Financial and Emotional Abuse During Cancer

How I endured partner abuse at my most vulnerable.

Whilst in my third year of university, I began a relationship with a PhD student I met at a quiz evening. A few months in, I met her parents, she met mine, it all seemed very normal. She was spending around half of the week at my flat, which worked well for her as I lived in the city centre — near to the popular clothing shop she worked at to put herself through her doctorate. I was surviving on my student loan only — my living in a luxury flat was the decision of my flatmate and was therefore heavily subsidised (I wasn’t going to decline the offer of a riverside apartment for the price of student digs).

In my fourth year, I moved back to a student house. My flatmate had graduated and left the city, and I once again had to cut my coat according to my cloth. Again, my student loan was seeing me through, though dating was expensive, birthday and Valentine’s Day gifts were expected but not budgeted for and a trip back home to see my parents cost the best part of £100. I studied hard, tried not to spend too much money and did okay.

However, tech was a hobby of mine, and I bought and sold a lot of gadgets. I tried to minimise any loss and more than occasionally made a small profit. One large expense, however, was a gift to my then girlfriend of a MacBook Air. I figured if I could have the latest tech, then so could my partner — and she’d put it to good use during her PhD.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, her parents didn’t treat her particularly well. Her older sister was the favourite and often treated as such — and often too obviously to be a coincidence. A memory of one Christmas Day comes to mind, I remember the look on her face when she unwrapped her Terry’s Chocolate Orange while watching her sister thank her parents for her Radley handbag. She would have frequent fall-outs with her mother, often in the form of a rabid disowning by the woman followed by a week of silence between them before a grovelling apology.

Her sister, the product of almost three decades of doting favouritism, was abusive and sometimes violent towards her. I remember (and can never forget) an occasion at their parents’ house on which her sister’s husband left the house as her taunting (over money, no less) of my partner was too shameful for him to bear. Her childish teasing suddenly turned to anger as the 5'3" toddler threw her fists up and chased her little sister out of the room and upstairs. I intervened and, in my shocked state, told her sister to leave. I remained shocked as I observed their parents’ non-reaction.

I digress, but after many years of analysis it’s clear that these incidents factored into her abusing me. The first, small instance of this was that she sought to move out of her home and, without consulting me, did so — into my student house.

Not into another room, into mine.

I saw the mistreatment at the hands of her mother and sister and the failure to intervene on the part of her father; this made me feel as if letting her move in was the right thing to do. At least with me she was out of danger or harassment. It’s important to note that shortly after this, we headed down to my home town to see my family and friends — some whom she’d never met — and another incident occurred during a day out bowling. She got up from next to me to take her turn bowling, and my best friend moved to where she’d sat for a catch-up with me. She returned, and told him to move. He joked, “I’ve got him for a bit, you’ve had him for ages” or words to that effect. In a fit of jealous rage, she shouted at us and stormed off. I chased after her. Upon our return to our (my) room at uni, I tried to break up with her. She wouldn’t have it, and refused to leave. We spoke at wildly varying volumes for a long time, and eventually decided to give it another shot. This was in no small part due to the feeling that by breaking up with her I’d be throwing her to the wolves, saving myself from an unpleasant relationship at the expense of her safety. I was trapped.

I graduated from university with my integrated Master of Physics degree a few months later. We moved into a smaller, less extravagant flat in the city centre than in my third year, but it was our first home together. I enrolled on a teaching degree, which came with a generous bursary — physics teachers were, and still are, in short supply. For the first time in my life, financial independence was on the horizon.

Then she quit her job.

Her reasoning was essentially that she didn’t like working there any more, internal politics and shift work made for an unsatisfactory experience. Being the supportive boyfriend, I assured her that, if that’s what she wanted, she’d be fine. I did however encourage her to pursue more of a role in her outreach teaching, as this was her secondary job tied to the university, and only lasted for an hour a day, two to three days a week. The loss of income from her retail job could be overcome with more teaching hours, which would also serve to further promote her field of study to high school students.

Then she quit that job as well, for the same reasons.

Without any financial support from her parents, it fell to me, my student loan and my bursary to pay for both of our lives. I paid for our rent, our bills, our food, our travel, everything that needed financing was now my duty. I paid her phone contract. She was now living with me and living on me, on the money I’d been given for my work and had hoped to save for the future — what was potentially our future.

