"I Was a Victim of Psychological Abuse for Years"
 
I couldn't explain this to my friends and family for years.
 
How would I get them to understand to my husband’s behaviour was slowly breaking me down by actions that in their isolation would seem trivial.
 
He would question me about money I had taken out from ATM's and asked to prove where I had spent them.
 
He would check all my receipts.
 
If he was angry with me he would still have sex with me but then would make me sleep on the floor.
 
I would have to say sorry exactly 20 times before he would decide to forgive me.
 
Every time I was in the shopping centre, I would have to take photos of myself to prove I was there.
 
Whenever my parents would ring me, he would put the phone on loud speaker so he could hear everything.
 
Once he didn’t like the way I had ironed his shirt, so he took all his shirts out, crumpled them up and made me iron them all “properly” before I was allowed to go to bed.
 
When I was 7 months pregnant, he once woke me up at around 1am because he said I had not cleaned the toilet properly and made me do it then as he watched me.

After the baby was born amd I was home from the hospital, he told me his mum had picked the name of the baby. I told him I didn’t like the name.

He told me I had to agree to the name and until I agreed he would smash every single glass we had on the kitchen floor. 

I didn’t have a choice.

I eventually left him but even now he tells people that he never once hit me, nor did he cheat on me, so I am in the wrong for leaving him.

And what is so worrying is that so many people agree with him.

It seems our culture simply cannot cope with the term ‘psychological abuse.’

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