I grew up hating my father because he used to beat my mum. 

I remember telling myself as a kid that I would never settle down with a man like him, but somehow, I kept attracting men who reminded me of my father.

In my home, every misunderstanding between my parents ended with my father beating my mother black and blue 

I knew what he was doing was wrong. Even as a child, I hated seeing my mother suffer like that, and I hated my father for putting her through it.

Whenever my siblings and I saw our mother crying, we would go to her and try to comfort her.

But my mother would always tell us not to interfere.

She would say, “Leave me alone. I don’t want you people telling my sorry.”

Sometimes she would even tell us that she didn’t want us to challenge our father because she knew how he could react.

So I grew up in a home where I was constantly watching my mother become smaller whenever my father got angry.

The moment his voice changed, she became quiet.

The moment an argument started getting heated, she withdrew.

And as a child, I didn’t understand it, but that fear stayed with me.

I didn’t want to become like my mother.

I didn’t want to be in a relationship where a man would raise his hand against me.

I didn’t want to live in fear.

So I made a promise to myself that no man would ever treat me the way my father treated my mother.

But what I didn’t realize was that while I was running away from my father’s violence, I was also carrying the fear of that violence with me.

It affected the way I responded to men.

I became extremely defensive.

If a man asked me a question in a certain tone, I was already preparing for an argument.

If we were having a disagreement, I would raise my voice before the conversation could even get serious.

I was always trying to stop things from getting to that place.

The place where my father used to take things.

The place where a disagreement became violence.

So I became the woman who would shout first.

I would say, “Don’t try it.”

“You cannot beat me.”

“If you think you’re a man, dare me.”

I didn’t understand why I behaved that way.

I thought I was being strong.

I thought I was protecting myself.

I didn’t know that I was reacting to years of fear I had carried from childhood.

Then I met Matthew.

Matthew was the first man I seriously dated.

Matthew had anger issues. Sometimes when he suspected anything, he would smash my phone, or my laptop, but he would replace it later.

And as for me… old habits never die.

Whenever we had misunderstandings, my defensive side would come out.

I would challenge him.

I would tell him, “You cannot beat me.”

Sometimes I would even provoke him by saying, “If you think you’re a man, dare me.”

But one day, we had a very serious misunderstanding.

I got angry and became defensive as always.

And that was the day he beat me.

He beat me black and blue.

I was shocked, but instead of immediately walking away, I stayed.

Matthew could be very loving.

He could spoil me with gifts.

He could make me feel special.

And because I had already become used to defending myself, our relationship became one long cycle of arguments, anger, apologies and violence.

Until one day, he beat me so badly that I fell into a coma.

I stayed in a coma for two weeks.

Throughout those two weeks, my mother sat beside my bed.

She cried.

She prayed.

She begged God not to let me die.

When I finally woke up, I saw my mother’s face.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes.

Then she asked me, “Why did you follow my path? Of all the men in this world, why did you choose this kind of man?”

I started crying.

Then I told her something that even I couldn’t believe I was saying.

“Mummy, I don’t know. I hate the footsteps of my father, but I don’t know how I keep attracting men like him.”

My mother just cried.

She didn’t have the strength to say anything.

But that day, I knew I had to leave.

I realized that if I continued with Matthew, one day he could beat me and I might never wake up again.

So I ended the relationship.

I decided that I needed time to myself before entering another relationship.

It took me one whole year before I met Jerry.

Jerry was completely different.

He was calm.

He was patient.

He was kind.

He didn’t have anger issues.

He never raised his hand against me.

He was the sweetest man I had ever met.

But there was something wrong with me.

I didn’t know how to respond to a healthy relationship.

Because I was always expecting things to escalate, I would sometimes create the very tension I was trying to avoid.

If Jerry asked me a simple question and I felt his tone was slightly serious, I was already raising my voice.

If we disagreed about something, I became defensive.

I would say things like, “You cannot beat me.”

Jerry would just look at me.

Sometimes he would smile and walk away.

I didn’t understand him.

I would ask myself, “Why isn’t this man reacting?”

There was a part of me that was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I was expecting the calm man to eventually become the angry man.

I was expecting Jerry to eventually become my father.

One day, Jerry sat me down.

He said, “I need you to understand something. I am not a woman beater, and I will never become one.”

Then he told me that if our relationship was going to work, we needed to learn how to communicate.

He said whenever we had a misunderstanding, I should sit down and talk to him.

I should tell him exactly what was hurting me instead of shouting or provoking him.

He said, “Sit down. Let’s talk about it.”

