Before I Knew My Name
I was born into domestic violence on both sides of my family. Before I knew words like coercive control, psychological abuse, stalking, financial abuse, sexual coercion, intimidation, or hypervigilance, my body already knew fear. I learned very young how to read a room, watch facial expressions, hear changes in someone's tone, stay quiet, explain myself, keep the peace, and survive. I learned how to read everybody else before I ever really knew myself. That is why I call this story Before I Knew My Name.
I am sharing the little details because domestic violence doesn't always begin with a punch. Sometimes it starts with jealousy, accusations, a look, monitoring, questioning, controlling money, refusing to let an argument end, or making you afraid of someone's reaction. Sometimes those “little” things become much bigger.
(I was 16) I dated someone for several months. One day while we were taking a nap, his 24-year-old brother climbed on top of me and raped me. When I told my boyfriend what his brother had done, he beat me. He kicked me in the face, pistol-whipped me, and tried to fire a gun. I truly believed I was going to die that night. He kept me there for hours before finally letting me go home. I was sixteen. I didn't understand domestic violence or trauma. I only knew that one man had violated me, and when I told the person who was supposed to care about me, he violently hurt me too.
(I was 17–19) At seventeen I entered another relationship. He was funny, and humor drew me to him, but there really wasn't dating or slowly getting to know each other. He pretty much laid me down and initiated sex while I froze, then acted like we were together. Eventually we were. He cheated constantly. When he was nineteen, he was involved with girls who were fourteen and fifteen, and at twenty-one he was involved with a sixteen-year-old whom he later married and had children with. While he cheated, he constantly accused me of cheating. I never cheated on him.
He was physically violent. He beat me and strangled me. Once he punched me so hard that my head hit my daughter's head, and I had two black eyes the next day. His cheating also brought pubic lice into our home. I noticed them on my daughter before I noticed one on myself. His legs were covered with them, and after everything he had done to me, I still sat there helping pick them out of his leg hair one by one. I include that strange little detail because abusive relationships aren't only the violent moments. Sometimes you are still caring for, helping, protecting, and loving the person hurting you.
Eventually I moved out of my mom's house and into an apartment to get away from him. Several months later I ran into him at a club. A friend had used my ID to get in and handed it back to me in front of him. He snatched my ID. When I got home later that night, he was hiding in my closet. He cried and begged me to get back together with him, and I did. The cheating started again. Eventually we separated again, but he stalked me for approximately another three or four years. He broke into my home, physically abused me, and raped me. Leaving did not automatically make me safe. The stalking finally stopped after I became involved with the man who would later become my husband, because I believe he was afraid of him.
(About age 23–41) My next long-term relationship lasted around eighteen years. He was my friend's older brother, and I genuinely thought we were just friends at first. One night his sister canceled plans with me, he offered to go out instead, and we started hanging out. I even tried setting him up with another woman. He later told me not to do that again because he liked me. Eventually I developed feelings for him.
The jealousy and intimidation started quickly. One night at a bar he angrily whispered that he had seen me looking at his friend. It wasn't only what he said—it was the frightening way he said it. Another night we had an amazing time singing karaoke. I sang to him and danced with him, and everything seemed fine. The moment we left, he called me a whore and accused me of flirting with the karaoke DJ. While we walked home he kicked over trash cans and continued accusing me. Those were some of the early “little things” I explained away.
I became pregnant with our son very quickly. I stopped drinking and thought things might calm down. Instead, he started disappearing. At first for shorter periods, then 24 hours, and eventually 48–72 hours. Meanwhile, he constantly accused me of cheating. I believe he was cheating from very early on. There was pornography, women he had previously dated, nights at bars with other women, and repeated suspicious behavior.
He was also physically abusive. There was intimidation, lying, addiction, instability, and severe financial abuse. I worked much more consistently than he did. I cleaned houses and bartended while he barely worked for long periods.
Sometimes I handed him money to pay the rent and utilities and he told me they were paid when they weren't. Other times he simply stole money directly from my purse. He gambled our money away. We were evicted multiple times. We lived without electricity, water, and gas. There were times we were homeless, stayed with relatives, or lived in RVs. I was deeply embarrassed and hid much of it from people.
He also stole our children's birthday and Christmas presents after they had opened them, then told the kids they must have misplaced them. There was alcohol addiction, gambling addiction, drug addiction, lies, smear campaigns, physical abuse, and repeated promises to change. Not long after we got married, I came home and he pointed a shotgun at me. That was long before meth became the bigger problem later. When meth entered the picture, the physical abuse became more frequent and his behavior became increasingly frightening. I had obtained restraining orders before and gone back because he promised to change. Eventually I got another one, and this time I stayed away.
(My most recent relationship, 2021–January 2026) This relationship was different, and that actually made the abuse harder for me to recognize. I had survived beatings, strangulation, guns, stalking, addiction, and financial abuse, so I would compare what was happening to the worst things from my past and think, He's not beating me like they did. Maybe this isn't abuse.
But coercive control doesn't always look like a black eye.
I felt watched constantly. There were cameras and Life360. My movements were monitored inside and outside. If I walked outside to take the trash out, I could be questioned about why I was outside. I could tell him everything I did that day and he would say, “What about the gas station?” or “What about going to lunch?” That's how I knew he had been watching my location.
