Recovering from an abusive relationship: the first year

“I left four months ago. Why do I feel worse now than I did in the first week?”

The question often comes out surprised, almost angry with oneself. For many people, the first weeks after leaving an abusive relationship pass in a kind of overdrive: moving out, paperwork, the children, work, conversations with the police or the social work centre. There is no time to feel. Then things around you settle, the outside world says “well, it’s over now” — and that is exactly when everything that has been waiting opens up.

This piece is about the first year after an abusive relationship. Not about how you leave, and not about how trauma heals — I have written about both separately. It is about the in-between, less described time when you are already out, but not yet on the other side. First, though, something that has to come at the very beginning: if violence is still a threat to you, safety comes before everything that follows. In immediate danger, call 112 or the police on 113 (in Slovenia); for a conversation, the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence is available day and night on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia).

You are not the exception — and the path is not a straight line

Violence in an intimate relationship is often experienced as something that happens only to you — and something that has to be hidden. In a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which in 2012 interviewed around 42,000 women across all member states, 22% of women said that since the age of 15 they had experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner. That figure does not include emotional and economic abuse, which are even more common, nor men who experience violence and speak about it even less often.

This means there are many people around us going through the first year after an abusive relationship. It is just that this year is hardly ever talked about. People talk about leaving, they talk about danger, and then the story often simply stops — as if moving out sorted everything. A review of the research by Deborah Anderson and Daniel Saunders found that psychological well-being after leaving does, on average, improve over time. But “on average” and “over time” hide a great deal: the path is not even, and it is not equally fast for everyone.

So if, after a few months, you notice that things feel harder than at the start, it is not a sign that you made the wrong decision. Often it is a sign that your system is finally safe enough to start feeling.

People who have been through this year rarely describe it as gradual improvement. More like waves: a week when it seems the worst is over, then a day when a single voice in a shop, one song, one email from a solicitor knocks you flat. Judith Herman, one of the authors who most shaped our understanding of relational trauma, described recovery as a process that returns to the same themes, each time with a little more steadiness — not as a ladder you only ever climb upwards.

The picture above is not a timetable. One person will feel grief in the very first week, another only after a year. What matters is that the ups and downs are part of the path, not proof that you are failing.

Safety does not end when you leave

One of the most uncomfortable truths of this year is that leaving does not necessarily mean the end of the violence. A study by Rebecca Fleury and her colleagues, who followed women after they had left, summed up in its very title what the women described: ending the relationship does not always end the violence. Some former partners continue with control, threats, stalking or violence, often through the children, court proceedings or the phone.

That is why, in the first year, recovery is almost always intertwined with looking after your safety. This is not paranoia, and it is not a sign that you “haven’t got over it yet”. If there is any chance that your former partner could harm you, take time for a safety plan: what it is and how to put one together — after leaving it looks different from before. The SOS helpline, organisations working with violence, or the police can help you with this.

And one more thing: this piece is not a questionnaire you can use to assess for yourself how dangerous your situation is. No blog can do that. If you are unsure, talk it through with professionals who assess risk every day.

The first months: when the body doesn’t believe it yet

Many people describe how, after leaving, their body went on behaving for a long time as if the danger were still there. You flinch at the sound of a key in the door. You check your phone before you have even looked at it. You sleep lightly. In the shop, you scan faces. Professionally, we call this state of constant readiness hypervigilance, and in the abusive relationship it made complete sense — it helped you survive.

Since I have written at greater length about what violence leaves in the body and in memory in Trauma after abuse: what remains and how it heals, here I will add just one thought that matters especially in the first year: the body cannot be persuaded with words. It will not calm down because you have explained to it that you are safe now. It calms down slowly, through repeated experiences of safety: a night when nothing happens; a doorbell with your neighbour behind it; a week without a message that turns your stomach. How the body gradually learns to let go of old readiness is also the subject of How trauma stays written in the body.

