John would get angry, paranoid and jealous for no reason. Photo / Getty Images
John would get angry, paranoid and jealous for no reason. Photo / Getty Images
An Aussie woman who left a controlling relationship has explained a bizarre scenario which led to her partner accusing her of cheating.
When a lot of people think about domestic violence, they think about depictions they have seen on TV or in movies. Clear examples of physical attacks, a loud angry man, a frightened woman with a black eye.
Many of us don't realise that abuse isn't always physical, and the effects of emotional abuse and coercive control can have long and painful impacts that are just as hard to recover from.
Zoe Jones* was one of those people. She thought that she would recognise abuse if she saw it, but when John* entered her life she was completely unprepared for what would follow.
"I think a lot of it is that I was at a stage in my life where I was ready to meet someone.
"That's what I wanted. I wanted to meet someone; I wanted to fall in love."
The relationship moved at high speed. When Zoe had to travel overseas for work, John immediately booked flights to visit her and whisked her away on a series of romantic getaways. He told her she was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he couldn't imagine a life without her.
But John was also revealing himself to be possessive and needy.
"He would text me continuously all through the day," Zoe said. "He would call me every night and it would be an hour-long phone call.
"At that time, I had a pretty stressful job and I remember sometimes feeling like, God, I just want to come home and stare at a wall or just like switch off. But I always felt like I had to talk to him."
When Zoe didn't respond John, would hammer her with questions.
"If I didn't reply within a certain amount of time, then it was like, 'What are you doing? Hey, hey, answer me.'
"Or, you know, if I tried to come off [the phone calls], he'd be like, 'Why? What do you want to be doing? Why don't you want to talk to me?' And they were always really long conversations."
Zoe and John decided to move in together and John convinced her it would be a good idea to pool their money into one account. But a few months later she would discover that was a mistake.
John gambled away money from their joint bank account. Photo / Getty Images
"I think I asked him how much we'd saved or, you know, we were talking about it and he broke down and said, 'I'm so sorry. I've gambled it all away," Zoe said.
"Because he was saying to me that this was a one-off thing, and he'd never done it before, I believed him and forgave him."
But John's poor behaviour intensified. Soon he was telling her what to wear, who to see socially and hassling her constantly about the amount of time she spent at work.
He'd criticise her family and friends and tell her she was strange for wanting to spend so much time with them.
Despite these warning signs, Zoe and John decided to try for a baby. She'd been told she might have trouble conceiving and she didn't want to wait too long before trying.
But even when Zoe fell pregnant, John's jealousy and paranoia didn't stop.
One day when she was six months pregnant, Zoe was in bed at 10pm after a long day at work when John noticed she had a loose hair on her chest.
"I had a small tiny hair, and he was like, 'What is that? " John then accused her of being with another man and labelled her "disgusting". "And this literally ended in a four-hour argument of him just accusing me of goodness knows what," Zoe said.
Zoe later realised the hair was from her makeup brush.
Escalation
Zoe felt like she was constantly walking on eggshells. Not even the arrival of their beautiful baby boy seemed to satisfy him. If John came home from work and she was ironing his shirts, he'd tell her she should have had it done already.
When John lost his job, it was Zoe who had to go back to full-time work while still running the household to immaculate perfection. And all the time, the abuse was constant – yet Zoe still couldn't recognise it for what it actually was.
"I remember I engaged a charity because I was actually wanting help with the gambling and so I went to like Gambling Anonymous who do a free counselling service and I also engaged a local domestic violence charity, but they kind of also helped with other things as well.
"And it was actually these people that were like, 'Wow, you know, that's actually domestic violence.' And I was like, 'No, that's not domestic violence. That's so dramatic. I've never had a black eye.' That was my initial reaction.
"And it was only until I left, and then started to reflect back on what happened that I actually realised that it was."
Escape
The incident that finally caused Zoe and her baby son to leave started with an argument.
"We had we got into an argument and he shoved me," she said. "He's basically said to me, you're the type of woman that would make a man hit you.
The incident that finally caused Zoe and her baby son to leave started with an argument. Photo / Getty Images
"And he threatened to kill me – chop me up into little pieces, which apparently was a joke, but he was quite menacing when he did it."
Zoe left John for good after the incident, and although she and her son are doing well on their own, five years later Zoe still fears her ex.
"I was scared of my own name for a while," Zoe said. "I remember being at Mum and Dad's home and my mum called me from upstairs, and you know, when your insides like, come up into your mouth?
"I was like, 'Well, what have I done' – thinking I was gonna be in trouble. And my mum was like, It's all right, 'I just needed to ask you something.'"
"It's like it's fight or flight, right? It's hard to shake."
Zoe has written a children's book Where's My Daddy? for parents to read to kids who have left domestic violence situations.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - DO YOU NEED HELP?
If it's an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you're in danger now:
• Phone the police on 111 or ask neighbours of friends to ring for you. • Run outside and head for where there are other people. • Scream for help so that your neighbours can hear you. • Take the children with you. • Don't stop to get anything else. • If you are being abused, remember it's not your fault. Violence is never okay
Where to go for help or more information:
• Women's Refuge: Free national crisis line operates 24/7 - 0800 refuge or 0800 733 843 www.womensrefuge.org.nz • Shine, free national helpline 9am- 11pm every day - 0508 744 633 www.2shine.org.nz • It's Not Ok: Information line 0800 456 450 www.areyouok.org.nz • Shakti: Providing specialist cultural services for African, Asian and middle eastern women and their children. Crisis line 24/7 0800 742 584 • Ministry of Justice: www.justice.govt.nz/family-justice/domestic-violence • National Network of Stopping Violence: www.nnsvs.org.nz • White Ribbon: Aiming to eliminate men's violence towards women, focusing this year on sexual violence and the issue of consent. www.whiteribbon.org.nz
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