The unforeseen happened six months after we moved in together. I received a diagnosis of Hodgkin Lymphoma, a blood cancer, and was due to start chemotherapy almost immediately. The money I thought I was due stopped coming in. My student loan and bursary were halted as I paused my studies to undergo treatment. However, every bill, every rent payment, every meal and every cab fare to and from the hospital needed paying. The monthly PIP payments from the DWP didn’t cover the rent. Any savings I had were lost, and my parents spent tens of thousands of pounds supporting me, my partner and themselves during this difficult time.

In stark contrast to her parents, mine have love in abundance. They didn’t have unlimited funds, so upon hearing the news of my illness, they offered me a choice: they could either give me some money to help with the situation, or they could use that money to move 250 miles, leaving behind their business, their friends and the rest of our family to be with me. I chose the latter — my family was, is and always will be more important than any sum of money.

We became engaged just before I started treatment. Throughout my ordeal, she looked after me, fed me and stood by me. I was unaware that she was also isolating me by telling friends not to visit, not allowing my family to visit either and feeding me lies about them not wanting to see me. Her family, who allowed me to see them up until an argument after which they forbade me from entering their house forever (by the way, still on chemo), used me as a bargaining chip in their imaginary war with my family over aspects of our wedding. Though often trivial, these disagreements would spiral into malicious insults aimed at members of my family. To name two examples, my family’s wish to conform to their social circle’s tendency to have black tie functions, according to her parents, was — and I quote — “an excuse for people like you to dress up like they have money.” When her mother accused mine of disapproving of our engagement, my mother pointed out that the diamond on her daughter’s finger was bought by my grandfather after he’d survived the Nazi Holocaust and was a valuable to our family, solidifying their blessing. Her mother responded to this by scoffing and rolling her eyes, an act due to which her father then had to text me to tell me that his wife wasn’t mocking the Holocaust.

If you have to send that text, you’ve done something wrong.

I recovered in the following months. Now in considerable debt, I was just looking forward to returning to university, walking without a walking stick, seeing my extended family and friends and our wedding, due to happen a few months later. She had dropped out of her PhD and started a teaching degree as well. I had run out of money entirely, so she stepped in to pay rent for what became the last two months of our relationship. She had gained new friends at her training schools, one of which she grew intimately close with on a staff night out — though I didn’t find this out until after we’d broken up. As I was still in the pre-wedding post-cancer phase of trust, thinking nothing of her new friendship, she let me make the terrible decision, using more of my credit, to buy her an iPad for her birthday.

Our relationship ended a week later.

While piecing my life back together, looking at the debt I was now in, the deposits I’d lost on the wedding venue, catering and band, the rent due for the flat I was now inhabiting alone, she contacted me to ask for half of the two months’ rent she’d paid. I said I’d gladly pay it if she paid me half of all the rent paid in the two years prior. She retracted her request.

I am now married to my amazing wife who I met almost 18 months after that nightmarish period of my life ended. I have an amazing job teaching physics at an incredible school. I am lucky enough to have won a battle with cancer and, at the same time, escape a worse life than the disease could throw at me. The financial scars of being used by her and fighting a life-threatening illness have yet to fully heal, but I’m working hard to correct that.

I teach about abuse as part of PSHCE at school. When financial abuse is mentioned, it usually takes the form of a breadwinner stifling their partner’s earning potential so that they become dependent, giving full control to the person with the cash. In my case, she intentionally made herself dependent on me so that I had to pay, ensuring that she lived for free — then got herself an iPad after cheating on me. I use an abridged, school-suitable version of the story to teach from, showing my students that abuse can happen to anyone. My students see the challenge of the harmful stereotype of male-on-female abuse, though statistically somewhat more likely, for its heteronormativity and dismissal of female perpetrators and male survivors. Telling my own story is also a surefire way to have a silent classroom — it turns a usually abstract topic into a powerful reality.

The financial abuse I suffered, as well as the emotional and other forms of abuse I endured from her and her parents both before and during my illness, is something I’ll never forget but have long forgiven. I don’t blame her for the abuse, it can easily be tracked back to how she was treated by her parents which, unfortunately, can be traced further into her family history — her mother told me of the abuse she faced as a child when we were on better terms. I truly hope that she and her family find peace and happiness one day, as I’ve found mine.

Be brave, be kind and be truthful.

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