I want to leave but I'm scared

You have decided. You may have decided several times. In the clear light of a Tuesday morning you know you want to leave, and then the fear arrives and talks you back round by Tuesday night. It knows exactly what to say. What will they do. Where will you live. What about the children. What if nobody believes you. What if you are wrong and it was not that bad. What if you are alone for the rest of your life.

Some of the fear is about them: what they will do when they find out, what they have said they would do, the look you have seen on their face. Some of it is about life afterwards: money, housing, loneliness, judgement. From the inside they feel like one great wall. They are different fears with different answers, and the first useful thing is to pull them apart.

What tends to be going on

Fear of them. If a part of you is frightened of how your partner will react to you leaving, listen to that part. It is the most important information on this page. People who are frightened of their partner's reaction to leaving are usually right to be, and the people who do this work treat that fear as a risk marker in itself. Separation is the period when harm is most likely, because someone losing control often tries hardest to keep it. That is why the people who do this work say: plan, quietly, with help, and then go.

Fear of after. Money, housing, the children's school, Christmas alone, what your family will say. These are real, and they are the kind of problem the UK has systems for, even if nobody has told you. Councils have duties to people leaving abuse. Benefits can start the day you leave. Legal aid exists. People sleep on friends' sofas and are fine. None of it is easy and all of it is survivable, and most of the people who have done it will tell you the fear beforehand was worse than the doing.

Fear of being wrong. You cannot be certain, and you will not be. Nobody is. Leaving is a decision about the next chapter, not a verdict on the whole story. Many people leave uncertain and become sure only once they have some distance, because distance is what lets you see the shape of a thing.

Fear of not being believed. Especially if nobody has seen anything, if your partner is charming, if you are a man, if you are in a same-sex relationship, if you have been told nobody would take your side. The helplines believe people every day whose partners are charming. They do not need bruises.

The fears feed each other. Fear of them makes the practical seem impossible. The practical seeming impossible makes it easier to decide that you were exaggerating about them. Pulling them apart lets you deal with each one on its own terms.

What to look at first

Your safety, today. Before any plan, the free module Is this danger? goes through what services ask about: violence, threats, strangulation, weapons, jealousy, the children, whether it has got worse. If the answers are serious, you do not have to work this out alone, and you should not. Independent domestic violence advisers, reached through the helplines or your local service, do this with people every week.

Tell nobody who could tell them. Not yet. Plan with people you trust completely, or with the helplines, which are confidential.

Clare's Law. In England and Wales you can ask the police whether your partner has a history of abuse that you have a right to know about. It is called the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, and the right to ask is yours. Scotland has an equivalent.

Protection orders. A non-molestation order can forbid contact. An occupation order can give you the home. Rights of Women, the Men's Advice Line and your local service can explain which fits.

What is holding you. Write every fear on its own line. Then, next to each, write whether it is about them or about afterwards. You will find the list is more manageable in two columns than it was as one wall.

One next step

The free module Leaving safely turns this into a plan you build yourself: what to gather, who to tell, when to go, what the first week looks like, and how to stay safer afterwards. If the fear is mostly about afterwards, What's really holding you looks at those fears one by one. The assessment begins with safety and will tell you plainly how your situation reads.

If you are reading this for someone else, Pass this on explains how to share it safely.

National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247, free and 24 hours. Men's Advice Line 0808 801 0327. Galop, for LGBT+ people, 0800 999 5428. In an emergency call 999 and press 55 if you cannot speak. Pressing Escape twice leaves this site at once.