You Left, But the Abuse Didn't Stop - Post-Separation Control
You thought leaving would be the hardest part. You gathered your courage, made your plan and walked away from someone who made you feel small, unsafe, or constantly on edge. You did the impossible thing.
And then it got worse.
The texts didn't stop; they just got meaner. The calls multiplied. Legal papers arrived. Your children started saying things they couldn't have come up with on their own. Money you were owed disappeared. Friends you thought were yours suddenly went cold. And somehow, even though you're no longer together, you still feel controlled, monitored, punished for daring to leave.
You're not imagining this. What you're experiencing has a name: post-separation abuse. And it's one of the most misunderstood, minimised forms of domestic violence—because people assume that once you leave, the abuse ends.
For many survivors, leaving is just the beginning of a different kind of war.
If You're Here Because...
You might be reading this because:
You left an abusive relationship, but the harassment hasn't stopped
Your ex uses your children to maintain control or punish you
Legal proceedings feel endless, expensive, and deliberately prolonged
You're being monitored through mutual friends, family, or social media
Money you're legally owed (child support, property settlement) is being withheld
You feel like you're going crazy because everyone sees them as the victim now
People don't understand why you can't "just move on"
You're exhausted from fighting battles you didn't choose
You wonder if going back would be easier than this
You need to know this pattern is real and you're not alone
If any of this resonates, keep reading. What you're experiencing is documented, recognised, and, most importantly, not your fault.
Why Leaving Doesn't Mean It's Over
When we think about abusive relationships, we imagine the ending like a movie: the victim leaves, the credits roll, life begins anew. But reality is messier and far more dangerous. Research consistently shows that the period after leaving is often the most dangerous time for domestic violence victims. Not because you've done anything wrong, but because the abuser's control has been threatened.
Abuse was never about anger or passion or love gone wrong. It was always about power and control. And when you leave, you remove their primary method of exerting that control, direct access to you. So they find new methods. They adapt. They weaponise whatever connection points still exist: children, finances, mutual friends, the legal system, your reputation, your sense of safety.
The abuse doesn't stop. It evolves.
Your ex might be charming to lawyers, sympathetic to mutual friends, the picture of a concerned parent in mediation. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they're systematically dismantling your peace, your finances, your support system, and your sanity. And because it's not happening with their hands around your throat or screaming in your face, people don't always recognise it as abuse.
But your body knows. The knot in your stomach when you see their name on your phone. The anxiety that spikes when you check your email. The hypervigilance that never quite turns off because you're always waiting for the next attack, the next manipulation, the next way they'll find to hurt you.
You're not paranoid. You're responding accurately to an ongoing threat.
What Post-Separation Abuse Actually Looks Like
These behaviours are about maintaining control after the relationship ends.
Post-separation abuse takes many forms, often shaped by whatever vulnerabilities the abuser knows they can exploit. Some tactics are obvious; others are so subtle that even you might question whether it's really happening.
The Relentless Contact
They text at all hours. Call repeatedly. Send emails that alternate between pleading and threatening. Show up at your workplace, your home, places you frequent. They might use different numbers when you block them, create fake social media accounts to monitor you, or enlist others to pass along messages.
Each contact, even the “nice" ones, serves a purpose: to remind you they're still there, still watching, still able to disrupt your peace whenever they choose. To keep you in a state of perpetual alertness, never quite able to relax into your new life.
Some contacts seem innocuous or even friendly, which makes them harder to explain to others. “They just wanted to talk about the kids." “They were being nice, asking how I'm doing." But you feel the manipulation underneath, the way each interaction leaves you drained, anxious, or second-guessing yourself.
When contact consistently leaves you feeling worse, that's information—not paranoia.
Weaponising the Legal System
This is sometimes called “legal abuse", using courts to continue harassment under the guise of protecting rights.
They file motion after motion, often frivolous or contradictory, forcing you to spend time, money, and emotional energy responding. They contest custody arrangements they initially agreed to. They claim you're withholding visitation when you've documented every exchange. They accuse you of parental alienation while actively turning your children against you.
The legal system becomes a tool to continue the abuse under the guise of “protecting their rights" or “being a concerned parent." Each hearing, mediation, and legal bill drains you further—not to resolve matters, but to exhaust you into submission or compliance.
If legal proceedings feel deliberately designed to torment rather than resolve, trust that feeling.
Financial Control and Sabotage
Money becomes another weapon. They might refuse to pay court-ordered child support, forcing you to choose between pursuing enforcement (more legal costs, more battles) or struggling financially. They hide assets during property settlement. They run up debt on joint accounts or in your name. They interfere with your employment by calling your workplace, spreading rumours to colleagues, or showing up during your shifts.
