Hello, I wanted to share my story and ask for any advice I can get right now. I’m 25f, and my husband almost 27m have been together for a little over 5 years now. At first things were great, hardly ever even bickered. We had such a connection I’ve never had with anyone before, like almost psychic. Fast forward to almost a year into dating, we moved in. That’s when I realized just how much of a drinking problem he had. Once I moved in, he started having me buy his alcohol so his mom wouldn’t see the charges (she was on his checking account until just maybe 2 weeks ago when he finally changed it), and had me always drive except when he worked so he could avoid getting a dui. That’s when we started fighting more, but not more than the average couple. But that’s when the controlling and manipulation started. He found “excuses” for why I couldn’t just go see my friends and family. Then we bought our house and moved out of his parents a few months later (we were engaged by then). After about 2 months of living there, I got pregnant with our son. At 20 weeks along, we got married a little sooner than planned because of covid and my job had laid us off (this way I was guaranteed insurance if I lost my job before the baby came. Not even a month later we got into a stupid fight and that’s when the threats of divorcing me started. I grew up in a broken home (caused by my dad’s alcoholism (which he’s now recovered from) and abuse he put my mom through because of), and due to that I was always adamant that I would never become divorced much less a divorced single mother unless things became to abusive or the person abuse our children. He wouldn’t let me go to bed without putting pajamas on that night (we usually slept naked together at that point). Things were already pretty rough at that point. I felt like I was alone in my pregnancy both because of the rules due to covid and him just not really participating in the pregnancy. Come time to have my son, we went in on the night of his birthday, and of course he was drinking. He drove us to the hospital, something that scared me. He even brought a insulated bottle of vodka with him. He slept through most of my labor (19 or so hours at the hospital). By the time we were discharged, he was withdrawing from the liquor and agitated from lack of nicotine as well and was a dick the whole way home. Fast forward to October of 2021 after dealing with just emotional and verbal and mental abuse, things slowly became physical. First with shoving, and he’d also grabbed my nose with hot tongs from the grill.

He had also started making some serious damage to our house (he’d already created some small holes from throwing things like his vape (something he constantly did and does, causing me to replace idk how many))

Not long after this (probably January 2022) after him begging me for 2+ years to sleep with other guys (a kink of his), I finally broke down and decided to (something I had to smoke and drink to do, he’d only been the second guy I had slept with and have PTSD from SA as a child), and continued to push me to keep doing after (which he found the first guy for me). Fast forward to this year. Everything got worse with him, his drinking and mental state. The first time he choked me was the last weekend of March. Two days later his parents and I had him 302ed (cops force him to the hospital since he discharged himself and was out of his mind and threatening to off himself before he could go to rehab the next day). He was in rehab for a month, and came home a changed man, so I thought. He was a version of himself that I fell in love with again, until I found out he went right back to drinking and hid it from me, then the abuse started again. He went back to rehab again, only for 4-5 days, and came home again. Mind you he’s also barely worked in the last year by this point due to his health caused by drinking ( cirrhosis of the liver and chronic pancreatitis (his liver was so bad that they thought he might need a transplant the summer before)), so I was pretty much the only one supporting our family only making about $16 an hour and the little bit of short term disability he was bringing in. We became deep in debt by now. Then he went to the psych ward for threatening to kill himself. By this point it had only been the abuse mentioned and some slaps to the face. Then he choked me again last month. In the past month, he’d also thrown his phone in to a fire and I had to fish it out with a stick, and then he hit our small fire pit towards our house saying he was gonna burn it down, which the fire pit headed towards me in a big ball of fire, singeing my hair on my head and some of my eyebrow. (The spot where the fire pit sat before I kicked it away and stomped any flames out)

Then this past weekend, I realized I definitely needed to leave, or he would kill me (something he’s threatened/the things he threatened to do that could result in death). Or I would kill him for putting our son in harms way. He had only been home about 2 hours when hed already broke the tip on his new vape tank, and then started escalating out of no where over nothing. He started choking me again while I held our son this time, lit my side of the bed on fire while our son and I sat on his side

Then he lit his side on fire when I was trying to leave

Causing me to put both out with my bare hand while holding our now almost 3 year old son. He then began throwing things, including one of my sons toys at another toy breaking it, and then ended up hitting our son with cardboard (something he apologized immediately to our son for), tried ripping my son out of my arms and when he realized I was not gonna let go easily, slammed me up against our bedroom door while choking me, trying to rip my throat out. When he finally let go, I started trying to call 911, and he got on top of me on the bed by shoving me down, pinning my sons legs on top of me. I was so focused on my son and trying to dial 911 that I honestly couldn’t tell you what he did to me besides being on top of me, crushing me with all 190 lbs of him. As 911 was ringing, he ripped my shirt in the front half off (and broke my necklace that I always wear with my great grandmas fingerprint and a cross and jewel he’d gotten me out first Christmas together) and didn’t stop till he realized I had rang through as I screamed our address at the lady, full on in hysterics. I ran outside to get away from him, not caring if passerby’s saw me with my shirt barely hanging on, bra exposed. He kept begging me to hang up, and tried snatching the phone out of my hands, almost causing my son and I to go over the railing to our porch (at least 8ft above ground). The police arrested him and told me he would not be allowed to contact me (something the court included as part of his bail). Which before the cops got there, he begged me to lie to them like I had the weekend prior when he’d punched me 5+ times and kicked me 5+ times in the face and head (I only lied that time cause I was scared and because I had punched back and had caused more physical apparent damage despite only punching him 3-4 times (I only looked red where as he had a busted fat lip, despite me getting a concussion from it). At that point I didn’t know how I looked, and he was stupid if he thought the cops wouldn’t know he choked me. I cried when I looked in the mirror after they left while I was on the phone with his parents.

Since then his parents forced him into rehab, and I’ve been staying with them and my son. He was charged with simple assault, harassment, strangulation, arson, and child endangerment. I’ve made my mind up that I will not be going back to him, going to get a PFA, and he can kiss any type of custody goodbye if I have any say. I will be testifying against him in court. But I’m lost. Idk what to do at the moment, and everything is on me to take care of including cleaning up our house, packing everything, and trying to sell it. His dad really wants me to rent a place on my own without a roomate, but idk how I’m gonna do that. And what’s worse, I feel like I can’t hate him because I know if he had taken the help he could have gotten for his mental state and stayed sober, we would have been so happy. And I was raised to hate no one. But I definitely can’t forgive him. I treated him like a king while I was treated like trash. And I know I don’t deserve that. This was my neck as of Wednesday night.

I had also gone to the hospital Monday and the forensic nurse took pictures of every bruise on my body and mark and sent it to the police. Thankfully other than some broken blood vessels inside my throat (also photographed), I’m okay internally. My son is also thriving without his dad around, so much happier. This is me:

And this is my story. I know it could have been worse, but that’s why I’m getting out now. Any advice would be appreciated, and I will gladly read all of your stories if you’d like to share. ❤️‍🩹

Domestic Violence Support