She came to bed at gone five in the morning and promptly punched me in the head (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Content warning: This piece includes descriptions of domestic abuse.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when my last relationship ran aground.

The moment that most often springs to mind is New Years’ Day last year, when she came to bed at gone five in the morning and promptly punched me in the head as I slept, screaming at me for not saying goodbye to our guests (I had – she was too drunk to notice).

It could, of course, have been done long before then, when she smashed up a hotel bathroom to the tune of €1,000 because I hadn’t been granted a plus one to an old friend’s wedding.

Or after a gig earlier that spring, where she shoved me around a tube platform, threatening to throw herself in front of a train because no one had talked to her enough in the pub post-show.

Perhaps it came apart when she stormed out of a party because the DJ played Kylie Minogue – a teenage crush of mine whose very existence would frequently send her into a fit of rage.

Any one of these moments, or the hundreds of other micro and macro-aggressions I went through in our 16 months together could’ve been the moment our relationship died. It’s hard to tell, even now.

Even conventional wisdom doesn’t help, here. Arguing that the relationship was done when I finally left, almost a year after her first violent outburst, doesn’t hold up in my head – not after the months that followed, where I was subjected to a near-constant stream of texts, emails, direct messages and tweets begging for me to return, and sidestepping any of her wrongdoings. At one point, she even turned up at my front door, uninvited and unannounced.

Through the course of our relationship, I was excruciatingly anxious, panicked and severely depressed – I remain as much even now, months after we broke up, largely unable to move forward.

As recently as last month, she was continuing to insult my appearance online, and messaging a friend of mine to say I’d made all of the above up.

Specificities aside, none of this is particularly surprising, I’m sure. Domestic abuse is depressingly common – according to the Office for National Statistics, 2million of us suffer from it every year, that number overwhelmingly female.

It’s had high-profile, recent headlines in the #MeToo movement and the horrific story of Natalie Connolly’s death at the hands of her partner, which hit the news towards the tail end of last year, as her former husband was charged only with manslaughter, not murder.

These cases are as disgusting as they are prevalent, and deserve the spotlight they’ve been given – indeed, a far brighter one. But they’re not a woman’s issue alone.

Given the prevalence of violence against women, it becomes difficult to discuss the flip-side – the third of domestic abuse victims who are male, and are being repeatedly failed by both the system and society at large.

In the aftermath of my own experiences, the isolation felt unending. Afraid of being seen to speak over my ex-partner, or ‘silence’ her as so many men do, I followed friends’ advice and kept as quiet as I could bear (bar a few hastily-deleted, desperate and drunken tweets, denying what she was claiming, all of which she systematically shut down and silenced).

Her own friends soon waded in, too, also encouraging my silence or suggesting that she deserved kindness and support – many of them, despite publicly presenting themselves as staunchly anti-abuse and consistently posting online about the importance of others holding their friends accountable, continued to side with my ex-partner, and chastise or ostracise me and my friends for keeping our distance, long after she admitted what she’d done.

Through lie after publicly-posted lie, I bottled up my experiences, my mind spiralling between feeling weak and embarrassed about what had happened to me, fearing being ‘cancelled’ if I were to try to speak against her and her friends’ actions, and wondering if – actually – my anger and resentment at what happened (and was still happening) to me made me a bad feminist.

The last thing I wanted was to play into the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope, and I was fearful that publicly denying what she was saying could be perceived as gaslighting.

For years I’d sided with the ‘believe women’ rhetoric so prevalent in online anti-abuse campaigners – was this not now hypocrisy in action?

It’s something that I’ve heard echoed through others.

One friend, who opened up to me after hearing second-hand about my experiences, said he was made to feel ‘like a men’s rights activist’ for ever attempting to speak out against his abusive ex-girlfriend.

In the unsure mind of someone who’s suffered from abuse, and in post-#MeToo climate of believing women, ‘men can be victims too’ can sound an awful lot like ‘not all men’.

It becomes simpler to bottle it up, rather than traverse this unsteady terrain, and risk coming off like a meninist.

The facts: Domestic abuse in the UK One in four women experience domestic abuse in their lives. For men, this figure is one in six.

Two women are killed by a current or former partner every week in England and Wales.

Globally, one in three women have experienced sexual or physical violence – in most cases from a partner or family member.

Around 54 per cent of rapes reported to police take place within the context of domestic violence.

Every minute a domestic violence case is reported to police. But…

Only 35 per cent of domestic violence cases are actually reported to the police. Sources: Refuge, nia

The conversations that surround a male victim are muddy, too. Close friends of mine will think nothing of cracking jokes about what happened, laughing about ‘taking things on the chin’, or the time she hit me with the oh-so-appropriately titled ‘Bosh!’ cookbook – something, I should note, I’m all too ready and willing to join in with.

Cracking jokes about it seems par for the course; it’s textbook deflection of male emotion, the type we’re increasingly warned of as toxic masculinity continues to dominate discussion.

And yet if the gender roles were reversed, the situation would become a whole lot less palatable for all. I can’t picture a situation among progressive, liberally-minded people in which someone would joke about a man punching his girlfriend, right to that very victim’s face.

It’s certainly easier to laugh it off than process exactly how it’s affected me. We’re in an era where men are being increasingly encouraged to talk, and dissect their own emotions – those big, bad buzzwords ‘toxic masculinity’ are everywhere.

But when it comes to unpacking a violent girlfriend, there’s precious little support out there.

At various points during our time together, I found myself desperately searching for support lines, or online advice on what to do as a male victim of female violence. I was met with the online equivalent of tumbleweeds – only the ManKind Initiative popped up, while charities I knew and trusted were blank on the subject.

Subsequent Google searches, at my very lowest, soon turned me towards forums glorifying and offering advice on suicide. I remember laughing grimly, even then, at how much easier it was to find information on how to end my life than information on how to deal with my situation.

But once again, it’s not really all that funny. Male abuse victims, both gay and straight, are being failed.

David Edwards, a 51-year-old man, was murdered by his wife just days after their 2015 wedding, following a relationship fraught with abuse and assault. Last summer, it was reported by the ManKind Initiative that he had been extensively let down by both the authorities and those around him.

In September 2018, the BBC published an interview with another domestic violence victim who went under the pseudonym Tony: ‘I still feel ashamed even today to admit I was in an abusive relationship,’ he said. ‘I think it’s something to do with being a man.

‘You’re supposed to stand up for yourself, you’re supposed to protect yourself.’ A former partner of his laid out some reasons she believed he let his abuse go on for so long: ‘Embarrassed,’ she said, ‘The stigma. It’s a man thing.’

It’s time for us to move the conversation forward, and for that stigma to be demolished. Much as the #MeToo movement galvanised countless women into acting against their abusers, and refusing to lay dormant, a sea change is needed across the gender gap.

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‘Believe women’ is a hugely important mantra – ‘believe survivors’ perhaps more so. Because as long as we exclude vulnerable men from the conversation of victimhood, we are continuing to fail a third of people who are already suffering in silence.

John Oldcastle is a pseudonym used to protect the identities of those involved

Who to call if you need help You can call the ManKind helpline for support on 01823 334244 between 10am and 4pm on weekdays. You can also call the Men’s Advice Line for confidential help, information, advice and support on 0808 801 0327. Please call 999 if you are in immediate danger. Help is out there.

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