How a new connection helped me finally stop going back
I didn’t leave when he hit me. I left in cycles. I knew something was wrong very early. Just two weeks after we got married, he hit me.
At that moment, a part of me already knew it was over. There was a quiet voice inside me that said, this is not what love is supposed to feel like. But I didn’t leave.
Not because I didn’t see it, but because I was more afraid of being alone than I was of staying. So I stayed… for more than 13 years.
Every time things got too heavy, I would leave. I would pack a few things and go to my brother’s house in another city. I remember those moments clearly, the silence, the relief, the feeling that I could finally breathe again.
For a while, I felt like myself and then… I came back. I always came back, I always thought things felt “not that bad anymore.” Sometimes for reasons I couldn’t even explain.
It happened again and again, until leaving stopped feeling like a decision and started feeling like a loop I didn’t know how to break.
Now, I’m divorced and yes… I’m happy. But not in the way people usually imagine.
There was no moment where everything suddenly made sense. No version of me that woke up one day feeling strong and completely healed. I didn’t transform. I just… stopped going back.
The truth is, I didn’t do that on my own. Part of the way I survived was allowing myself to connect with other men. Not as a replacement, and not because I was ready to build something new.
It started quietly, just conversations, just being listened to, just moments where I didn’t feel small.
For so long, I lived inside a version of reality where he defined me. Where I slowly became someone who questioned herself all the time. Where I started to believe the things he said about me.
That I wasn’t enough, I was difficult, I was lucky he stayed.
But those conversations… they didn’t match that version of me, and that confused me. Because suddenly, I was being seen differently.
Not as someone who needed to be fixed or tolerated, but as someone worth listening to. Someone worth knowing, and somewhere in the middle of that… I felt something shift.
I didn’t expect it, but I found myself falling. Not in a dramatic way, not in a “this is the love of my life” kind of way. Just… quietly.
Like something in me was waking up again and at the same time, I knew I wasn’t ready. I could feel that what I had to give was still incomplete.
Still fragile, still shaped by everything I had just gone through. So I didn’t try to turn it into something permanent. I didn’t try to make him my future. I just let myself feel it.
And somehow… that was enough. Because it reminded me of something I had forgotten: That I could feel love without fear.
That connection didn’t have to come with pain. That I was still someone who could be wanted, respected, and seen. It wasn’t really about him. It was about what that experience gave back to me.
A sense that I wasn’t small. That I wasn’t “too much” or “not enough.” That the world didn’t begin and end with the man I had been trying to leave.
People always say, “Don’t replace. Heal first.” But this wasn’t about replacing anyone. It was about breaking the illusion that he was the only place I belonged.
Because I knew, deep down if I stayed alone for too long, I might go back. Not because I loved him, but because familiar pain felt easier than empty space.
Some people heal in silence, some disappear into work, some take time to be completely alone. I didn’t.
I reached outward. Not in a perfect way, not in a way I could explain at the time. But in a way that kept me moving forward.
Was I ready? No.
I was still scared, still learning how to trust, still carrying things I didn’t fully understand, and that’s the part no one really talks about.
When you’ve been in something toxic for a long time, even something kind can feel unfamiliar.
So you question it, you hold back, you observe more than you speak. Not because you’re broken, but because you’ve learned what it feels like to be hurt.
I don’t think there’s a perfect way to move on. I think there’s only the way that keeps you from going back.
And this… was mine.