My phone became another source of tension. If I picked it up in the living room, he would sit extremely close to me and stare. If I picked it up while we were in bed, he would sometimes sit up, turn the television off, and stare at me. Eventually you begin thinking before you even pick up your own phone because you know it may create a reaction.
If my children and I were laughing or having fun, he would sometimes walk into the room, stand in the doorway, cross his arms, and give us the look. No screaming was required. The atmosphere changed anyway.
There were many times I tried to walk away from arguments and he would not allow the conflict to end. I would tell him I was overstimulated. I would tell him I needed space. He knew continuing to push me when I was overstimulated affected me badly. We even had a safe word specifically for when I had reached my limit, and he still didn't respect it. He would keep questioning, talking, following the argument, and sometimes physically block me from leaving rooms or stand in doorways.
There were incidents with my SUV too. He climbed onto the side rails when I was trying to leave. There were situations where braking and accelerating became part of conflict. These things can sound small when separated, but that is what coercive control often is: the doorway, the phone, the cameras, Life360, the questioning, the staring, the car, the ignored safe word—all accumulating until your nervous system is constantly calculating another person's reactions.
There were also things involving women online that made me uncomfortable. He followed many sexualized accounts, including young-looking women and accounts that appeared fake. He would heart or “wow” pictures of women he called friends but rarely seemed interested in pictures involving those women's husbands or children. One social-media reaction alone doesn't prove anything, but inside a relationship already filled with jealousy, monitoring, double standards, and sexual-boundary problems, it became another part of the environment I was living in.
There were repeated sexual violations too. Very early in our relationship, during an ordinary nonsexual interaction, he suddenly touched me sexually without consent. I trembled and cried. He knew I had a sexual-trauma history, yet part of the situation became about whether I hated him, leaving me managing his feelings after my boundary had been violated.
Over the years I became extremely clear: don't suddenly grab my breasts, butt, or crotch, and do not sexually touch me while I am asleep. Yet I repeatedly woke to him touching my breasts, nipples, butt, or vagina, and to sexual behavior and humping against my body while I slept.
I tried to believe maybe he was asleep too. I told him that if he truly couldn't control it, he needed to get help. Meanwhile, I changed the way I slept to protect myself. I put pillows and a body pillow between us, layered blankets, tucked clothing around myself, created distance, and sometimes slept on the couch.
Imagine having to build barriers around your own body before falling asleep next to someone who says they love you.
After Thanksgiving, there was an incident where I woke while touching was happening and stayed still. At one point he got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and returned. What happened around that incident made it much harder for me to keep convincing myself that unconscious sleep behavior explained everything.
Eventually there was an apology.
There was a promise that it would stop.
And unwanted touching still happened afterward.
By the end, I was constantly bracing, watching, anticipating, explaining, and questioning myself.
Is this really abuse?
Am I too sensitive?
Is this just my trauma?
Maybe I'm exaggerating.
I had survived such extreme physical violence earlier in my life that psychological abuse sometimes seemed too “small” to count.
But it wasn't small.
Coercive control can be a thousand tiny adjustments you make to yourself because you are anticipating someone else's reaction.
I am forty-seven years old now. I was born into domestic violence and then lived through abusive teenage and adult relationships. The abuse didn't always look the same. There were beatings, strangulation, guns, stalking, financial abuse, physical violence, psychological manipulation, sexual coercion, jealousy, accusations, monitoring, intimidation, and boundary violations.
I am sharing the little details because maybe the woman reading this isn't being punched. Maybe nobody has pulled a gun on her. But maybe every time she picks up her phone, his expression changes. Maybe she has to account for everywhere she's been. Maybe he tracks her and quizzes her about every stop. Maybe she says she's overwhelmed and asks him to stop, but he won't. Maybe she tries to leave a room and he stands in the doorway. Maybe she spends so much energy managing his reactions that she has forgotten to ask herself:
Do I feel safe?
The little things matter because they teach you to anticipate, explain, comply, become quieter, and make yourself smaller.
That is why I call this Before I Knew My Name.
I learned survival before I learned safety. I learned other people's moods before I learned my own needs. I learned how to keep the peace before I learned boundaries. I learned how to survive relationships before I learned what healthy love was supposed to feel like.
Now I'm learning that no is enough. I'm allowed to end a conversation when I'm overwhelmed. I don't need permission to leave a room. Another person's anger doesn't determine whether my boundary is valid. Love should not require hypervigilance.
Safety isn't someone saying, “Trust me.”
Safety is something a person demonstrates through their behavior consistently, over time.
After forty-seven years of surviving, I'm finally learning my own name.
I share this for awareness, not pity. If even one woman recognizes one of those “little things” in her own life and starts asking questions sooner than I did, then telling my story was worth it.
Kris-Duh
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This is an incredibly brave and powerful testimony. Sharing your story helps so many other people feel less alone, feel more understood, feel more seen.
It’s stories like this that save people’s lives, and I can’t thank Krista enough for being so honest it’s truley incredible to have so many other powerful people speaking out with me. This campaign is all of ours and when it reaches the people in power I want to make sure they see all of us. Our voices matter. Kristas voice and story matters.
💜