There are stages of abuse called the cycle of violence, then there are the stages of abuse that the victim controls. These stages of abuse range from victim to hero, and include the labels of target and survivor along the way. What stage of abuse are you in today?

The stages of moving from Victim of Abuse to Hero of Your Abuse-Free Life includes transitory phases of Target and Survivor.  Some people get stuck as a Target. How do you know when and how to move on?

I can only speak for myself and my experience of leaving my abusive ex-husband. Your results may differ, but I hope my experience gives you a heads up and, in knowing it won't be easy at any point, the courage to continue your course. My ex didn't stalk, didn't beg me to come home, didn't turn on the charm to trick me into returning. He felt I betrayed him. He used my decision to report him to the law and the military as an inexcusable sin. I exposed him (falsely he says). I think that he feels he left me.

I know that my ex spews hogwash (and even tell him so), yet I continue to allow Will access to me because he may actually have something worthwhile to contribute in raising our sons. Or, at least, that's what the courts and "common sense" tell me. I know that the courts are sometimes dead wrong and that I cannot use a "common sense" test for a man who is so far from "normal" that common sense doesn't apply to him.

It's almost a year to the day the judge awarded primary physical custody to my abusive ex-husband. My attorney was as surprised as I was. My attorney said that the best she could figure (without being allowed to see the interview documents, if there were any), was that my older son elected to be with his father because of his anger toward me, and the judge decided for keeping the kids together.

I wrote you a story of leaving abuse because sometimes the words of verbal abuse weigh so heavily in our minds and hearts that we no longer hear the good words. Pummeled by negativity, our brains begin to tell us our story of abuse, and in creating it, focusing on the pain, we cannot hear anything else. I call this story of abuse The Foreigners because the kind voices this abused woman hears start as foreign, but become the only voices she wants to hear.

A verbal abuser defines you--he tells you who you are. And if you don't act like the person he says you are, then he abuses you into submission. A verbal abuser does not tire of turning you into someone less than yourself. A verbal abuser will abuse you long after you leave the relationship, if possible. A verbal abuser does not stop trying to make you who he thinks you should be. Who does he think you should you be? A female version of him. Or rather, the female version of who he thinks he would be if he were a woman. And that is what I deal with today because a verbal abuser and I had children together.

The verbal abuse excuses I used as glue to hold my marriage together were lies that kept everyone happy. But one day the verbal abuse excuses revealed themselves as lies (see Verbal Abuse Examples), and I realized that the excuses had twisted my perspective on communication, love and integrity. Soon after that, I left my abusive marriage.

What if, just for now, you were able to shrink your abuser's voice down to nothing? What would it be like if you stopped imagining that those hurtful words came from a place of love or concern? What would it feel like to know in your heart and mind that what that abuser said had no relevance to your reality, that your abuser was the one in La-La Land, not you? What would it be like to trust your own perceptions, to move about freely without fear of reprisal?

January 22, 2010, I left my husband. When I returned the next day after a judge granted me an ex-parte order, the law arrested him and removed him from the house. They handcuffed him in front of our teenage boys. I was left with two grief-stricken and angry boys who didn’t understand what happened. None of us understood what was happening. None of us could have foretold the future we’re living today.