Disney World is supposed to be the Happiest Place on Earth, but for her, a trip there became the backdrop for a wake-up call that was anything but magical.
This woman was only 20 when she got married to a man a decade older than her, named Ted, and they both met in a religious cult.
As soon as they tied the knot, Ted became abusive, but she hid the details from her family, and she was pretty good at it.
But the facade came crashing down when she went to Disney World to run a half-marathon along with Ted and her cousin. Ted made the whole trip miserable, and as soon as she and her cousin said they wanted to do something, he would argue about another activity.
“We ended up going out to eat at The Yak and Yeti restaurant at Animal Kingdom. I got the Kobe beef burger, and my cousin got the tikka masala. When our food came out, my cousin kept eyeing my burger and saying, ‘Wowww…. that looks really good,'” she explained.
“I can take a hint, so I offered to give him a bite of my burger. The mood immediately shifted. Ted was crossing his arms, huffing and puffing, and we had no idea what was wrong.”
“But when the waitress came by, he turned nice again. He told her how delicious the food was, and it was like a flip switched. My cousin went to the bathroom, and I asked him, ‘So you can be nice to the waitress, but you can’t be nice to your wife?’ He lost it. He ended up screaming at me outside the restaurant and causing a huge scene.”
Ted was so bent out of shape because she gave her cousin some of her burger. Ted shouted at her that she had directly disrespected him and should have let him have a bite first.
Ted said he would leave her in Florida and throw her credit card and ID out in the parking lot. Her cousin and her little nephew both saw Ted’s meltdown, and nobody had ever witnessed this side of Ted before.
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The following day, she questioned Ted about whether he planned on screaming at her like that with their future children present.
Ted responded that he would if he felt that she deserved to be treated like that. She informed Ted that she would not have kids with him, and he proceeded to strangle her.
She realizes now that Ted could have killed her, and she’s lucky he didn’t. Next, she called a domestic abuse hotline, and the person she spoke to over the phone said something eye-opening to her: she was indeed in an abusive marriage.
“I know it sounds silly, but I was genuinely so brainwashed. It took hearing it from someone on the outside for me to understand my situation clearly,” she continued.
“I made a safety plan, and I left a couple of days later. When I look back on that burger, I am so thankful that I decided to order it. It was the best burger of my life, and it gave me my freedom.”
“I spent years googling, ‘Is it normal if my husband ____.’ I thought I had to submit to my husband, and I was told that respect = obey. To anyone who finds themselves in an unsafe situation, I promise that there is hope on the other side. It gets so much better.”
I’m proud of her for walking away from such a toxic and dangerous situation, and it’s crazy that a burger gave her the clarity she ultimately needed to leave.
What do you think of her story?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