But something about the way he was setting those boundaries triggered me.

I started seeing my father in him.

Not because Jerry was behaving like my father, but because I had learned to associate authority and firmness with the fear I experienced as a child.

Then Jerry said something else.

“For no reason should you ever tell me to beat you again. I don’t want to hear that from you.”

Then he said, “I also want you to see a therapist.”

That was the part that made me angry.

I said, “Therapist? For what? Did I tell you that I’m traumatized? Did I tell you that I’m wounded?”

I picked up my bag and wanted to leave.

Jerry looked at me and said, “If you are not willing to get help, I don’t think I can continue with this relationship.”

I left.

I went home and cried for days.

Jerry was sweet.

He had never raised his hand against me.

He had never treated me badly.

But I was angry because he was asking me to deal with something inside me that I wasn’t ready to face.

Pride wouldn’t let me call him.

For three days, I couldn’t concentrate at work.

I was hurting, but I didn’t want to admit that maybe I needed help.

Then I remembered my mother.

I called her and told her everything.

After listening to me, she asked me one question.

“Do you love this man?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could say anything, I burst into tears.

I cried because the truth was that I had never met anyone like Jerry.

He was genuinely good to me.

My mother said, “If you know that this man is good to you, then do the right thing. Don’t allow pride to destroy what God has given you.”

Then she said something that stayed with me.

“I know what it means to live with a man who beats you. I know what it means to be afraid of a man’s anger. Don’t allow what happened to me to become your own story.”

That conversation broke something inside me.

For the first time in one week, I picked up my phone and called Jerry.

I told him, “I’m ready. I will go for therapy.”

And I went.

It wasn’t easy.

I didn’t realize how much I had bottled up inside me for years.

I had spent my childhood watching my father beat my mother.

I had spent years being afraid of what could happen whenever a man became angry.

Then I carried that fear into my relationships.

During therapy, I started talking about everything.

And whenever I talked about my childhood, I cried.

Sometimes I would talk about it with Jerry and suddenly break down in tears.

My therapist would tell me, “Keep talking. This is part of your healing.”

So I kept talking.

I talked about my father.

I talked about my mother.

I talked about the fear I carried.

I talked about why I always became defensive.

And slowly, I started understanding myself.

I wasn’t trying to find violent men.

I was trying to protect myself from becoming the woman I had watched my mother become.

I had been fighting before the battle even started.

I had been shouting before anyone attacked me.

I had been preparing myself for something that wasn’t happening.

Therapy taught me that I didn’t have to live like that anymore.

I learned that disagreement doesn’t have to become a fight.

I learned that a man setting healthy boundaries is not the same thing as a man trying to control me.

I learned that I could sit down and express my feelings without shouting.

I learned that I could be angry without becoming violent.

And most importantly, I learned that peace is not boring.

Peace is peace.

Eventually, I forgave my father.

He was already long gone, but I realized that I couldn’t continue carrying the pain of what he had done.

I couldn’t change what happened to my mother.

I couldn’t change the childhood I had.

But I could decide that what happened in my parents’ marriage would not become my own story.

Was I still defensive sometimes?

Yes.

But now I was conscious of it.

Whenever Jerry and I had a misunderstanding and I felt myself getting angry, I remembered his words.

“Sit down. Let’s talk.”

And gradually, I changed.

I became calmer.

I learned to communicate.

I learned self-control.

I learned that being strong doesn’t mean shouting the loudest or preparing yourself for a fight.

Jerry became one of the best things that happened to me.

He didn’t just love me.

He helped me grow.

He introduced me to different businesses and taught me about investments.

He introduced me to treasury bills and taught me how to make my money work for me.

We dated for two years before we settled down.

And today, when I look back, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had allowed my pride to win.

What if I had refused therapy?

What if I had walked away from Jerry because I wasn’t ready to deal with myself?

I could have lost a good man because I was still trying to heal from a home he didn’t create.

I grew up hating my father because of the way he treated my mother.

I never wanted to become like him.

But I didn’t realize that even though I rejected his violence, I had carried the fear of that violence into my own relationships.

Thankfully, I learned that healing is not just about leaving a bad situation.

Sometimes, healing means learning how to stop fighting battles that are no longer happening.

MORAL 1:

Sometimes, if you refuse to work on yourself, you can lose the very good thing God has placed in your life. God can give you a good person, but pride and an unwillingness to change can make you lose that person.

MORAL 2:

What happened to you should not become who you are. You may come from a painful home, but you can choose to heal, unlearn what hurt you and build the kind of home you always wished you had.