In these months, doubt often appears too: “Was it really that bad? Maybe I exaggerated.” Once the violence is over, memory no longer works as an alarm, and because there were good moments in the relationship as well, the picture blurs. If your former partner also denied for a long time what was happening, the doubt is even stronger. It helps to have somewhere written down what happened — not so that you read it over and over, but so that when doubt comes, you have something to lean on.

Grieving what you hoped for

One of the most confusing experiences of the first year is that you miss your former partner. This often frightens and shames people: “How can I miss someone who did this to me?”

The answer is less mysterious than it seems. Abusive relationships rarely contain only violence. They also contain tenderness after an outburst, shared plans, the family you had, and above all the hope that one day things would change. When you leave, you lose not only a person but also the future you carried inside you for years. It is possible to grieve that future, even if it was an illusion. Why thoughts circle so stubbornly around a former partner is something I explain in Why we think about an ex for so long after a break-up — in abusive relationships this bond is often even stronger, because of the alternation of fear and relief.

It is important to separate two things: grieving is not a decision to go back. You can miss someone and at the same time know you will not return. Researchers Judith Wuest and Marilyn Merritt-Gray, in conversations with women who had left, described precisely this time as a distinct, demanding phase of “not going back”: not an event but daily work that needs support, not just determination.

The practical load nobody sees

Recovery after an abusive relationship rarely happens in peace. It is often accompanied by court proceedings, dividing property, arrangements about contact with the children, looking for somewhere to live and worrying about money. Each of these means contact with your former partner, or at least their name on a piece of paper — and each such contact can stir up everything that had only just settled.

The exhaustion this brings is real and is not a sign of weakness. A person who lived in tension for years is now making dozens of decisions at once, often alone and often with children who have their own reactions. It helps to allow yourself not to manage everything at the same time: whatever is not urgent this week can wait. It also helps to have someone beside you — a friend, a counsellor at an organisation, a lawyer who understands the dynamics of abuse — who carries part of the weight.

Exercise: what is mine today

An abusive relationship often slowly takes away small choices: what you eat, when the light goes off, what music you listen to, whom you meet. When you leave, they do not come back by themselves — often you discover you no longer even know what you like. This exercise is meant to help you slowly take those choices back. You can do it this evening.

1. Take a sheet of paper or a notebook that is yours alone and that nobody else will read. If there is any chance someone could find it and that this could harm you, do the exercise in your head.
2. Write down one small choice you made by yourself today — tea instead of coffee, the route through the park, the decision not to answer a message. It doesn’t matter how tiny it is.
3. Next to it, write how it felt. Perhaps pleasant, perhaps strange; perhaps you caught yourself glancing round to see whether anyone would object. Everything is welcome.
4. Write down one thing you would like to choose differently tomorrow from how you would have chosen it in the relationship. Keep it small and doable.
5. After a week, read the list. Don’t look for progress, just notice: these are choices that were yours. Out of such small acts, a sense slowly grows that your life is yours again.

If the exercise floods you with fear or sadness, stop. That is not failure but information: for now it is too early, or it is better done with someone beside you.

Anniversaries, triggers and bad days

The first year is a year of firsts: the first birthday without them, the first holidays, the first anniversary of the day you left. These dates often bring a wave you don’t expect, even if you have felt well in recent weeks. The body remembers seasons, smells and light better than the calendar does.

This is what a conversation before one such date might look like (composite, not a real person):

“Next week is the anniversary. I’ve been sleeping badly for a few days and I’m angry with myself, because I thought I’d moved past this.”
“What if it isn’t about whether you’ve moved past it, but about your body remembering?”
“Then I don’t know what to do with that week.”
“Perhaps you don’t have to get through it as if it were an ordinary one. What would help you this week?”
“Not being alone that evening. And not having to explain to anyone why.”

With bad days, it helps not to treat them in advance as going backwards. You can write yourself a short list: whom I call, what helps me fall asleep, where I go for a walk. It is best made on a good day, because on a bad one you wouldn’t manage it.

