Two reasons to keep a record, and the second one is the one people expect.
The first is that it is for you. Living inside this pattern does something to memory: the calm weeks erase the bad night so thoroughly that within a month you will genuinely wonder whether you exaggerated it. A list in your own handwriting, with dates, is very difficult to argue with, including when the person arguing is you. Women who start keeping one almost always say the same thing after a few months, which is that they had no idea how often it was happening.
The second is that if you ever need a court, a police station, a lawyer or an employer to act, this is the thing that makes it possible.
What to write down
For each incident, six things. It takes two minutes.
- The date and the time. Approximate is fine, and better than leaving it out.
- Where it happened. Which room, or which place.
- What happened, plainly and specifically. Not “he was violent” but “he held my wrists and pushed me against the wardrobe, then slapped my face twice”.
- What was said. His words as closely as you can remember them, in quotation marks. Threats matter enormously and are frequently the strongest part of a record.
- Who else was there, including children, and who might have heard.
- What it did to you. Injuries, where they were, whether you were seen by anybody, whether you missed work, and how long it took to fade.
Write it the same day if you can. Detail decays fast and the specific sentence he said is gone within a week.
Things people leave out and should not
- The apologies afterwards. Messages, gifts, what was promised. These are often the clearest evidence in the whole file, because they are an admission in his own words. Do not delete them because they are painful to look at. Why the apology is part of the pattern is worth reading alongside this.
- Non-physical incidents. Money withheld, being locked out or locked in, your phone taken, being prevented from going to work, threats about the children. Nigerian law covers economic and psychological abuse, and a record consisting only of physical incidents understates your case.
- The near misses. Things thrown and missed, a weapon shown, a fist through a door. These matter a great deal to how risk is assessed.
- Anything involving the children, including what they saw and what they said afterwards.
- Who you told at the time. A friend you called that night, a colleague who saw your face on Monday. Independent people who can confirm the timing are more valuable than you expect.
Photographs
Photograph injuries where you safely can, and then photograph them again after two days, because bruising develops and often looks worse later than it did on the night.
Get something in the frame that gives scale and date. A ruler or a coin for size, and a newspaper or a phone screen showing the date if you have one. Take one close and one further back showing which part of the body it is, because a close-up of a bruise with nothing around it proves very little.
Photograph damage too. A broken door, a torn wrapper, a smashed phone, a hole in a wall. And keep any medical note, prescription or discharge slip, since a record made by an independent person on the day carries more weight than anything you write yourself. Getting seen serves both purposes at once.
Where to keep it
This is where records fail, and the failure is serious: a diary discovered is not just a lost record, it is a dangerous escalation.
Do not keep it in the house. Not in a drawer, not under a mattress, not inside another book, not in a bag. Houses get searched, and hiding places in a house he lives in are not hiding places.
Better options: a notebook kept at work, with a relative, at your place of worship, or with us. Or an email account he does not know exists, on a device he does not control, where you send yourself a message after each incident. That has the useful side effect of a timestamp somebody else generated, which is much harder to challenge than a handwritten date.
If you keep it on a phone, keep it on a phone he never handles, and do not name the file anything meaningful. Do not use an app that syncs to a shared family device. What to check first applies here.
And do not tell him it exists. A record is only useful while it is private, and telling him turns it into an accusation he can respond to.
What makes it usable later
Courts and police are not looking for elegance. They are looking for consistency, specificity and contemporaneity — that it was written at the time, that the details do not shift, and that it names things rather than summarising them.
So: do not go back and improve earlier entries. Do not add things later that you did not write at the time. If you remember something afterwards, write it as a new entry saying you are recalling it now. An account that has been tidied up is easier to attack than a messy one.
Keep it in order, keep everything including the entries that are unflattering to you, and do not remove the times you went back or the times you did not want to press charges. A record that shows a real life is more persuasive than one that has been curated.
What a Nigerian court actually looks at goes through this in more detail, including messages, medical reports and witnesses.
If you are not going to report anything
Keep it anyway. Most people who start one never use it in a court, and it still does the job it was mainly for.
It holds your own account steady while somebody is telling you that it did not happen, or that it was not like that, or that you are the one who causes it. That is worth the two minutes on its own, and if a day comes when you do need it, it will already exist and it will already be years long.
Questions people ask
What if I cannot write it down safely?
Send yourself a message to an email account he does not know about, from a device he does not control. That gives you a timestamp generated by somebody else, which is stronger than a handwritten date.
Should I include things that were not physical?
Yes. Money withheld, being locked in or out, your phone taken, threats about the children. Nigerian law covers economic and psychological abuse, and a record of only physical incidents understates your position.
Should I delete his apology messages?
No. They are frequently the clearest evidence there is, because they are an admission in his own words. Keep the whole thread rather than selected parts.
Can I go back and add detail to old entries?
Do not change an old entry. Write a new one saying you are recalling something now. An account that has been tidied up is much easier to challenge than an untidy one.
He found my diary. What now?
Treat it as an escalation and get somewhere safe if you can. Do not start another one in the house. Move to an email account or ask us to hold the record for you.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
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