Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2025
Last September I called 911 during an attack that was meant to kill me. I was arrested, named the perpetrator, and charged with a misdemeanor. Jail was the only place my abuser could not reach me, and my arrest saved my life. I’ve learned so much since then, lost so much, and experienced so much. I want to share what I went through in the hope that I can help someone else before it’s too late. Tomorrow is the first day of October. The first day of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Last year I went to the Kentucky state capitol, shook the governor’s hand, and cried as these names were read. I came so close to being nothing more than a candle at a vigil, but I’m not dead yet. I’m going to spend the next 31 days sharing as much as I can. I wanted to Be The Last, but dangerous men move so fast, so I’ll settle for being a light in the dark, a voice in the silence, and a life extracted from the cruel grip of death.
DVAM Day 1: Intersection
According to the CDC, the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States is homicide.
Research from the Alliance for HOPE International found that in cases where information was available, 75% of officers killed in the line of duty were murdered by men with a history of domestic violence.
According to a 2021 study, approximately 68% of mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 involved a domestic violence offender, either by killing a family member or intimate partner during the shooting or by having a prior history of domestic violence.
For the United States, the total economic impact of domestic violence is estimated to exceed $8.3 billion annually, and includes healthcare expenses, lost wages and productivity, criminal justice system costs, property damage, and increased costs for services like shelter and legal aid.
Domestic violence affects every single one of us, and it is a public health crisis. October may be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, but perpetrators harm 24/7/365, so please take what you learn this month and use it all year long to support survivors and hold offenders accountable.
Day 2: A dream…but no sleep
I almost fell asleep at the wheel, driving my kids to their dad’s house for the weekend. I was exhausted, because I was in love! So many late nights, so many conversations, so little sleep…after 18 months of almost complete solitude aside from the kids, I was struggling to keep up. Struggling to stay awake.
While I was crashing, he was riding high. Starting anew. Doing his research. What I thought was attention and infatuation was really interrogation, and every detail he gleaned and every detail he shared was used to burrow further and further into my life - to assert control. It happened so fast, but I was reassured by everyone around him. He was a good man. Would do anything for anyone. Always helping, always giving, always working…it was always something.
This reputation that he protects so fiercely is one of the many red flags I missed in the beginning. I heard over and over about how he sold his belongings to send a student to camp. How he bought his sister and niece the latest iPhones. How he did this and that for this person and that person. He was a self proclaimed knight in shining armor, but it didn’t take long for the gleaming shell to tarnish…
The chaos in the beginning stole my peace but made me feel special. Seen. Chosen. Loved.
But it was none of those things. It was the great whirlwind, the first act: Lovebombing.
Day 3: Geometry Lessons
Triangulation is a common tactic used by abusers, but it can be difficult to detect at first. The lovebombing that swept me off of my feet only lasted a few weeks, but by then he had taken hold of me and my life. The “good man” who had been so excited to get to know me became diminished, elusive, mysterious, and surrounded by shadowy figures who seemed to influence the relationship from afar.
I often wondered in the beginning why I never seemed to get the same story from any two people in his life. Why there were so many people in his life who didn’t like me, or seemed to have an inaccurate impression of me, or who I was kept away from.
I asked a lot of questions. I brought up a lot of issues. I tried to build bridges and facilitate peace, but little did I know what was happening behind my back. I have no doubt now that from day one, the seeds were being sown to preemptively discredit and devalue me.
Our coworkers, his family, his friends, his exes…there always seemed to be a problem. Problems that didn’t exist in my world. I don’t have ongoing feuds, or ghosts from the past, or delicate relationships I have to shield. I’m an ordinary person and I thought I was dating an ordinary person - but I wasn’t.
Predators groom everyone around them, often very successfully, and by the time a victim realizes the danger they are in, no one in the predator’s orbit will help.
One of the red flags I missed in the beginning was the confusion I constantly felt. Why did his sister hate me? Why did my boss offer to help me with my “anger issues”? Why wouldn’t he introduce me to an ex who lived nearby and had an unfinished project he had started at her home? Why did my concern about his drug use get weaponized into me trying to hurt his fragile uncle?
It was always, always something. No peace. No clarity. No headway. A dizzying prism of chaos.
