Escaping domestic abuse: 'Running was everything, a chance to be free'
Anne Elliot suffered for 20 years living with her unpredictable and violent husband. Running helped her survive, escape and - ultimately - find herself.
The Running Tales newsletter is primarily about running, but we like to explore the sport within the wider context of people’s lives. Please be warned that this article explores issues of domestic abuse and domestic violence.
If you are touched by Anne’s story, please consider donating to your nearest domestic abuse charity. Thank you.
“I listen to the sound of my breathing. It’s like meditation on acid.”
For Anne Elliot, running has been a crutch, an escape, therapy.
She used it for 20 years to get a few hours peace from a husband who got so angry he punched a car windscreen until it smashed, threw a kettlebell at her, and ripped a baby seat from their car.
Anne would run further and further distances to escape a man who took to calling her “the hideous creature” and made her sleep on the bathroom floor because she snored when she was pregnant.
After she finally took the brave step to leave him, running helped her rediscover who she really was. An ultra marathon across mountains on the other side of the world became a way of connecting with the “independent and happy” 20-year-old she had been before she met the man who was supposed to love her for the rest of their lives together.
For Anne, running was everything: “It was the only way I could get out, be free, have space.
“I was constantly walking on eggshells. You never knew when something was going to go off.
“But when you are running you are free to think about nothing but running.”
‘He stole my identity - I didn’t even know what I liked to eat’:
By the time Anne came to leave her abuser his behaviour had become so unbearable that he would openly call her “the hideous creature,” “vile” and other cruel names.
“I had even lost my name by the end,” she said. “It’s taken me a long time to get used to pet names or allow people to say ‘babe’ or ‘sweetheart’.
“Coercive control is a slow increase in temperature, a slow burn which intensifies. You do more and more and more for your controller until you don’t even know what you like eating.
“If you had asked me four years ago what my favourite food is, I wouldn’t have known.”
There is an irony in what Anne says, because Anne Elliot isn’t her real name either. It is a pseudonym created for a Facebook account that only her closest friends knew about.
If ‘Anne’ decided it was finally time to leave her husband for good, she could warn them by posting a picture of a particular holiday home.
And this article continues to use that name as her husband remains part of their children’s, and by extension her, lives. Although she managed to leave him for good, he has never been prosecuted for anything as she did not want to see the father of her children charged for a crime that could have seen him go to jail and lose his job.
Incredibly, after all she went through, Anne did not want to “ruin his life”.
The world may have moved on from a time not so long ago when women were very much considered as second class citizens, but attitudes towards domestic abuse and coercive control - defined as “an act, or a pattern of acts, of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation that abusers use to harm, punish or frighten survivors” - often remain outdated.
Anne’s husband’s violent and aggressive behaviour stopped short on one level: he never hit her.
That single act, or lack of it, shaped both their attitudes to the abuse for many years, and is all too prevalent across society in general.
It is an issue Anne is determined to raise awareness of.
Timeline of key developments in domestic abuse legislation in the 19th Century:
Horrifyingly, just over 250 years ago in England and Wales, a judge reportedly stated that a man could beat his wife so long as he used ‘a rod not thicker than his thumb’.
This 1782 ruling - the very first ‘Rule of Thumb’ - is considered by many to have formed the basis for common law throughout the 19th century.
Although progress was made in the 1800s, many of the misogynistic ways of thinking about women’s rights within a marriage are grounded in that period.
This timeline outlines key legal developments in women’s rights and domestic abuse in the UK:
1853: The Criminal Procedure Act attempted to limit the amount of ‘chastisement’ a man was entitled to give his wife.
1857: The Matrimonial Causes Act was a landmark piece of legislation which gave women legal standing in civil courts to seek a decree of divorce.
1860: The Law of Coverture gave men the right to use physical or verbal abuse to control their wife and children.
1882: Under the Married Women’s Property Act, a wife was allowed to own property in her own right.
