I haven't really shared this much or talked about it, but after I ended my marriage three weeks ago, my little fam need some help getting back on our feet after a decade of abuse

We still need carpets, a dining table, and to fund garden work. https://uk.gofundme.com/f/house-to-home-for-v-and-family

OBVIOUSLY things like rent relief, urgent needs etc are way more important so like please don't feel like you have to donate or anything. I feel horrible about even asking my community to help us, because I have a lot of shame about staying?

And we're fed and the rent is paid

So nothing is desperate. Carpets are a bonus. We aren't in dire need. I just can't afford to redecorate a house on my single income even when I'm doing full time hours, which I'm currently not.

I put up lampshades yesterday and such a tiny simple thing (£7 from wilco, I brought five!) made me feel so much better?

I don't think my ex husband ever intended to behave abusively. He didn't, I don't think, mean for the impact of his behaviour to be what it was.

But if you combine refusals to do household work with a violent and easily roused temper, and then you extend that over ten years....

Intent stops nattering. It stops being about what you mean, and boils down to what you do.

How many times is it acceptable for a man to put his fist into a wall? To break crockery? Slam doors so hard they break?

One of the things I think we lack in the ways we talk about Domestic Violence, is a recognition that a lot of cis-het men behave abusively, and get stuck into cycles of abusive behaviour without ever intending it.

But we don't, outside of some models of specifically women focused, feminist analysis talk about how men are indoctrinated into committing patriarchal violence and we don't offer them ways to identify those cycles, and break out of them

And that is shitty for everyone - for the men perpetrating violence without intention, for their partners and children who are victimised and then only have discourses that paint their partners or parents as intentionally violent, evil people.

At the end of that cycle, there's still then no support - for men to recognise their behaviour, support their mental health and stop engaging in it

For their partners, to recover from the violence they've experienced, and to identify it in future relationships

For the kids....

It's a shitty fucking cycle. My ex husband isn't a bad person. He's replicating behaviour he's been socialised into, with no mental health support in a society that has limited nuanced discourses around domestic violence.

But none of that makes the impact of his behaviour better

I can simultaneously recognise why and how he ended up behaving that way, alongside the trauma that caused both me and my children and the ways we were and are impacted.

And I tried REALLY FUCKING HARD for twelve bloody years, to break that cycle, while keeping the relationship

Ultimately I failed in that. And hopefully, by leaving, I've shown my kids that they do not have to accept violent behaviour, and that it is is their responsibility to work on their own behaviour, and that intent does not magically alter impact

I haven't questioned or second guessed the decision to leave since I made it. I haven't regretted it for even a microsecond.

Which is how I know I made the right choice.

I just wish I'd had the space and clarity to make it sooner, for all our sakes.