Day 4: Fix Your Face
I had never met a person like this. He said that his childhood was so traumatic that he couldn’t handle conflict. Emotion was painful. Love cost him dearly. He claimed he had isolated for so long because human connection was so difficult, but we were worth the price he had to pay.
That was utter bullshit. But I believed it for a long time. These lies laid the groundwork for him to demand that I never disagree with him, never argue with him, and never call him out - because conflict hurt him.
He asked for me to limit big emotion, which turned into a command: “Fix your face”. I was not allowed to wear an expression that he did not approve of. I couldn’t look sad, serious, disappointed, frustrated, or angry. Never angry. And this is one of the biggest misconceptions about coercive control and domestic violence - that the abuser has anger issues. They don’t. They are in complete control of their anger. They have an issue with YOUR anger. They remove your right to be a complete human being with a full range of emotions.
What began as his claiming his face felt numb and his side hurt and his energy tanked soon turned into physical assaults, violent threats, and hours long tirades. Roaring that there could only be one alpha, and that he wasn’t going to be a simp. I had to google both of these concepts, and slowly began to grasp what a very small, weak, and toxic person he actually was.
I had so much empathy and compassion and pity for his initial story; for this tortured experience he imitated in the early days. I had no idea that a human being could lack a conscience to the degree that he did and does. I now know that there are many people who don’t feel guilt or remorse, and who can lie and harm and take from others and sleep soundly at night.
If your partner tells you to “fix your face” or some other iteration of limiting you and your emotions, it’s a huge red flag that something is very wrong with them and the relationship needs to end immediately. I’m not sure exactly when “fix your face” mutated into something much more sinister, but based on my journal entries I was being called the C word and selfish within a few months, and overt and covert violence had both crept into the relationship.
Day 5: I’ll Be The Biggest Asshole In The Room
I’ll likely never know what was truth and what was fiction, but this is what my abuser told me. He said he used to go looking for fights in bars. That he needed to be hit, not just do the hitting. That he had a criminal record that was expunged in another state. That for his entire life, he’s been the “biggest asshole in the room”.
He explained exactly what he meant by this. That no matter what, he was going to win every conflict with every person who engaged with him. That he went to extreme and even illogical lengths to come out on top. That he’d told his sister he’d shit on her ceiling; that he’d wrestled his mom into submission. That violence was a language he had spoken his entire life.
That if I was stupid enough to try to go toe to toe with him, I would get hurt. That he couldn’t control his reaction. That if I provoked him in any way, I was responsible for what happened next.
This was initially presented as a heavy cross for him to bear, that he would try to protect me from the harm he could inflict on me should he ever lose control. That he lived in fear of being challenged lest he split someone’s face open.
Soon enough, like everything else, it morphed into a roaring threat. “I’ll be the biggest asshole in the room!” “I don’t lose!” “You don’t get to be aggressive with me!” “Look at me, you pathetic piece of shit!”
I couldn’t raise my voice, cross my arms, move closer toward him, or challenge anything he said. He started getting in my face, pressing his forehead into mine, backing me into corners and bending me over countertops. I had to be small, and silent, and stare at my feet.
Even eye contact was labeled as aggression. If I dared look him in the eye, it was just asking to get hurt. Once he had “warned” me about all of these missteps I had better not make, any future instance of them meant he was absolved of the blame, shame, and responsibility for his violent responses, because the only promise he knew he could keep to me was that he would be the biggest asshole in the room.
Day 6: We met at work.
He was there first. A spring and summer semester earlier. We shared a direct supervisor, and held lateral positions - Program Coordinators of our respective disciplines. But I was a temporary, last-minute hire. A single mom bouncing back from a pandemic layoff. He was established.
He had worked as an educator before, and he twisted both his permanent position and his background into controlling me in the workplace. It was one of the reasons he burrowed into my life so quickly and one of the barriers to exiting the relationship - I subconsciously knew that if we broke up, he would ruin my career.
Our shared female supervisor asked him to work on her home, wrote him notes with cash tucked inside, and scheduled weekly check-ins with him. She became more hostile toward me, even suggesting once that she could help me with my “anger problems”. I was at a loss, felt trapped, and was constantly being pointed away from the true source of the ever present uncertainty. I have pictures of myself installing electrical outlets with him in her home on a federal holiday. She never thanked me. She barely acknowledged me.
