"My hell started at 16"

My name is Marie Gervais, I am 42 years old and I have lived 8 years of domestic violence, from 16 to 24 years old. Today, I testify for the feminine and leave a book: "It kills me, this love".

8 years of total control and psychological, physical and sexual violence with "my first love", a boy in my first grade who was my age. Thomas came, like me, from a classic middle-aged family. He had no drug or alcohol problem, he was intelligent, cultured, charming to everyone, and "the perfect son-in-law" to my mother. Also being his "first love", we didn't know anything about love, desire, sex.

During the first 5 years, living with our respective parents, we spent days (high school then faculty) and weekends with one or the other. Holidays were also both together or with each other's parents. During the last 3 years, we continued our studies in Paris with roommates, same university, same branch.

We were just 16 … and the violence started, extremely fast but also pernicious. Before celebrating our first month together, I was already manipulated, by little blackmail, guilt that seem like nothing, little games that destabilized me and made me doubt myself very quickly. I was pushed to always move faster, without having time to know what I wanted, if I was ready, and always in the name of my love for him. I must have said "I love you" without even knowing what that meant, and my tone had to ring true …

His mood swings and aggressive questions made no sense, no logic, so they had to come from something I had to do, or say? How else to explain it? So almost immediately I doubted myself. Of my words, my thoughts, my beliefs, my abilities. I thought that was love: doing everything for each other, and our relationship showed me that I really suck at loving. "Fortunately" that he loved me! He was telling me what to do, what was good for us, good for me. So gradually, his voice came to crush mine and his desires became mine. "For my good."

8 years of total control and psychological violence.

However, after only 4 months of official relationship, Thomas decided that he was attracted to another girl, but since he didn’t want to lose me (I was "the woman of his life", the "future mother of her children", we were so "made for each other" !). He decided on a "contract": we were both going to live out our younger years in "discovering other hearts and other bodies", while still saying "I love you" and having sex informally, behind everyone's back. I was devastated, but had to keep smiling and looking happy because we had the same group of friends and her image had to stay positive. Soon, Thomas asked me to get closer to this high school girl he liked and to talk about her merits to her. In the years that followed, he will ask me 7 times to be the one "make contact" with other girls, to manage myself so that they throw themselves in his arms, that they end up in his bed… On 4 occasions, I played my role of reel perfectly, before stepping aside, the air happy to see "my best friend" with a new conquest … Inside, I would die slowly.

Obviously, this contract was never more than one-sided: a look at a boy, or a look of a boy at me and I was "the last of the whores", a "under-shit that handled him". How could i "lower me to this", I who was so pure, so perfect?

In 8 years, I have been the lover of the shadows, the woman of his life who waits, whom he loves like crazy with one hand and hits, insults, manipulates, submits with the other, the future mother of his children whose consent does not count, the one who must be there to meet all his desires, the one who ruins his life and the one who constantly pushes him to the limit, the one who is always too much or not enough, the one who must Obey and the one who is so much better than the other women… Between pure and whore, there is only one letter to change.

I was just 16 … and the violence started, extremely quickly.

During these 8 years, of our parents, our families and our friends (all mutual), no one has ever seen anything. He was so smart, so polite, so cultured, and I was so radiant, so "solar", always smiling, always there for others and in particular Thomas, my "best friend.".

During those 8 years, I never understood that I was a victim of domestic violence, that what I was going through was not normal, let alone that it was criminal. It was just my life, a life of screaming, hitting, cursing and "of love" for so many years … It was my first, my only "love."
I never understood it because NOTHING in our history fit into the boxes of domestic violence: I didn't wear dark glasses to hide my cockades (there are so many ways to hurt without leaving a trace), we were not married, he was not from a socially disadvantaged family, he was neither alcoholic nor drug addict, he was studying, like me, and we were so young! And then, what about this ocean of mental violence that was crushing me? Who was talking about that? In 2002, no one … Of my domestic violence to me, like so many other women aged 16 to 96, there was no outward sign.

During those 8 years, I never understood that I was a victim of domestic violence.

In the summer of 2002, while chatting with a cousin as broken in life as I was, and not understanding what was coming out of my mouth, for the first time, I spoke. I have said the beatings, the name calling, the crushing, the silence, the pretense of my life for 8 years. The next day, I threw up everything at my parents and I huddled in their cocoon for 4 months, under the daily telephone threats from Thomas, 500 km away, alternating declarations of love, fear of losing myself, worry for my mental health (!), insults and death threats if I did not return. "How could I do this to her?"

Almost 20 years to rebuild myself and make my words heard.

Since that Sunday in August 2002, I have always told myself that one day I will testify.
We had to wait almost 20 years: the time to throw up all my ailments, to detach myself from the astonishment, from the hold, to re-tame the desire and the feeling of love, to regain confidence, in me first, become aware of the trauma and its many consequences, to put the right words, those of victim, marital rape, post-traumatic stress, then time to write.
Almost 20 years to rebuild myself and make my words heard, so that we finally see domestic violence as it is: multifaceted, without a typical profile, without question of age or social situation.

The victims are executives, employees, civil servants, influencers, they are in high school, at university, in a large school, retired or in a retirement home, they are unemployed, they are self-employed, they have stopped to work to raise their children. They are very often strong women, before being crushed women.

Run away, I assure you that's not love.

It can be your friend, your sister, your neighbor, your colleague. Your daughter.
It could be a girl from your class, your high school, your class.
It could be you, it could be you.
Flee, without looking back, without explanations.
Run away, I assure you that's not love.

Today, 42 years old, Marie Gervais has emerged from this grip which lasted 8 years. She tells about her ordeal and her reconstruction in a book, It kills me this love at Massot Editions. For aufeminin, she testifies.