I\u2019d always heard, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t hit you, cheat, or drink. What are you complaining about?\u201d Everyone repeated it like it was a universal truth. I followed the rules\u2014until the kids were grown, and it was just me and Tony.<\/p>\n
He criticized me constantly: \u201cYou don\u2019t clean well enough,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve let yourself go,\u201d while I worked, earned more, and did everything at home. One night, after he barked at me about dust on the TV, something inside me snapped. I yelled, packed a suitcase, and left. I needed space.<\/p>\n
At a gas station, I ran into David, my first love. We spent time together, and old feelings resurfaced. But then, I woke up beside him and saw a message from Tony, begging me to come back. I felt guilty, but Tony had promised change before.<\/p>\n
I left David, but something felt off. I soon discovered David had broken my car on purpose, to keep me there. Furious, I confronted him. \u201cI won\u2019t trade one controlling man for another,\u201d I told him, grabbed my car keys, and left.<\/p>\n
This time, I chose myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019d always heard, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t hit you, cheat, or drink. What are you complaining about?\u201d Everyone repeated it like it was a universal truth. I followed the rules\u2014until the kids were grown, and it was just me and Tony. He criticized me constantly: \u201cYou don\u2019t clean well enough,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve let yourself go,\u201d while I worked, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2822,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions\/2822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}