I have been married for seven years now. I met my husband through a common friend and we fell for each other and decided to get married. Everything went fine for the first few years. We had a beautiful daughter after three years and I gave up my job to nurture and take care of her.

But as imagined the initial years of bringing up my daughter were not easy—I was a first time mother and at a loss about many things. And I also started to miss my office and career and so somewhere inside my heart I was preparing myself to not have a second child and go back to working once the time is right.

But my husband was very clear that he wanted another child; the pressure on him was also for a boy child. It was from here that my married life started to fall apart.

My husband and I had frequent arguments about having a second child. He wanted one and I was not ready mentally at all and told him as much. I tried to reason with him that I will have to bring up the children since he will be away in office and if I am not ready, bringing another baby in the world, unwanted, is not good. Also since as a mother, it meant putting my career at hold forever, and re-planning my life, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for such a big compromise. But my reasoning fell on deaf ears.

Until one day when in anger he told me that either I be prepared for another child or be ready to fight a custody battle in the court over our daughter. My heart sank on hearing these world. I could not believe what I was hearing...did he not care at all for me? Was my status limited only to bearing children for him? Does it make sense to him that the debate about the second child is putting my first child’s happiness at risk? Was a boy child such a huge thing that nothing--family, our daughter, our happiness mattered to him.

I must have cried through that day...in bursts...whenever I was reminded of his words. I called him up in office to say sorry...just so that he would reconsider his decision; in the evening too I begged him to reconsider his decision, but he remained stoic.

This continued for two full years--whenever anything happened he would threaten me with divorce and custody battle. Out of fear of both, I used to cower before him and pretend that things were normal. I tried my best--made his favourite foods, kept saying sorry, tried to satisfy him sexually--anything that would soften him towards me again, but now I realise it was all useless. He had figured out that the threat of divorce and being separated from my child was the only way to keep me in control and he enjoyed doing that now. In his own words, spoken out in front of a family friend, “Her presence disgusts me. I find her repulsive. Please take her away from my sight.”

These words stung me so hard that the pain went right through me...the people in whose presence they were spoken, look embarrassed. I cursed myself for not dying of shame there and then.

The mental trauma had become so much for me that one day, I burst out crying in front of my sister and told her everything. She too was shocked and pointed out to me that what my husband was putting me through was a sort of mental harassment and domestic abuse and it is not my place to accept it.

I was scared of  the shock my parents would have to go through if they got to know of it..I was worried about their health, they are old. I was worried that how much shame they would have to tolerate if my husband sent me back home. I secretly wished that they would die so that I could then stop my husband's threats. But then my sister reasoned to me that if my husband continues bullying, my parents were bound to find out sometime and what then!!! The fact that their educated daughter bent her knees to the evil of domestic abuse, is going to hurt them anyway.

She took me to a counsellor who also agreed that I needed to stop tolerating his bullying and blackmailing and that a relationship is not based on these.

She also called in my husband and through marital counselling we started our lives afresh.

It has been two years now since that episode; my husband no longer holds threats over me, but I have also learnt that bullying and blackmailing in a relationship is not acceptable; that domestic abuse is not always physical; that anything--words, actions, or intent--that slowly corrodes away your dignity and self respect is abuse and that there is no good enough reason, at all, for anyone to tolerate it.