1895: A curfew was imposed in the City of London making it illegal for a man to hit his wife between 10pm and 7am - but only because the noise was keeping people awake.
Source: Centre for Women’s Justice
‘He never needed to hit me - when someone smashes the room up, you are petrified’:
Anne said that she spent 20 years in an abusive relationship with her husband “without even realising it”.
Although she knew something wasn’t right, and his violent moods and insults often left her scared, Anne did not recognise what was happening to her as abuse.
“I had a preconceived idea about what domestic abuse should look like,” she said.
“I wasn’t Little Mo or Mandy Jordache [British soap opera characters who were victims of domestic violence].
“Most people still think domestic abuse is about being beaten. He didn’t actually hit me because it was frightening enough as it was. He never needed to hit me.
“When someone smashes the room up, you are petrified.”
When the couple first met, there had been warning signs and Anne had never originally intended to continue the relationship.
“I was a typical young woman who loved life,” she said. “I was independent, happy, and full of energy.
“I ran my own business, had no plans to settle down, and was simply enjoying life.”
But circumstances - and occasional good times - changed all that.
Despite an incident where he had thrown her printer out of a window while in a temper, Anne’s husband-to-be also had a romantic side.
“When I first met him he would sing these songs about me,” she said. “There was lovely stuff. It was overwhelming in a way.”
Anne’s life then took a turn when her father fell ill and, at a time when she needed help, her husband-to-be “did everything for me”.
Two years later, the pair were married.
‘I couldn’t get off the rollercoaster’:
As the marriage went on, Anne’s husband became more and more violent and controlling.
She told Running Tales: “His temper became more unpredictable and violent. He’d lose control - throwing things out of windows, punching mirrors.
“It felt like he could punch me at any point. But he didn’t actually hit me, so I convinced myself it wasn’t abuse.”
Anne said although the signs had always been there, her husband wasn’t “always that way”.
The conditions she was forced to live under came in slowly and there were times - when she followed his rules - that things would go well.
“It was like being on a rollercoaster,” she said. “When the temper came in, you would try and follow the rules so it would be better.
“But there was always a crash. I couldn’t get off the rollercoaster.”
Compliments that had once made her feel good about herself, such as ‘you look nice in that,’ changed subtly into comparisons. He would tell her she looked better in another outfit.
Later, he would simply say he didn’t want her to wear certain clothes.
“The sweet words turned into jokes at my expense, and eventually, to cruel, unpleasant names,” she said.
“I began changing my behaviour to avoid angering him. I tiptoed around his moods, constantly on edge.”
Anne had grown up in a single parent family, taught by her loving father to be strong and independent but shorn of the ability to see how a husband and wife should interact.
For a long time, she thought her husband would “grow up,” but instead he simply became more controlling - and violent.
How Anne escaped violence by embracing running:
If the idea Anne was not suffering from domestic abuse was not stretched - and broken - by the control her husband inflicted on her, his increasing bouts of violence and cruelty spoke an undeniable truth.
On one holiday, he abandoned her and their children by the side of the road and drove off on his own.
Later that same day, she was so scared of his temper that she was forced to barricade herself in a room.
On another, when she was pregnant and their older child was teething, she had to spend the nights “walking the streets, pushing her buggy” to avoid waking him.
“One night, I sat in a church until morning,” she said. “The second night, I was made to sleep on the bathroom floor because my snoring disturbed him.”
Anne’s husband would regularly throw things at her, but such was his control by that point that she would be made to feel that behaviour was her fault.
When he once threw a heavy kettlebell at her, it hit his bike instead. Anne’s only answer was to take the bike to get repaired.
Amid all the chaos, Anne was still running. She even had a personal best in her sights before a trip to a major European marathon descended into more violence when her husband punched their car windscreen until it shattered.
“All I could think was, ‘I was going to do a PB and now I’m going to die’,” she said.