Some withhold money you're owed until you comply with their demands, essentially holding you ransom. Others sabotage your attempts at financial independence by damaging your credit, accessing your bank accounts if they still have information, or using joint financial responsibilities as leverage.
The message is clear: you thought leaving would give you freedom, but they can still make you suffer economically. They can still make your life precarious and unstable. They can still punish you for choosing yourself.
Financial abuse doesn't end with the relationship. Often it intensifies.
Using Children as Weapons
For parents, this is often the most painful form of post-separation abuse.
They might engage in parental alienation, systematically undermining your relationship with your children by telling them lies, distorting your words, or positioning themselves as the “good parent" while you're painted as unstable, mean, or dangerous.
Counter-parenting is common: deliberately contradicting your rules, routines, or values when the children are with them. Letting them stay up late before school, feeding them junk food exclusively, buying them things you've said no to, speaking badly about you in their hearing, encouraging them to disrespect or disobey you.
They might use visitation as a control tactic, withholding it to punish you, then claiming you're preventing them from seeing the children. They schedule activities during your parenting time without consulting you, forcing you to either comply or look like the inflexible one. They grill children about what happens at your house, what you're doing, who you're seeing.
Your children become messengers, spies, or pawns. And the worst part? They're harmed by this too, caught in loyalty conflicts and exposed to manipulation that damages their sense of safety and trust.
When your ex treats parenting like a competition or warfare, your children are casualties too.
Reputation Destruction and Social Manipulation
They tell your mutual friends a version of events where they're the victim, and you're the abuser. They share private information, twist your words, or outright lie to make you look unstable, vindictive, or cruel. They might post vague social media updates designed to garner sympathy while subtly implicating you as the problem.
Flying monkeys, people recruited to do the abuser's bidding, start appearing. Suddenly, friends are questioning you, pressuring you to “be reasonable" or “consider their side." Family members who weren't there, didn't see what happened, are certain you're overreacting or being too harsh.
Your reputation in shared communities gets systematically destroyed. And because the abuser often seems so reasonable, so hurt, so bewildered by your “cruelty," people believe them. You lose friends, social connections, sometimes even family relationships.
The isolation that abuse created during the relationship continues after it, just through different mechanisms.
When people who don't know your story side with your abuser, it's not because you're wrong. It's because they've been manipulated.
Stalking and Surveillance
They drive by your house. Show up at places they know you'll be. Monitor your social media obsessively, sometimes through fake accounts or through others. They track your car if they still have access to it. They question your children about your activities, your routines, your relationships.
Some install tracking apps on shared devices or accounts. Some use location sharing that was set up during the relationship and never disabled. Some simply know your patterns well enough to show up "coincidentally" wherever you are.
This creates a perpetual state of hypervigilance. You can't relax. You can't feel safe in your own routines. You start changing your schedule, your routes, your habits, constantly adjusting to avoid them, which means they're still controlling your life even from a distance.
Being watched, even without direct contact, is a form of terrorism. Your nervous system knows this.
The Psychological Warfare
Mixed messages, gaslighting, and destabilisation continue even without direct contact.
They send loving texts followed by cruel ones, apologies followed by blame, promises to change followed by threats. They might send gifts or write letters professing their love while simultaneously filing false accusations in court. They alternate between pursuing you and punishing you, keeping you off-balance.
Gaslighting continues: they deny things that definitely happened, rewrite history to paint themselves as the victim, claim your documentation is fabricated or exaggerated, tell others you're mentally unstable or making things up. When you try to point out contradictions in their story, they accuse you of being obsessed with the past or unable to move on.
Some engage in sexual coercion or harassment even after separation: sending explicit messages, demanding sexual contact in exchange for cooperation with custody or finances, threatening to release intimate images or information.
When reality feels slippery, and you constantly question your own memory or perception, that's not confusion; that's deliberate destabilisation.
Post-separation abuse affects the children as well.
Why This Happens (Understanding the Abuser's Motivation)
None of this is about you. It's not about something you did wrong, something you failed to provide, or something broken in you that made them act this way. Post-separation abuse happens because the abuser's need for control didn't disappear when the relationship ended.
Loss of control is intolerable to them. During the relationship, they controlled your daily life, your emotions, your choices. When you left, you took that away. Post-separation abuse is their attempt to reclaim it through whatever channels remain open.
Revenge often drives escalation. They feel wronged by your departure, even if the relationship was abusive. In their narrative, you're the villain who abandoned them, betrayed them, or destroyed what they built. Punishing you feels justified, even righteous.
Ego and public image matter intensely to many abusers. Being left, especially if you've named the abuse publicly or legally, threatens their carefully constructed persona. Destroying your credibility, painting you as unstable or vindictive, protects their reputation and soothes their wounded ego.
