10/29/2026
Part Two:
Love Should Never Hurt
This is the last week of DV Awareness month so I’m sharing part of my story this week.
🫶🏻 For the highlight reel of how I got into a DV relationship and marriage, read part one on my pages…personal/ business or group pages.
💜
We left off with the abuse “ramping up” when I got pregnant with my son.
I got pregnant one month after our wedding.
4 WEEKS
🚩 Instead of feeling excited, I actually felt stuck.
Trapped.
I was going to give birth to the first “Warren” boy in their family in 30 something years.
Although I was excited to have a baby and I was excited to be a mom and my family was over the moon…the pit my stomach was not from being pregnant.
🚩It was from being married to someone who inconsistently loved me, was unpredictable, verbally abusive and incapable of real empathy.
🚩 I just kept saying “something is off”.
I didn’t have the terminology for it.
Narcissism wasn’t a hot word back then.
🚩 I thought domestic violence was only black eyes and broken bones.
I kept writing in my journals “something is off”, “I hate him”, “why is he so angry”, etc, etc.
But I did not tell a single soul.
I kept it in.
I just appeared to be annoyed or angry around him all the time to people who knew me.
I was starting to become reactive without realizing it like a Mama defending her unborn cub.
🚩 at this point he was still drinking but going in and out of faking being very supportive one minute (or playing a role)and even standing at the bathroom door when I was sick every time to check on me.
How sweet, right?
It was the only sympathy I really ever received that seemed genuine.
🚩 during this time, I believe he started watching p**n or had never stopped.
He told me he had a problem with it in his teens and 20s and that he absolutely hated it and it was something that he would never do again and that it “made him feel gross”.
🗑️Side note: He would end up admitting that he had been watching it off and on during my 3rd pregnancy and then the last year we were married.
I believe he did it throughout our entire relationship.
🗑️🗑️Another side note: when I kicked him out for finding p**n searches on our home computer the last year we were married, he sat my kids down and said “it’s not right but all men do it”.
My son was 13 at the time.
🚩 what a great dad. 
There was not a day, except for a very brief reprieve in my pregnancy with my son, that I did not get sick all day every day.
It was morning, noon and night sickness!
🚩 I think the abuse ramped up when he found weakness in me.
I was vulnerable.
I needed him.
He knew that and took advantage of it.
I was not eating much and moving was nauseating.
I could not keep anything down except for the occasional Coke.
🚩 he would get drunk and get angry and push me around and kind of push the limit.
I guess he was trying to see where my boundaries and physical limitations were.
He became way more physical knowing that I could not defend myself well because I was so afraid of hurting the baby.
🚩It started out with aggressive pushing and shoving me and almost chest bumping me when he was angry.
During the pregnancy, I stayed dehydrated and apparently got a virus at some point at the same time as having 24 hour morning sickness.
I remember one night feel like death.
I told him I wasn’t feeling good and stayed in the bed from the time I got home from work.
🚩He never came in to check on me.
🚩 I remember smelling food.
🚩He was making himself dinner.
🚩I heard him pop a few tops on the b**r cans and he was watching a loud show with g u n sounds on the tv that I had asked him to turn down through the wall.
I was getting very sick.
I came out into the living room and told him that I needed to go see a doctor or call the doctor.
🚩 It was later at night and that glazed drunk look came over his face.
I wasn’t worried about me.
I was worried about the baby.
I was so nauseated and so sick and so dehydrated that I did not realize that I had 102-103 temp and that I had a virus.
All I know is that it was next level sickness and I can still remember it.
🚩 he sat on the couch and didn’t really do anything except started arguing that it was late and what was a doctor going to do etc etc.
🚩 He was probably too drunk to drive but I did not put all that together until later.
I was too sick to drive myself.
So I called my parents.
BOTH of them now having over 90 years of nursing/medical experience between the two of them!
Thank God.
My parents came rushing over that night.
I did not tell him they were coming.
I remember my mother sternly asking him why he did not take me anywhere and why he did not take action.
🚩 he said “she got mad at me and wouldn’t let me and secretly called y’all”.
Nothing else was said that I could remember but it was noted in my parent’s minds I’m sure.
Realizing how sick I was, they took me to the ER where I got an IV for the dehydration and then medication I could safely take until the virus ran its course.
🚩 When I got home I remember a few days later him saying that I wouldn’t “let him” take me to the doctor and that I called my “mommy and daddy” to make him look bad.
🚩No concern for me or his son.
🚩Just non stop accusing me of “being manipulative” by calling my parents, “being mean to him” when I was sick and not telling him what I needed when I communicated very well my needs but realized quickly I couldn’t rely on him.
🚩I got a constant barrage of absolutely absurd and freaking ridiculous accusations that would become a staple of his narcissistic behavior whenever there was an insult to his ego.
🗑️Side note: IT IS STILL HAPPENING TODAY POST DIVORCE!
🚩 One night when I was around 5 months pregnant with Colton, I was in the bedroom watching TV when he came busting in the door for absolutely no reason.
🚩He had been drinking on the couch since he had gotten home.
🚩He started in on me and told me that I “hated his mother” (his go to line) and all of this other crap that he would say when he was drinking that truly made no sense.
🗑️ Side note: it was probably him who hated his own mother for putting up with the abuse that she put up with from the barrage of hate she received from his father on a minute by minute basis.
I have come to the very real conclusion that my ex secretly hates women.
I was around his family.
I saw what I needed to see and distanced myself for a reason.
🚩I had never been around people like this so I had no idea why I just would instantly get so anxious.
🚩I finally got brave enough to stand up to him this particular night, five months pregnant, and tell him to get the hell out of the room.
He got closer and closer to me and wedged himself between me and the bed and started raging.
🚩Spit flying from his mouth.
🚩Hot b**r breath.
🚩Black eyes.
🚩Angry arms and pointing his finger in my face aggressively.
💜💔I turned to walk away out of our small bedroom and he slammed me belly first into our dresser and then he quickly walked out of the room.
💜I remember hearing the mirror of the dresser slam against the wall really hard and all I could do was stay there and hold my pregnant belly.
💜 I stood frozen holding my stomach.
💜 I was afraid he had damaged our baby.
I was afraid to move.
💔I sat on the bed holding my stomach and taking to Colton.
I just remember saying…
it’s OK it’s OK. It’s OK.
Over and over.
It was like my first apology to my child for what had just happened between his father and I.
🚩Cory never came back in the room to check on me.
He slept on the couch, got up the next morning early and went straight to work.
I called out of work and got an emergency appointment with my doctor.
💜 I went alone and told no one.
💜 I didn’t want to worry anyone unnecessarily or call my parents and make him angry again.
💜 I told the doctor and his nurse that day that I had tripped and fell hard on my belly.
💜There was only a small bruise in the front, but that was it.
They did an ultrasound, took my vitals and said that everything looked fine.
🚩 I remember feeling very grateful and very relieved and then my next thought when I got in my car was…he’s gonna be mad that I got an extra ultrasound that we may have to pay for out of pocket…
THAT was my next thought after finding out Colton was ok.
🚩Not divorce, not hating him.
🚩Just worried he would be mad about a MEDICAL BILL!!!!!
🚩🚩He never apologized for what he did and to this day denies it ever occurred.
🚩In fact the day after those kind of incidents occurred, he would often slap me on the butt at the coffee pot and tell me how sexy I was.
🚩🚩Although I felt that deep awful pit in my stomach, as long as he was telling jokes and laughing and telling me I was pretty…
🚩Everything was OK.
Right? 🚩🚩🚩🚩
💜DV survivor