I was a fantastic hire. My students loved me, I was phenomenal in my role, and I won awards for my course design during my first year. He missed deadlines, couldn’t manage his small cohort of students, and slept in his office. He kept a camping cot in the corner, and his clothing and personal effects were strewn everywhere in the grubby, sticky room. The residue from crushed pills clung to the surface of his desk, and I found a syringe in his desk drawer as we moved him out. “Planted”, he said. I wonder…
He was fired and blackballed from the statewide college system.
I allowed my contract to expire and left on good terms. Then I got word that the adjunct position I was looking forward to at another school was no longer available. I was blackballed too.
Day 7: “My Unmedicated Brain is Scarier”
I had never seen a rolled up dollar bill, or a razor blade dusted in white powder, and suddenly they were everywhere. Sure, my dad died from an overdose in 2007, but I was out of the house by then and simply had no firsthand experience with drug use or the paraphernalia, so this scared me.
My fears were belittled as sheltered, and my abuser downplayed the harm and emphasized the necessity. He said “my unmedicated brain is scarier than any drug”.
He claimed that until he had better coping mechanisms, his drug use was the only way he could get through a day, because he was so fragile and special. An orchid. That if I wanted him to stop, he would not be able to teach, not be able to be in a relationship, and not be able to function.
To that end, asking him to stop would be “selfish” and “cruel”. This sat on the shelf of utter bullshit right beside “Fix your face” and “I’ll be the biggest asshole in the room”. But I didn’t want to be selfish or cruel, and I continued to believe the best in this wretched, pitiful, afflicted man.
The following is an excerpt from my journal, written February 19, 2022:
“My heart is pounding in my ears. It’s beating so fast.
I don’t want to hear it. It’s louder than you think. It’s a collection of familiar sounds. The chair. The blade. The card. The snort. I’ll be focusing on something and I hear it, and everything inside of me freezes.
Am I wrong for not stopping you? Am I a horrible person, a horrible partner? Am I watching you kill yourself?
All of my thoughts seem dramatic and dark and heavy, and I remind myself that people do so much worse.
And some die from far less.”
He knew how worried I was, and weaponized my concern. If I messed up in any way, I was the reason he had to do drugs. If I argued with him, it stole his energy and he had to do drugs. If we had a wonderful day, the price he paid for emotional connection was so hefty that he had to do drugs. So the rolled up dollar bills and razor blades persisted, and I was slowly being erased.
Day 8: “Coercive control is a better predictor of domestic homicide than previous violent assaults.”
One of the most stunning things I’ve learned in the aftermath of my attack is how much research has been conducted on domestic violence, how great our body of knowledge is, and how long that body of knowledge has existed. Equally stunning is that domestic violence accounts for 15% - 20% of violent crime committed in this country.
Somehow, though, most people are not familiar with the concept of coercive control - even law enforcement officers.
Biderman's Chart of Coercion is a table developed by sociologist Albert Biderman in 1957 to illustrate the methods of Chinese and Korean torture on American prisoners of war from the Korean War. The chart lists eight methods of torture that will psychologically break an individual:
Isolation
Monopolization of perception
Induced debilitation and exhaustion
Threats
Occasional indulgences
Demonstrating "omnipotence" and "omniscience"
Degradation
Enforcing trivial demands
Coercive control is now understood to be a powerful indicator of future harm and increased likelihood of lethality in domestic violence situations.
“Almost all domestic homicides are preceded by coercive control,” says Lisa Fontes, author of Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship. “In fact, coercive control is a better predictor of domestic homicide than previous violent assaults.”
“Coercive control is devastating. It tears down the individuality and the centeredness of a person. It leaves them open to self-doubt and therefore makes it more difficult for them to leave an abusive situation,” says Jamie Sabino, Deputy Director of Advocacy at the Mass Law Reform.
Domestic violence homicides are increasing, and I believe one reason is that we don’t speak openly about coercive control. Understanding this pattern of behavior is lifesaving, for ALL of us - because we also know that DV offenders are willing to harm anyone, not just their partners.