Anne’s feelings at that point are illustrative of how important running had become to her.
“It was my escape. It stopped me getting fat, which he was always accusing me of, but it also gave me an escape.
“Because I was slower than him, he wouldn’t run with me which meant I had peace.
“The last two miles were difficult because I was thinking, ‘I’m going to be back soon’ and I didn’t know what I was going to be back with.
“The longer the run, the more time I got away.”
Anne said it was only when running that, “I could be me”.
She added: “I did hard runs if I was frustrated and didn’t understand what was going on.
“I did other runs where I just ran to be out. I would run really steadily for a long time, just to be free.”
When she was running, Anne would “let out this animal noise because I was in pain as a human being and I felt stupid that I hadn’t seen it coming.
“I think I always knew there was something wrong but I ignored the warning signs.”
Fat shamed - for being pregnant:
Those signs only escalated during what should have been one of the happiest times of Anne’s life.
When she became pregnant for the first time, she naturally put on weight but as her body shape changed the abuse she received got worse.
She told Running Tales: “He would squeeze the fat on my body until I cried.
“At night, if I snored, he would jab me repeatedly to wake me up.
“I ran and cycled all through my pregnancy, desperate to keep my weight down, thinking it might stop the cruelty.
“When our beautiful child arrived, I hoped he would be so filled with love that everything would change.
“I believed that maybe now, finally, it would all stop. And again, I told myself it wasn’t abuse - because he never hit me.”
Anne’s hopes were soon to be shattered though. When her mum arrived at the hospital with her husband to pick her and the new baby up, she looked terrified.
Later, Anne found out her husband hadn’t been able to release a baby seat from its base, and in front of her mum, had exploded with rage and physically ripped the seat out.
“It stayed broken, as his way of teaching me a lesson about buying something he deemed ‘rubbish’,” she added.
Once they were home, he began to complain that the noise of Anne feeding their child was “too much,” as was the baby’s crying.
“I was so desperate for relief that I took to running with her in a buggy just to escape,” Anne said.
“I didn’t run with my phone so I could just be free and not think about anything.”
When their second child came along, she pushed both children in the buggy as she ran, her desperate way of keeping everyone out of the house and away from the tension within it.
Anne’s way of coping, outside of running and cycling, was trying to do everything her husband wanted.
Although that helped her get through each day, it also stripped layers off her own personality and she found herself lying to friends and family about his over-reactions to the simplest things.
“You lie, then you feel guilty,” she said. “I’ve spent years lying about his behaviour. Friends noticed it and I would say he had PTSD or was stressed at work.
“Even now, it is really hard when I see people and have to say I’ve spent the last 20 years lying to them.”
Anne remembers one conversation with her dad, after she finally left her husband, when he asked if the little clues he saw were the tip of the iceberg or the full extent of things.
“That was such a difficult conversation,” she said. “He had brought me up to be strong, to not need anybody.”
The shocking statistics behind domestic abuse:
An estimated 2.3m people were victims of domestic abuse in the UK in the year to March 2024.
Just over two-thirds of this number were women, while 712,000 were men.
A total of 1.4m incidents of domestic abuse were recorded by UK police in 2024 with just 39,000 resulting in criminal convictions.
In the UK, one woman is killed every three days by her intimate partner, while one child a month is killed by their parents and one man a month by his partner.
The United Nations says worldwide one woman is killed by their intimate partner or another family member every 10 minutes.
What is coercive control:
Domestic abuse isn’t always physical. Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation, or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.
This controlling behaviour is designed to make a person dependent by isolating them from support, exploiting them, depriving them of independence and regulating their everyday behaviour.
Coercive control has been a criminal offence since 2015.
Are you a victim of domestic abuse in the UK? There are number of organisations, such as Women’s Aid, you can contact, as well as the numbers within this government advice.
Running Tales is based in the UK, but read all round the world. If you are suffering from domestic abuse, wherever you are, please contact your local police force or a women’s charity in your area.
