncertain.

Throughout my experiences, I was experiencing a profound emotional burden. Despite the abuse I was experiencing and the concern I had for my own safety, I found myself constantly worrying about what would happen to them. I had taken on responsibility that no partner should ever have to carry.

At the time, it simply felt like survival. Internally I was asking myself “How can I get through today without being abused or called an idiot or stupid? How do I avoid confrontation today?”

The idea of being free felt like a pipedream.

This is one of the reasons coercive control is so difficult to explain and realise. It changes the very way you think. It changes how you weigh decisions. It changes what feels possible.

From the outside, leaving may appear straightforward. From the inside, it can feel impossible.

Reporting isn’t the end of the story

Eventually, I reported what had happened. Like many survivors, I believed that telling the truth would bring clarity. Instead, I discovered that reporting was not a single event. It was the beginning of another journey.

It meant reliving my experience through witness statements, interviews, waiting rooms and months of uncertainty. It required a courage I did not know I possessed.

As a solicitor, I was well aware that the criminal justice system was designed to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prove a criminal offence, beyond reasonable doubt. The problem was, I was also a seemingly successful solicitor and I was not reliant on my abuser.

I knew the burden of proof, but it did not sit well emotionally. When I received the news that a prosecution would not be sustainable, I experienced a grief like no other. This was not simply because of the legal outcome, but because of the hope I had invested in it.

The hope that justice would bring closure. The hope that everything I had endured would finally make sense. The hope that I could close that chapter of my life.

The key message I would share with any survivor is this:

A failed prosecution is not a failed survivor.

A prosecution may not meet the legal threshold for a conviction, but that does not erase a survivor’s lived experience, their courage or their truth.

What happens next?

When the case concluded, I did not feel free. I found myself withdrawing. Avoiding conversations, avoiding reminders, avoiding anything that might pull me back into those memories.

For a long time, I believed I was failing. I now understand that what I was experiencing was a recognizable, understandable response to prolonged trauma.

The avoidance was extreme. It was not simply a weakness or an unwillingness to engage. It was my nervous system reaching its limit. I was trying to protect myself from further triggers. What appears to be disengagement is often exhaustion; inconsistency was trauma. What felt like resistance, may simply be self-protection. If we become curious before we become critical, we create space for understanding.

Learning compassion

My greatest turning point in my journey, came through Compassion Focused Therapy. Until then, I thought recovery meant becoming the person I had been before the abuse. Instead, I learned that recovery was about changing the relationship I had with myself.

Therapy helped me understand that my brain was not broken. It had adapted.

Hypervigilance, constantly scanning for danger, self-criticism and anticipating the needs of others had once helped me survive. The difficulty was that my mind no longer knew when it was safe to stop.

Gradually, I learned the difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt says: “I made a mistake.”

Shame says: “I am the mistake.”

Coercive control thrives on shame. It convinces survivors that they are responsible for everything that happened to them.

I realised I would never speak to a client the way that I spoke to myself. I would never tell a client that they were weak for being manipulated. I would never tell them they should have known better. I would never blame them for surviving.

Yet those were exactly the things I was saying to myself.

Learning self-compassion did not remove accountability. It removed cruelty. The recovery did not begin when I stopped feeling afraid, it began when I stopped punishing myself for having been afraid.

Finding calmer waters

People often ask me what recovery looks like. For me, it arrives quietly and in small moments. In woodland walks, where I hear the birdsong instead of raised voices. In sitting by the sea and noticing calm instead of tension. In discovering that my body was not something to be diminished by abuse, but something remarkably powerful and resilient.

As a whitewater kayaker, I have found that rivers do not necessarily take us where we expect to go. Recovery has felt the same. Sometimes it is calm, sometimes it is relentless and throws us upside down. Sometimes it carries us through waters we would never have chosen. I could not change the river that I had already travelled, I could not change the abuse, the outcome of the prosecution but I could decide how I would travel from there.

I have found calmer water, not because life became easy. But because I stopped believing that I had to navigate it alone.

To the professionals

All I would ask for professionals in this area is this: please be curious about behaviour before you are critical of it. When a survivor withdraws, misses an appointment, misses a call, changes their mind or struggles to engage; do not ask “What is wrong with this person?” but “What has happened to this person?”

To the survivors

A failed prosecution does not erase your truth. It does not erase the courage it took to leave and to stand up and say something. It does not define you. The process did not give me the ending I had hoped for, but it did not get to write the ending of my story. I did.