Given that abuse is a progressive disease, the signs can be well masked by a lot of noise—in the beginning of a relationship, a very pleasant noise! My wife said some venomous, despicable things to me in years 7 and 8; if she had said them to me in year 1, I would have jumped like the frog in boiling water. But early on, the romance! The passion! The constant whirl of attention!

And in the midst of that there was this one huge red flag: a separation of me from old friends (“oh what do you want to hang out with them for? They’re your past—we have our OWN family now—let’s just be us!”). Any social activities had to include her or it was no go. Separation from work friends (“You can’t hang out after work—you need to come home and take care of the kids!”) separation from any roundabout connection (“You met them through X? What do they have to do with your life NOW?”) separation from family (“Your relatives don’t ever call you—they don’t care about you—they could have visited last summer but they chose not to—they don’t care about you!”) and separation from my child (her stepchild), which started in 2015 and ended when I moved out in 2017. In the end the only person who thought my child was an amoral manipulative abomination was my wife, and everyone else (friends, school, psychiatrists) thought she was a sweet creative child in need of some maternal warmth.

So it’s normal for your new SO to dislike some of your old friends, and I’m aware that some of them can be pretty flawed. But separating you from EVERYONE is a huge problem: beware of people cutting you off from communicating with friends or family, whatever the reason. Keep working, keep earning income, keep your work colleagues, don’t move to the middle of nowhere (she did suggest it!).

And keep your internet so you can log on here when you get kicked put of the bedroom—it’s a lifesaver!