I didn't understand until decades later, but it was always whatever level of abuse that made him feel power and control over me. Since I was crazy in love with him, he could control me very easily in the first few years just by sulking or snapping at me, being mad for no apparent reason, putting me down with mild insults that were disguised as joking around, silent treatment, etc. Sometimes we would go out to eat and he would insist it was my turn to pay when I knew that it was his turn, then I would feel silly arguing over a $25 restaurant tab so I would just pay it. He would manipulate me into paying for other stuff and he refused to spend his money on me but was very generous with his friends.

After a while I started standing up for myself a little, and I didn't react to his sulking and silence anymore, so it escalated to yelling in my face, serious ugly name-calling, slamming things around, throwing things, threats, serious manipulation of finances, temper tantrums over minor things like leaving the closet door open. I realized by now this was an "abusive" relationship but I believed that if I set boundaries and kept calling him out on his bad behavior and his unfair treatment of me, he would realize he wasn't getting away with it so he'd stop. Stupid. That just made him escalate to another level to try and control me and put me beneath him in the power dynamic. So then it was shoving, yanking me around by hair or arms, putting me outside in the snow barefoot and locking the door, knocking things out of my hands, damaging or stealing my things, and more severe threats.

So I left him, the ultimate challenge to his control. They say an abusive man is most dangerous after you've left him. He set about trying to woo me back and showing me how much he'd changed. I wasn't buying it, but I thought the good behavior would continue as long as we were in court for divorce and custody of our son, so I felt safe going to his house to pick up our son one evening. At the end of that night he had beat me, raped me and choked me unconscious and I spent the night in the ER while he went to jail.

And it took about ten years for me to put my pieces back together and be normal again.