Access to children provides ongoing leverage. If you share kids, they have guaranteed points of contact and opportunities to continue exerting control. Every custody exchange, every co-parenting decision, every school event becomes a potential battlefield.
Understanding why doesn't make it hurt less. But it can help you stop personalising behaviour that was never about you.
The Emotional Toll - What This Does to You
The ongoing nature of post-separation abuse creates a specific kind of trauma. You did the hardest thing: you left, but you're not free. You're still fighting, still defending yourself, still being harmed. And often, people don't understand why you're not “over it" yet.
Chronic Hypervigilance and Anxiety
Your nervous system never fully relaxes. You're always scanning for threats: checking your phone with dread, reading emails defensively, preparing for attacks that might come at any time. You startle easily. You have trouble sleeping. Your body stays in a state of alert that's exhausting to maintain.
This isn't anxiety in the clinical sense; it's an appropriate response to ongoing threat. But it feels like you're broken, like you should be able to calm down but can't. Your body is actually doing its job, trying to protect you from someone who keeps finding ways to hurt you.
Questioning Your Decision to Leave
When the abuse intensifies after leaving, it's natural to wonder if you made a mistake. Some days, going back seems easier than fighting these endless battles. At least you knew what to expect. At least the abuse was contained to one relationship, not seeping into every area of your life.
This is one of the most insidious effects of post-separation abuse: it makes you doubt the very act of self-protection that was necessary for your survival. It punishes you for choosing yourself.
Questioning whether leaving was right doesn't mean it wasn't. It means the cost of freedom is being made deliberately unbearable.
Isolation and Shame
Explaining post-separation abuse is exhausting. People who haven't experienced it struggle to understand why you can't just “block them" or “ignore them" or “move on." They don't see the systems keeping you connected, custody arrangements, legal proceedings, shared finances, that make complete disconnection impossible.
So you stop trying to explain. You withdraw. You deal with it alone because it's easier than being met with confusion, judgment, or dismissive advice. The isolation intensifies, and with it, the shame.
You might feel ashamed that you're not “stronger," that you can't just rise above it, that you're still affected by someone you left months or years ago. But strength isn't measured by how unaffected you can appear. Strength is surviving this and still getting up each day.
Grief for the Peace You Were Promised
You thought leaving meant the beginning of healing. Instead, it feels like the beginning of a different nightmare. You grieve the life you imagined after leaving—the calm, the freedom, the chance to rebuild without interference. That future feels impossibly far away.
This grief is valid. You're mourning not just what was, but what you were robbed of: the simple right to be left alone.
Protecting Yourself - Strategies for Surviving Post-Separation Abuse
You don't need to do all of this at once. These are options, not obligations. Take what helps and leave the rest.
Navigating post-separation abuse requires a different kind of strength than leaving did. It requires boundary-setting, documentation, strategic disengagement, and self-preservation in the face of relentless assault on your peace.
Document Everything
Keep records of every interaction: texts, emails, voicemails, social media messages. Screenshot before things can be deleted. Save threatening or harassing communications, even the ones that seem minor. Document visitation exchanges, financial transactions, times they show up uninvited, instances of rule-breaking or manipulation with the children.
This isn't about obsessing over them or living in the past. It's about protecting yourself legally and maintaining your own sense of reality when they're actively trying to distort it. When they deny things that definitely happened, when they accuse you of fabricating events, your documentation becomes your anchor to truth.
Create and Maintain Strict Boundaries
Limit communication to what's absolutely necessary, ideally in writing only. Use co-parenting apps that document everything and limit off-topic discussions. Don't respond to baiting, manipulation, or emotional appeals. Don't engage with their narrative about the past or defend yourself against false accusations outside of legal settings.
Block them on social media. Change your number if possible, giving the new one only to people who genuinely need it. Establish clear, consistent visitation routines that limit opportunities for conflict or manipulation. Say no to requests that aren't legally required, regardless of their emotional appeals or threats.
Boundaries with post-separation abusers need to be rigid, not flexible. Every time you bend, you teach them that persistence works. Every time you engage emotionally, you give them supply. Grey rock or yellow rock techniques, becoming as uninteresting and unreactive as possible, can be essential for survival.
Build Your Support System Strategically
Not everyone needs to know the full story. Choose carefully who you confide in, prioritising people who believe you, understand domestic violence dynamics, and can offer practical or emotional support without draining you further.
Connect with a domestic violence service or therapist who specialises in post-separation abuse. Join support groups, online or in-person, where others understand what you're experiencing without needing explanations. These spaces can provide validation, practical strategies, and the reminder that you're not alone or crazy.
For practical matters, seek professionals: a lawyer experienced in high-conflict custody cases or dealing with abusive ex-partners, a financial counsellor who understands economic abuse, a trauma-informed therapist who can help you navigate the emotional toll.
