“He threw my engagement ring on the ground”
**Melissa*, 34, Essex**

I’d been with Michael for eight years when we got engaged in 2013. We’d just bought a house together and, considering how long we’d been in a relationship, getting married seemed like the next logical step. It was exciting, sure, but looking back, I can see that engagement as more of a box-ticking exercise than anything else. Michael was a pragmatic kind of guy, and both of us just thought it would make sense to get married.

Despite this, though, I’d always had a sense that something was wrong in the relationship. We met through work when I was 20. Naive, ignorant and completely sexually inexperienced, I was a different person back then. And so was he. Given our age difference – he was five years older – it always felt like the power dynamic was off between us. But for years I just dismissed it. Sure, we argued a lot and he struggled to communicate; whenever I raised a difficult subject with him, Michael would simply storm off and lock himself in a room until he calmed down. Still, we loved each other.

Things changed when I got a promotion at work in 2017, four years after the engagement. I was given a huge pay rise and sent away for my first ever international trip: a three-week tour around south-east Asia. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever felt completely financially independent – and that gave me a sense of what my adult life would be like without Michael in it. It opened me up to a world that wasn’t centred around him, and I liked it.

One night, I’d been to a party with some colleagues and Michael was angry that I hadn’t called him. He started to get verbally abusive and, after I reminded him I’d told him I’d be at a party, he called me a s***. At that moment I thought, f*** him. I could be on my own.

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