If you're in an abusive relationship and need to leave, here's what you need to know.

There may be more hope than you realize, and you need and deserve expert guidance.

"What is your advice for women planning to leave a physically abusive relationship?”

It’s become the most common question I get. When I started this work, I thought I was talking about the mundane and shitty realities of the typical marriage: chore inequality, emotional abuse, misogyny. I always viewed these behaviors as abusive, and I think they’re reason enough to leave a relationship. What I didn’t realize is how strongly they correlate with physical violence, and how much more prevalent physically abusive relationships are. If my audience is any indication, then a majority of heterosexual women are trapped in marriages they are afraid to leave because of threats to themselves or their children, severe financial abuse, or the looming specter of escalating emotional abuse.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the threat of abuse lurks in most heterosexual marriages, and that this threat is one of the primary ways society keeps women in line. Abuse is the main course of heterosexual marriage in a patriarchal society.

I’ve written before that women in marriages that do not physically endanger themselves or their children should consider quiet-quitting their marriage. Domestic violence, though, tends to escalate with time, which means so too does the danger.

If there is a way out, you should find it, and if there is not a way out right now, please consider working on building one.

And while it’s true that the most dangerous time is in the weeks immediately after a survivor leaves, most survivors who leave are able to escape eventually, and I’ve never heard of a single one who regrets leaving. It is a hard and dangerous road, but the safest time to leave is almost always now—before he gains more control, before he permanently disables you, before he attacks your children.

I’ve spent the last several years counseling hundreds of my readers to manage and eventually escape their abusive situations. Many have subsequently reached out to tell me how much better their lives are now. And before this, I volunteered for years on a domestic violence hotline. My thoughts come from experience, but they are no substitute for your own knowledge. Every situation is different, and you should not make decisions based solely on the input of any single person.

Here is what I want everyone hoping to flee an abusive situation to know.

Trust your intuition; you know your abuser best

Culturally, we love to talk down to domestic violence victims. We pretend they don’t know anything about anything. That’s because if we can blame them for their own abuse, we get to rest on our laurels and reassure ourselves that we are safe from abuse.

The reality is that every victim eventually becomes an expert on her abuser.

You know, deep down, in your heart of hearts, what sort of risk he poses and what his biggest triggers are. So before you read anything else, I want you to trust your intuition. If something I suggest seems dangerous to you, then it probably is.

Understand how abuse warps your perspective

You should trust your gut, while also being mindful of whether it’s your own voice or the voice of society/your abuser you’re hearing.

Abusive men try to convince their partners of a couple of things:

1. They deserve the abuse because they nagged/cheated/are abusive themselves/whatever other ridiculous excuse they can come up with.

2. The abuse either did not happen, was not that bad, or is not actually abuse.

If you sit with your thoughts long enough, you’ll likely find yourself making excuses: It was only once. He didn’t leave bruises. He didn’t assault me; he was just trying to take my bag.

As your perspective becomes more warped, a couple of other things happen.

First, you’ll take the abuse less seriously. It begins to feel normal. So whatever the baseline level of abuse is in your relationship begins to feel good and normal, and only escalations feel like abuse. Then eventually those escalations become normal, and the next severity of escalation feels like abuse.

Over time, you may earnestly come to believe that breaking your stuff is not abuse at all, or is only minor abuse, and that the times when he’s giving you the silent treatment or exploiting your labor while occasionally telling you he loves you are “good” times.

Second, and this is just as important, you will present the abuse in a way that causes others to take it less seriously. When you call the police, you may have trouble being direct about the abuse. You may struggle to call your partner abusive. You might tell people he’s “actually a really good guy.”

This warped perspective is by design. Abusers use it to keep you from seeking help, and to ensure that help is unlikely to come in the unlikely event that you do seek it out.

Understand the cycle of abuse

“My husband’s really nice most of the time. I don’t think he’s an abuser. He just loses his temper.”

Literally every abuse victim I have ever spoken to has told me some variant of this.

Your partner wouldn’t have attracted you if he didn’t have many good qualities. And those good qualities may still be very apparent much of the time—though as the abuse escalates, you’ll see them less and less frequently.

It works like this: He’ll be nice for a while. Then something will happen. Maybe you know what it is. Or maybe it’s random. Tension will build. You’ll feel that things are getting worse. And then he’ll explode. Sometime after the explosion, he’ll apologize*. Things will calm down and return to normal, till tension begins building again. Rinse and repeat.

