This is Part 2 in a series about realizing the man you built a family with is hurting you, and how you start quietly planning a way out while protecting your child.

If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you can read it here: When the Man You Thought Was Your Miracle Stops Loving You After a Baby.

If you read Part 1, you know where we left off. He had squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe, with our baby a couple feet away on the floor. He apologized. Things got slightly better. Slightly. And only for a time.

This is what happened when it started again — and why staying, for a while, felt like the safest option I had to protect my child in the long run.

It happened again

Some time passed, and we were back in the same place.

He had stopped giving me my one minute of affection again. He was “forgetting.” I was “too demanding.” I always wanted to fight. I was too insecure. He asked why I didn’t just come to him and hug him. Why did he have to come to me?

And then one evening, I was in his way again.

I didn’t move. He was on his way to the bedroom. I said playfully, “Guess what time it is?” with a smile on my face. He looked at me coldly, without emotion, and said he was tired. I said I understood but that I only needed a minute, and then I’d leave him alone.

He repeated, “I’m tired.”

Me: I understand, I am too, but I just need a hug.
Him: (getting angrier) You need to get out of my way.
Me: Please, just give me a hug and I’ll move and not bother you for the rest of the night.

The house was quiet, except for the baby laughing while playing with her toy dog. I could feel my heart rate quickening as I pleaded with him.

He grabbed me so hard it left bruises. He shook me — violently, while yelling — and when I told him I still wasn’t moving, he squeezed me, turned, and threw me to the ground behind him.

As I fell, I grabbed for anything I could reach. I caught his shirt. It ripped as he threw me with the full force of his body behind it. He looked down at the torn shirt, his face got even angrier, he yelled something, and stormed off.

Our baby was only a few feet away while he was squeezing me, before he threw me to the ground. I froze. Again, my baby witnessed it.

I want you to sit with that for a moment. Not for shock value, but because I need you to understand what I was calculating in my head in those seconds — and every second after.

What was going through my mind

This was not the first time a man had been physically abusive to me.

But it was the first time in my life that I didn’t fight back.

Every time before, I fought. I left. I didn’t stay. That was just who I was.

This time, I stood there, bruised, with a piece of his torn shirt on the floor, and I did the math:

If I fight back hard enough to actually stop him, what happens near my child? What if my baby gets caught in the crossfire?

If I leave tonight, where do I go? How do I make sure my baby comes with me? Would anyone even believe me if I told them what had been happening?

If I leave without a plan, how much time will my child spend alone with him — being taught things I’m not there to correct?

How much time will my child be getting neglected and ignored and fed junk food and soda so she leaves her dad alone longer so he can play his games?

What if the situation I escape into is worse than the one I’m escaping from? If he gets 50/50 custody, how many times will he leave our baby in dangerous situations when I’m not there to protect her?

There were too many times I’d already caught him leaving our baby in unsafe situations, but I was there to intervene. I kept thinking, I wouldn’t be there half the time. That’s too much time for my baby to be potentially in harm’s way because her dad values video games and doom scrolling over paying attention.

What if the unthinkable happened because I left in a fit of anger and rage at him hurting me again?

Kids really do change everything. And not always in the ways the greeting cards talk about.

The two-parent home I was holding onto

I grew up without a father.

I know what that feels like: the specific shape of that absence, the feeling of being unworthy, of feeling like I was unwanted by my father, unlovable. The pain in your chest every time you see a father being playful or loving toward their child. The way it shows up in places you don’t expect, years later, when you’re trying to figure out what love is supposed to look like.

I still remember getting out of school everyday and watching as some fathers picked up their kids. The kids looked like they felt more whole than I did. They looked happy, and the fathers seemed so happy to see them. I remember wondering what was wrong with me, what did I do to make him not want to stay?

I didn’t want that for my child. I wanted to give my baby what I didn’t have — two parents, a stable home, a father who was present and caring.

I held onto that belief longer than maybe I should have. Because it wasn’t just a preference. It was something I had grieved not having my whole life, and the idea of being the reason my child felt that same absence was almost unbearable.

I knew children do better in two-parent households. I had read the research. I had lived the alternative. I was not going to create that for my baby without exhausting every other option first.

What my therapist helped me see

Eventually, I talked to my therapist.

Not about all of it at first. Pieces. I gave her pieces.

She helped me understand something that shifted things slowly in my mind: children generally don’t develop detailed, lasting memories until around age four. My baby was two. I had a window — not a comfortable one, not an easy one — but a window to figure things out before any of this became part of my child’s permanent story.

That realization didn’t make me feel better exactly. But it gave me something to hold onto. A framework for thinking about time differently.

Not “I need to leave tonight or I’m failing my child,” but “I have a narrow window to build something real so that when I leave, I leave safely and with a plan.”

That shift in thinking may have saved both of us.

What I was building toward

So I stayed. Strategically. Painfully. With my eyes open.

And I started building:

• I started thinking about how to make money without having to leave the house much.
• I started thinking about documentation — what a custody conversation might look like, what a lawyer might need.
• I started taking my child to church, quietly planting seeds of something stable and good.
• I started finding small ways to build something of my own — so that when the day came, I would not be leaving with nothing.

I began looking for work-from-home jobs late at night, when my little angel fell asleep. One day I was talking to my only real friend, at the time, and she mentioned how some people use WordPress to blog. I opened a blank WordPress site that night and stared at it, trying to imagine a blog that could eventually pay one bill, then two.

I’m not going to pretend any of this was graceful. It wasn’t. It was terrifying and slow, and I second-guessed myself constantly. I still do.

But I want you to understand: staying was not giving up. Staying, for me, was strategy. I started planning.

If you’re still there

If you’re reading this and you’re still in it — still in the house, still trying to figure out the math, still holding the pieces together while something breaks quietly inside you — I’m not going to tell you what to do.

I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a therapist. I’m not your mother or your best friend.

I’m just someone who knows what it feels like to be thrown to the ground while your baby is three feet away, and to stand back up, and to start building anyway.

You don’t have to have it all figured out before you start moving.

You just have to start.

Maybe for you, starting today just means opening a private note in your phone and writing down what happened, or googling “legal aid near me” and saving the number. Maybe it means whispering the truth to one trusted person in your life, or looking up a hotline when everyone else is asleep.

Your first step does not have to be big or brave or pretty. It just has to be real.

You are not failing because you’re still there. You are not weak because you’re doing the math. You are a person who deserves safety and love, and you are allowed to begin taking steps toward it, however small they are.

One small step is enough to change the story.

Ready for Part 3? Read Building in the Dark