Protect Your Information and Privacy
Lock down your social media. Don't post locations, plans, or information about your daily life that could be used to monitor or harass you. Be cautious about what you share with mutual friends or family members who might pass information along.
Change passwords on all accounts, especially if your ex ever had access. Enable two-factor authentication. Check your devices for tracking apps. Be aware that your children might be questioned about your life and adjust what you share around them accordingly.
This isn't paranoia. It's risk management with someone who has proven they won't respect your boundaries.
Use Legal Protections Available to You
Consider intervention orders or restraining orders if you're being harassed, threatened, or stalked. Work with your lawyer to establish clear custody arrangements that limit opportunities for manipulation. Pursue enforcement of child support or financial orders through legal channels rather than direct negotiation with your ex.
Document patterns for court: not just individual incidents, but the overall picture of ongoing harassment or obstruction. Courts are increasingly recognising post-separation abuse and coercive control, though progress varies by jurisdiction. A lawyer familiar with these dynamics can help present your case effectively.
Prioritise Your Nervous System
Your body has been through a war and is still in one. It needs care, not just strategy. This might look like: regular movement or exercise that helps discharge stress, time in nature, practices that help you feel grounded and present, connection with safe people, activities that bring you even small moments of joy or peace.
Notice when you're in fight-or-flight and practice coming back to your body: deep breathing, feeling your feet on the ground, orienting to your surroundings. Build in moments of safety and calm, even if they're brief, so your nervous system has evidence that not everything is a threat.
Your body's responses aren't weakness. They're intelligent reactions to ongoing harm. Care for them accordingly.
Healing While Still Under Attack
One of the cruellest aspects of post-separation abuse is that you're expected to heal while still being harmed. People talk about “closure" and “moving on" as if these are simple choices, as if you're choosing to stay stuck when the reality is that your abuser won't let go.
Healing in this context doesn't look like traditional recovery. It looks more like resilience: finding moments of peace in the chaos, maintaining your sense of self despite their attempts to destroy it, protecting what matters most even when you're exhausted.
You're allowed to grieve the healing you wish you could do, the kind that happens in safety and silence, without constant interruption. You're allowed to be angry that you don't get that luxury. And you're allowed to survive however you need to, even if it doesn't look like the tidy recovery arc people expect.
Small Acts of Reclamation
Healing happens in fragments when it can't happen wholesale. You reclaim yourself in small ways: a morning routine they can't touch, a friendship they don't know about, a hobby you do just for you. These aren't indulgences, they're acts of resistance against someone trying to make your whole life about managing their behaviour.
You rebuild your sense of self by doing things that remind you who you are beyond their narrative about you. You practice trusting your own perceptions when they're constantly being challenged. You choose yourself, again and again, in ways no one else might notice but that matter profoundly.
Accepting the Non-Linear Path
Some days you'll feel strong, clear, untouchable. Other days, their latest tactic will knock you sideways, and you'll wonder how you'll keep going. This isn't failure, it's a realistic response to ongoing abuse.
Healing from domestic violence is hard enough. Healing while it's still happening is a different kind of battle entirely. Be gentle with yourself about the pace and the setbacks. You're doing something extraordinarily difficult.
The fact that you're still here, still fighting, still choosing yourself despite everything, that's not weakness. That's the kind of strength most people will never have to develop.
You're Not Alone and This Isn't Forever
Post-separation abuse can feel endless, like a sentence you're serving for the crime of leaving someone who was hurting you. But it does shift, eventually. Abusers often escalate before they finally exhaust their tactics or move on to a new target. Courts do eventually finalise arrangements, even difficult ones. Children grow up and form their own understanding. Your life does become more yours again.
In the meantime, you deserve support, resources, and the knowledge that what you're experiencing is real, recognised, and not your fault. You deserve professionals who understand these dynamics and survivors who've walked this path and come through it.
If any part of this article resonated with your experience, please know: you're not imagining it, you're not overreacting, and you're not alone in this impossible position.
You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
If you're dealing with post-separation abuse, you don't need to explain or justify why you're struggling. This work is complex, ongoing, and often misunderstood—and support can make a meaningful difference.
I specialise in working with survivors of domestic violence and post-separation abuse. This work requires understanding the ongoing nature of the trauma, the impossibility of "just moving on," and the specific strategies needed to protect yourself while trying to heal.
📧 Email: kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 Phone: 0452 285 526
Resources and Support
If you're in immediate danger, call 000
Crisis Support:
1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) – 24/7 national counselling and crisis support for domestic and sexual violence.
www.1800respect.org.au
Lifeline (13 11 14) – 24/7 crisis support
Legal Support:
Visit National Legal Aid to find your state's Legal Aid Commission
Women's Legal Services vary by state; search "[your state] Women's Legal Service"
Helpful Resources:
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