jlo5 – Good luck with your plan. I hope you find a happier place and recover from your troubles. In my experience, even though the abuse is mostly absent these days the damage has been done such that I am always walking on eggshells in a hyper-vigilant state of semi-constant anxiety. Even during times of calm, it’s like sharing your life with a raging wild animal that is sleeping and knowing that when it awakens, things could turn very bad and very quickly for no obvious reason. I think it’s called Narcissistic rage and such people have an overwhelming sense of entitlement to do as they please with their victims, who become their sources of gratification. There is never any happiness in such an environment and so there are never any good times. Just times with varying degrees of stress, fear, sadness, depression and all kinds of crazy-making emotions whilst waiting for the next attack. Psychological problems arise from this constant feeling of being in a stressful situation. Eventually there is no love at all. Just bitterness and resentment. If you become very stressed by the environment and find it very traumatising then complex PTSD is where it ends.