It doesn’t matter if he’s nice, or if he’s emotionally intelligent, or if he is a feminist, or if he’s smart. If he abuses you sometimes, he’s not worth it.

*Sometimes, very late in the cycle, men stop apologizing and things don’t return to normal after an act of abuse. This is really dangerous, even if there’s not a lot of physical violence. It shows that he believes he has complete control, and doesn’t need to apologize to keep you.

Get legal advice

Family courts are biased against women. But what that bias looks like varies a lot. In many jurisdictions, it is still routine for women to get custody of the kids, especially if they play the role of stereotypical wife and mother.

Even in jurisdictions with more widespread bias against mothers, it takes significant resources to litigate child custody to the death. So if your spouse doesn’t have deep pockets, the odds of him effectively litigating the child custody system against you are pretty low.

Every situation is different. But here’s what I think you need to know:

Millions of abuse survivors get custody of their kids every year.

Many districts offer lots of options for protection, but you have to know about them to use them.

A random person online is not an authority on your life, and not an authority on the law in your area.

And your shitty spouse is most certainly not an authority. So don’t take legal advice from him.

You need to talk to a lawyer. Multiple, if possible. In the United States, most family law attorneys offer an initial free consultation. This consultation can help you plan your exit and position yourself well, even if you’re not yet prepared to leave.

Know that abusers aren’t abusive to everyone

Abusive people don’t go around picking fights with everyone. They may have a history of violence—road rage, abuse of a prior partner, conflict with friends, maybe a family member or two who won’t speak to them—but they also usually have a large group of fans. The odds are good that your partner has a great relationship with their boss. They may have friends and family who dote on them. They deliberately cultivate these relationships. Eventually, they will weaponize them against you. Your mother in law will talk about what a kind boy her son is. His best friend will show up in court to testify about how “crazy” you are.

It doesn’t matter what he does or says to other people. It also doesn’t matter if he calls himself a feminist, since feminist men can be just as abusive as anyone else. Abusers see some people as valuable (and as potential sources of exploitation and defense should they ever get into trouble) and others as worthless. Don’t convince yourself that it’s not that bad, or that you deserve it, just because he’s nice to some people.

All abusers are.

Know that nothing can cause someone else to abuse you

One thing that all abusive people share in common is that they believe that certain behavior deserves abuse. This is actually one of the most effective ways to discern abusers from non-abusers. Abusive men tend to think that certain kinds of women need to be taught a lesson to keep them in line. As a result, they react very harshly to real or perceived infidelity, as well as to any behavior that threatens their ego. They demand to be right. They believe that women exist to give only, and that they owe women nothing. This is why they become abusive when women step out of line.

All too often, I get long stories from women who devote paragraphs to telling me that they really weren’t cheating. Or that they know they shouldn’t have been snooping, but, but, but…Or that they shouldn’t have been so mean to him. These women connect their behavior to their partners’ abuse, but the truth is that abusive partners will always find an excuse.

Your behavior is not causing him to abuse you. Only abusers abuse their partners. He would find a reason to abuse you no matter what.

Don’t waste your time explaining why you don’t deserve to be abused, or why you’re not guilty of whatever fake crime he has accused you of.

You don’t deserve to be abused because no human deserves to be abused.

As soon as you believe, even if only a little bit, that his abuse is related to your behavior, you are going to start downplaying his behavior. This is going to affect your ability to communicate clearly to authorities who can help you. And it may undermine your motivation to get help in the first place, because it can make it difficult to see how truly violent and dangerous he really is.

Do whatever you safely can to work outside of the home

Becoming a stay-at-home mother is dangerous even if you’re in a non-abusive relationship. Stay-at-home motherhood in the context of abuse can be downright deadly.

If you can safely work, please do so—even if it’s only a part-time job, even if it’s not in your field. Working anywhere for any number of hours gives you an advantage because it prevents your partner from fully controlling your finances.

Document everything

Document as much as you safely can. If possible, back up every photo and video to a cloud server. Or have them automatically emailed to a friend you trust, a lawyer, or a domestic violence shelter so that he can’t delete your evidence.

Some documentation to consider:

• Take photos from many different angles of every injury he causes. Save the photos in at least two locations.

