I woke up in the middle of the night and he was... he had started «making love»... if you can call it love. It happened several times. He said that I had asked him «in my sleep»... I found out much later that it was rape.

I've never been physically abused... or even verbally abused. Everything was subtle... angry stares... sighs... silences... absences... infidelity... extreme tension as soon as I didn't «submit». It was heavy, so heavy. The children also felt it, I saw them «crushed» in front of their father... it broke my heart. It lasted 28 years. I had 3 «depressions» which I understand today as exhaustion in the face of all the heaviness I carried day after day. I sometimes hoped that he would hit me... at least then I would have been certain that it was violence.

It was winter, in the evening, I went out to put the garbage bags on the side of the street without putting on my coat. When I came back home, the door was locked.. I was really cold. Half an hour later I saw him in the second floor window with my 12-year-old son... he was laughing. I ended up digging in the snow to find the emergency key... I got severe frostbite on both hands. I never left the house again without my keys in my pockets after that. Years later, when he was an adult, my son told me how guilty, he felt for not standing up to his father that night. At 38, he was crying out in rage and fear.

Last year, I spent 3 months in a shelter. I had called SOS from my car one night I was out with the kids because the tension was too high in the house. I just couldn't take it anymore, I was going to crack. At first I was really stressed out, but the shelter workers were so nice. I slept for 3 days... that's when I realized I was exhausted. The more time went by, the more I saw the violence clearly, all the psychological violence I had endured on a daily basis and honestly, I was really surprised... and relieved because I had help. Now I have my home, with my children. It's not always easy because the legal proceedings are still underway, but my counsellor is there if I need to talk, and she accompanies me in my efforts. It helps me move forward.

It was one night in the holiday season. I felt like everyone was happy except me. We were in the car, I was looking out the windows of the houses we were passing by, people happy to be together, families united... and I felt an intense need to get out, to join real life. I felt trapped in my relationship, in my home, in my daily life. At the end of the evening at my sister's house, I found an excuse to stay and sleep with the children. The next day, we called SOS. I spent 2 months in the shelter. My sister was so important during that time, she came with me to the lawyer's office, she looked after my children when I was looking for a place to live, she lent me her car... and so much more. Above all, she was there and I knew she would stay until the end. It's been 4 years now and my life is beautiful. Thank you life!

We were getting ready to go to my office Christmas party. He didn't want to go. We were in the bathroom. He grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me in front of the mirror. He held me there with his hands and his body pressed behind my back and told me to look at myself, that I had put on make-up like a «slut». I told him that I had put on my make-up exactly as usual. I begged him to stop, but he just kept going and going. He whispered in my ear that I was trying to impress someone, that I was «cruising» my colleagues. I was crying, my makeup was running and he was laughing. No matter how many times I told him it wasn't true, he kept going. He didn't hold me hard enough to bruise me, but just enough so that I couldn't leave. I ended up yelling at him and I scratched his hand, trying to get him to let go of me. He let me go and called me «crazy bitch». I didn't want to go to the party anymore, but he insisted on going. I had to redo my makeup because it was all ruined. I put on less makeup than usual after all, I didn't want it to start again. When we got to the party, I was just extremely depressed and stressed and I didn't dare talk to my male colleagues. He, on the contrary, talked to everyone. Later in the evening, a colleague came up to me and told me that he was showing everyone his scratch, and that he was asking them how they found me at the office, because I was aggressive at home...

Back when we were in the red zone, we weren't allowed to invite people into the house... but since my opinion counts zero in the balance he didn't care... there were 15 of them in the basement at one point and he forced me to stay with them... I was afraid someone had Covid and would cause an outbreak, I was afraid to catch it, there were real risks... and I was afraid we would get caught too... it was extremely stressful.

I felt inadequate all the time, stressed out, worried about what he would think of what I was wearing, what I was saying, the way I was moving, the way I was breathing. I was always afraid because he would react abruptly or harshly towards me, over a host of tiny little details. I tried to think of everything but I could never succeed, there was always something. It was so stressful. I'd never been a particularly anxious person before, but I became a nervous wreck... and even that he blamed me for.

We start making love and he asks me to do something he knows I don't want to do. When I refuse, he quickly gets upset, he shouts, he calls me a "bitch" and accuses me of cheating on him... Later, he puts blankets on the floor for me to sleep on... like a real bitch.

When the lockdown eased and we were finally "orange" and allowed to see our loved ones outside, I suggested that we go see my sister in her backyard. He shot me looks of total contempt... as if I was totally irresponsible for thinking of doing that. We ended up not going.

Little by little, each day a little more tension built... interspersed with days that I took as gifts where he was smiling, felt like the man I loved was back, the loving father... Until that fateful day when he called me a piece of shit and a slut in front of my children, and I saw my six year old with big tears in his eyes asking me why daddy was talking to me like that, that it wasn't true, that I wasn't bad... Those tears in my children's eyes and the incomprehension in my oldest's eyes were the first trigger. The fury and disgust in the eyes of the man I loved when he looked at me and threw me on the floor were the next. I couldn't take it anymore, it had to stop. Now. Right now...

The holidays are hell. If I'm too happy, he finds a way to make me cry, or to make me angry. If I'm looking forward to seeing my loved ones, he expresses jealousy or creates conflict with them. If I'm too eager to go somewhere, he finds a way to cancel the outing... but if I'm not happy enough, he blames me too.