Find out. If you’re really worried, don’t wait to do something — do it now. Don’t expect someone or the police to come and save you. By the time they know and can legally act, there’s not much to do but clean up the mess and write the report.
Start documenting.
Create an escape plan. Get a dog, one big enough to protect you. Train the dog.
Get a GPS tracker jewelry piece or have one made and wear it 24/7.
Think about how to tactically use your phone. You can pay someone or learn fairly easily to make an app that will record upon a voice activated code phrase and then send that data along with GPS location taken from your phone and that jewelry to a person or site of your choosing.
Get a lawyer. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Establish check ins and set a distress code. Your silence is his best tactical advantage, so don’t give it to him. It’s not your shame, it’s his. Show them what you’ve collected of this behavior. Don’t be hysterical. Be calm and measured, don’t inflate, don’t excuse. Tell them you’re worried but handling it. You want them to point the police in the right direction quickly if you disappear and you want a reason for them to bypass the 48 hour rule.
Show his family and friends, maybe even his boss. These are the best people to find out if he’s actually planning your murder and to change his mindset from where he’s at … if they believe you. You can’t control that but you lose nothing by trying. Again, be measured and calm, show them what you’ve documented thus far. Tell them you’re getting a restraining order. Don’t be accusatory or like you’re being vindictive. If children are involved, lay out expectations and commit for maintenance of their relationships around the order. Make consequences clear up front.
Get in self defense classes and start learning how to fight.
Arm yourself. Not necessarily guns or other lethal arms but something to even the playing field. Get over the mental barrier of “fighting dirty". Steel yourself to attack or respond viciously and decisively at his most vulnerable points. DO NOT HESITATE and don’t stop punching because he won’t go easy on you and he already has a physical advantage.
Learn evasion. Practice practice practice.
Create a means of home/car defense or a self defense kill plan of your own if he comes for you. At some point, you’ll know if you’re going to live through it or not. If you know you’re going to die, your job is to collect evidence. Get as much DNA as you can. That way you’ll be found relatively quickly due to the trackers, he won’t be able to hide or lie, and he won’t get your children (if you have them) after he’s killed you.
A lot of that will seem overkill to most readers. Let’s not pretend there’s not a difference though. If a guy is at a bar having a drink with his buddy and hears him lay out in detail how he’s going to run his ex through a woodchipper, that guy is going to laugh or chalk it up to drunken ramblings. Even if this is the 4th or 5th time he’s heard such ramblings and they are becoming increasingly violent. Even if she left him because he broke her nose or her arm. Even if he has a history of violence and harassment. And so forth and so on. The guy is more likely to pile on with his own grievance against past girlfriends than take it seriously. Intimate partner femicide is the only murder where you can openly talk about it beforehand, often, and no one checks you. It’s the only murder where there’s ample warning but no action can be taken until after a crime has been committed. Not even a psych hold. It’s the only murder where you know you’re in danger, everyone knows you’re in danger, yet when the moment comes you must face it alone against an opponent who has both planned the attack while simultaneously tearing down your defenses and can easily overpower you regardless.
Our responses to this are meaningless gestures that do more to keep women powerless and helpless or give a false sense of security rather than to arm them with every means available to protect themselves against a clear aggressor.
It’s the equivalent of sending someone deep into grizzly territory alone, not understanding bear behavior, unable to read bear signs, without a rifle, without a radio, and without bear repellant but with a backpack full of salmon, blueberries, and honey you’ve convinced them they can’t put down.
Does that sound like a smart move that’s likely to end well?