Back to people and back to yourself

Abuse often works by separating a person from others — friends are “a bad influence”, family “interferes”, meeting up gradually thins out. When you leave, your social circle is often smaller than ever before. Returning to people is one of the most important parts of this year and at the same time one of the hardest, because it requires a trust that has been wounded.

You don’t have to start big. One person you see regularly is worth more than ten superficial contacts. Some people find a support group helpful, where they meet others with a similar experience, because they don’t have to explain anything from the beginning.

Alongside people, your relationship with yourself gradually returns too. Often this is the hardest part: the voice that says you were stupid, that you should have seen it sooner, that it was your own fault. Where this voice comes from and how to quieten it slowly is what I wrote about in Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault. Briefly here: this voice is not the truth about you, but an echo of the relationship you lived in. Along the way you also relearn how to set boundaries — which after abuse can look dangerous, even though it is a condition for any healthy relationship. More on this in Setting boundaries: why it feels selfish.

And a new relationship? There is no rule about how much time must pass. A more useful question is: am I looking for someone to fill the emptiness and soothe the fear, or someone with whom I would like to share a life that again feels like my own? More on how you know you are ready in A new relationship after divorce: when is it too soon. After an abusive relationship, it also makes sense to know about violence in a relationship and its early signs — not out of fear, but so that you can trust your own perception.

Where this description doesn’t apply

This piece describes common patterns, not a path you have to follow. A few limits need to be stated plainly.

For some people, leaving mostly brings relief. Resilience after hard experiences is more common than we long believed — George Bonanno drew attention to this. If you feel not worse but better after leaving, it does not mean you are suppressing something. Perhaps you are simply free.

A year can be too short — or too much. For someone who lived in an abusive relationship for a decade, or who experienced violence already in childhood, recovery has a different scope. Here we are talking about complex trauma, which needs more time and professional help. The first year is not a deadline by which you should be “fine”.

Recovery isn’t possible while the violence continues. If your former partner is still threatening, stalking or controlling your life through the children, the first step is not working on yourself but protection. Talking about “processing” at a time when you are still in danger would be wrong and harmful.

Couples therapy is not an appropriate form when there has been violence. Even if your former partner offers, after you have left, that you “go to therapy together”, it is not a safe setting for recovery — joint sessions can even make the violence worse. Individual support is what fits.

Where you can turn

If you are in danger now, call 112 or the police on 113 (in Slovenia). For a conversation and advice, there is the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence, 080 11 55 (in Slovenia). When distress is so severe that thoughts of not wanting to live appear, you can call the Crisis Line (Klic v duševni stiski) on 01 520 99 00 (in Slovenia, every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritan helpline on 116 123 (in Slovenia, 24 hours). With serious problems with sleep, mood or anxiety, also turn to your GP, who can refer you to a psychiatrist.

For longer-term recovery there are organisations specialising in violence, counselling services and psychotherapy. I am a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, and I am not a specialist in violence. But I can be with you in an individual process, in English too, once the danger has passed and you want to understand what happened, how it affects your relationships today and what of it you carry from your own family. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, this is the central point: that old patterns are slowly recognised and stop repeating. Over time, many people also notice what we call post-traumatic growth — not as a reward for suffering, but as a new understanding of themselves.

The beliefs on the left are not a sign that something is wrong with you. In a relationship where the danger was real, they were wise. The first year is often the time when you begin to notice them — and when, slowly and in safer circumstances, you try out different behaviour.

What to remember

• Safety always comes first — after leaving too. In danger, call 112 or 113; for a conversation, the SOS helpline on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia).
• The first year is waves, not a straight line. Harder months after the initial overdrive are common and are not a sign of a wrong decision.
• Missing your former partner, or the hope you had, is grief, not a decision to go back.
• The body calms down through repeated experiences of safety, not through persuasion.
• Recovery can take longer than a year and is often easier alongside people and with professional support — individual, not couples therapy.