“I honestly thought as long as he wasn’t hitting me or raping me or yelling at me that it wasn’t abuse. But my relationship with him dictated how I lived the rest of my life: who my friends were, how much I could talk to my parents, even how I did little, everyday things. Whenever I stayed at his house, he told me I couldn’t answer the phones in case his friends or family called. (He kept our relationship a secret from them because I was so young—it turned out that he had a history of getting involved with girls my age and he was afraid of what his parents would do to him if they knew about me.) But I had to be there if he called. I had to wait for the answering machine to kick in, then race to pick up if I heard his voice. One time he gave me a five minute lecture on the correct way to replace a roll of toilet paper. It would have been faster for him to do it himself, but I guess the point wasn’t the toilet paper, the point was he needed to control me.” Healing and Wholeness: A Resouce Guide on Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community, Edited by Diane Gardsbane, Jewish Women International, 2002