• Tell your doctor about the abuse, if you trust your doctor. This creates an additional record. It’s especially important to show your doctor signs of physical abuse.

• Keep a diary of the abuse. It’s safest if this is in a password-protected cloud location, such as GDocs. You could also text the log to a friend or family member so they have a copy. Make a note of each act of abuse, the time and date, the circumstances, and any injuries.

• If it is legal to do so in your area, audio- or video-record the abuse.

Be clear, specific, and direct about your abuse

Over and over again, I get long and rambling emails from abuse survivors. They’ll spend 10, 20, 30 paragraphs talking about everything that has happened in their marriage, explaining why things have unfolded the way they have, and in many cases, making excuses for their husbands.

Then there’s usually one tiny sentence where the abuse is buried. “Oh and then he punched me in the face like he always does, but anyway…”

The police are biased against women.

Courts are biased against women.

Therapists are biased against women.

We live in a patriarchal society.

If you are not clear and direct about your abuse, the authorities you need to listen to you will not listen, and will not care.

Lead with the abuse. Be clear, specific, and direct:

• “My husband attacked me.”

• “My husband is abusing me.”

• “Here are the bruises from the last time my husband assaulted me.”

• “My husband is abusing our children.”

If you don’t, your failure to mention the abuse will be used against you by anyone who can, and especially by your abuser.

Couples counseling is dangerous

If you are being abused, couples counseling puts you in more danger, not less. This is an established fact, and any quality counselor will tell you so. Any counselor who tells you otherwise is woefully unqualified.

If you’re already in counseling, your therapist should be intervening with your abuser. If they’re not, fire them yesterday.

Don’t try to change your partner

Men who think that they get to beat up on women for any reason at all are unworthy of relationships.

He’s not going to change.

He’s not going to see the light.

The only possibility for future change is for you to leave him. Then, and only then, he might work on himself.

But abusers see women as trophies, as property, as acquisitions. As long as he has control over his property, why would he change?

He’ll make you promises to keep you, and then he’ll break them just as soon as he thinks he has you again.

It’s not worth one more minute of this cycle.

Get help from experts

It’s true that leaving a relationship of coercive control is dangerous and difficult.

I don’t want to diminish that.

But it’s also true that a lot of good people have devoted a lot of resources to understanding violence, so they can help people escape it.

There are likely lots of resources you don’t know about.

Yet many survivors have learned a sense of helplessness because their previous attempts to leave or seek help have not worked.

You are not alone, and there are people out there who may be able to help you. There may be a place you can go right now, or an advocate who can help you get a protective order. You won’t know for sure until you try.

Please contact a domestic violence hotline or shelter in your area. Here is the link to contact the national hotline—which connects you to local resources—in the United States.

Have an emergency plan

Even if you’ve chosen not to leave for now—perhaps there’s no physical violence and you’re concerned about him being alone with your children—there might come a time when you have to flee to save yourself or your children.

This link provides lots of information on building your emergency exit plan. Please, take the violence seriously. Please don’t diminish the severity of your abuse. Even if it only seems minor to you now, build your safety plan so that it’s there for you if you ever need it.

Be prepared for threats of suicide

Violent men often threaten suicide. Dealing with a suicide threat is a complicated matter that goes beyond the scope of this post, but the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has some great resources.

Many women mistakenly believe that, if their partner threatens suicide, it means he has finally seen the error of his ways. After a lifetime of socialization into the caregiver role, these women rush to support their partner. They may even face pressure from friends and family not to “abandon” him.

But how many times has this person abandoned you when you were suffering? How often has he destroyed your mental health, put you in danger? Would he be there for you if the roles were reversed? Of course he would not.

More importantly, a man who is threatening suicide is dangerous. Murder-suicides are one of the most common forms of violence in troubled marriages and when the women leaves an abusive relationship. Do not mistakenly interpret his threat as a sign of his benign intentions. A suicidal abuser is dangerous—especially if he has access to guns.

Your most important duty is to protect yourself and your children. Staying with someone because he threatens suicide may mean sacrificing yourself and your children at the altar of an abuser. It’s not worth it. Get out immediately, then seek help for him only once you are physically safe.

If you are in the United States, you can dial 988 for emergency mental health help for a person who is threatening suicide. But again, please only do so once you are physically safe.