'He wanted to build a cage and keep me in it'

Maria married at 22 and became pregnant on her honeymoon, but she soon began to realise that all was not well in her marriage.

"My husband became very jealous, checking up on me and trying to control my behaviour," she says. "I didn't know what was happening or why. Looking back much later, I remembered a dance we went to before our marriage. I was wearing a dress cut rather low, which made him angry. In all the photographs of that night, the group is smiling, but his face stares out like an angry mask.

It was a look Maria came to know well, as she was subjected to a regular barrage of questions and accusation. All social occasions were inevitably followed by an inquisition, which could go on for hours, going back over her appearance, behaviour, who she spoke to and what she said.

"I rebelled against it as best I could, trying to retain my self-respect as a human being. But over the years you become weakened, alienated and brainwashed. I have suffered from depression, lost my trust in people and am only now realising how much had been taken away from me and how isolated I became.

"It was as if my husband needed to bring me to screaming pitch before he let it go. Then he would cry, be full of remorse, promise never to do it again, call me his wonderful angel, tell me he was only trying to protect me. He wanted to build a cage and keep me in it. I know now he was suffering from a deep insecurity, but at the time I could not understand how someone who is meant to love you could put you through so much."

Over 30 years of marriage and three children, Maria made attempts to break out. She continued to defend herself as best she could against punitive control, sought counselling, and approached Women's Aid. "But I had numbed out a lot of my feelings. I couldn't put words on what was going on, so it was difficult for anyone to help me. This kind of abuse is so subtle and so gradual that you are in it and reacting to it before you know it, and my main wish was to protect the children and not let them see what was going on. I thought of leaving permanently, but where would I go? I didn't want to upset the children, and you also must realise that the constant mental abuse where you're living on a live wire weakens you and your ability to make decisions."

Physical violence played a minor part. "Sometimes, I would want to walk out the door when he was going on and on, and the odd time, he would push me and not let me go. I was physically afraid on two occasions, but there were few really violent incidents. The abuse was mainly emotional."

Now separated, with her family grown, Maria enrolled in the Women's Aid's Butterfly Project last September. "The first day we were asked to write down our goals, which was a new idea to me. I went in there hoping in some way to get something that would explain what I had gone through, and that my experience might have something to offer younger women. We had speakers on all kinds of subjects and there was so much awareness of what we had been through in every sense. I cannot put into words what it meant to me. I was just dead when I started, I had lost all my social skills. I found myself changing day by day. I began to find out who I was when I left off 30 years ago, who I was born to be. I am more willing to go out and try things, loosening up a bit, more open to change.

"I am getting a sense of myself again, but I am sad as well. There is a sense of mourning for what I've lost, my unfulfilled self, when I think of what I could have done. I am coming to see myself as a self-respecting human being, not weak, not a wimp. One of the things I used to do when I saw a photograph of myself was to scrape out the mouth, as I knew for a long time that I had no voice. I'm still a loner, I find it hard to trust people, but being alone now can give a new sense of peace."