‘Abuse comes in many forms, they all leave scars’:
Anne started making plans to leave her husband after one particularly unpleasant holiday - the one where she walked the streets at night, pregnant and pushing a buggy, to avoid waking him.
Shortly afterwards, she saw a speech from the Houses of Parliament on television that was to shift her whole perception.
It was about coercive control and it was in that moment that she finally recognised the truth: “I was in an abusive relationship, and needed to get out.”
She started to squirrel away any spare money she could, but had to be careful as her husband controlled their finances.
At one point, he even told her he had put a tracker on her car and said he could read all her messages.
“I will never know if this was true or just something to make me feel like I was crazy,” Anne said.
In the end, it took her three years - and a lot of help from local domestic abuse charities and her family - before she was able to finally leave him.
“People have to leave four or five times before they actually do,” she said.
Even then things didn’t immediately become easier.
“All the way through the process, I had doubts,” she said. “Had I done something to make him like that?
“Did I handle situations wrongly? Was there something I could have done differently?
“I found it really difficult once I was out because I didn’t have rules to live by. I struggled for 18 months to two years without those rules.”
When their marriage ended, Anne told her husband he had abused her.
His response was that he had never hit her.
“And it’s true he didn’t,” she said. “But abuse isn’t just physical, he called me names, he controlled every aspect of my life, he stripped me of my dignity, and made me feel less than human, he made me frightened for mine and my children’s lives.
“I was constantly afraid, he punched walls, doors, mirrors, smashed our house up, drove like a maniac to frighten us, he threw things at me, and made me believe the world would be a better place without me in it.
“No, he never hit me but abuse comes in many forms and they all leave scars.”
Dancing when putting the bins out and running for therapy - the simple pleasures of freedom:
As Anne started to emerge from her decades of abuse, it was running - once again - which helped her cope.
“I’m very lucky that I had running and cycling. They became therapy,” she said.
“After it had all ended, that was how I healed.
“I go for a run if something isn’t sitting right. It is hard to trust people.
“But running is still part of the journey and the recovery. It makes me feel alive and gives me an opportunity to work through stuff.”
Anne even took part in an ultra marathon on the other side of the world as part of her attempts to re-find the girl who had forgotten her name or what she liked to eat.
She came home with a wardrobe full of sequinned clothes, items her husband would never have let her wear.
New relationships remain hard - “I have found that I over explain. If I hear glass breaking, it will trigger something in me” - and there is a tinge of sadness when she says she may never find someone to be with.
Life is complicated for a recovering victim. As Anne said: “I think the reality is I am now too difficult to be in a relationship with, but that’s okay because I am free.”
But, ultimately, hers isn’t a melancholy story. Anne has spent the last few years, literally and metaphorically, putting out the rubbish.
One ‘crime’ her husband used to punish her for was not emptying the bin correctly or leaving it without a new bin liner. These days, that mundane job brings her immense pleasure.
“If I left the bin without a bag for even a moment, he’d smash eggs into it—to teach me a lesson,” she said.
“Now, every time I empty the bin, I do a little dance because I am free.
“I am here today, alive, rebuilding my life and my children’s lives. I no longer believe I am less than human. I am not a creature. I am not hideous. And dying won’t make everyone’s life better.
“I am here because of the help and support of my family, my friends, and those who cared enough to lift me up when I was at my lowest.
“I am teaching my children what behaviour is acceptable and what is not. I have money in my bank account. I wear what I want. I see who I want. And nobody will ever control me again. With time I have also learned to trust and to love, learning that help doesn’t always mean control.
“I will spend the rest of my life raising awareness and funds for domestic abuse survivors - not just for women like myself, but for the children who are victims too. My children, who lived through this, deserve to see a better future. And I will fight for that future every single day.
“As for him, I am not scared anymore because I see him for what he is, what he always was and what he will always be. A sad individual.”
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