• HealBridge

Ask anybody who works in this field which weeks are worst and they will name the same ones. Christmas and the New Year. The end of Ramadan and Sallah. The long visit to the village. Any extended holiday when everybody is at home.

It is not that these occasions cause anything. It is that they remove, all at once, most of the things that were holding a situation together.

Why these weeks are harder

• Nobody goes to work. The hours apart that made the week survivable disappear, for both of you.
• Money is stretched. Travel, gifts, food, contributions to family, school fees due in January. Financial pressure is the most reliable trigger there is.
• Alcohol increases in households where it is present, and so do the hours available for it.
• The house is full. Relatives staying, children home from school, no room that is yours.
• Services close. Courts rise, offices shut, organisations run skeleton staff, and lawyers are unreachable for two weeks.
• Expectations are enormous. The food, the clothes, the hosting, the performance of a happy family, and blame lands on the woman when any of it falls short.
• Everybody is watching. Which for some men means restraint, and for others means humiliation is more useful.
• Fasting shortens tempers in the daytime, and the pressure around it can be used to control what you eat, when you rest and whether you may see anybody.

The village visit specifically

Travelling to his family’s home concentrates the risk more than anything else in the year, and it is worth thinking about deliberately rather than as an obligation you simply carry out.

You are somewhere you cannot easily leave. Transport is not yours to arrange. The people around you are his, and any complaint is heard by his relatives before anybody else. Your phone may have no signal or no credit. You do not know where anything is, including the nearest clinic or police station. And you may be there for two weeks with no way to shorten it.

If you are going, arrange these first:

1. Your own money for a fare home, kept where nobody else can find it. This is the single most important item — not being able to afford to leave is what traps people.
2. Your phone charged, with credit, and a power bank if there is likely to be no supply.
3. One person outside who knows where you are, when you are due back, and a code word. How to set one up takes five minutes.
4. An agreed check-in. A message every day or two, and an agreement about what they do if it stops.
5. The name of the nearest town, and if possible a clinic and a police station. Ask casually on arrival rather than in a crisis.
6. Your identity documents with you, not left at home.
7. An exit reason prepared — work, a medical appointment, a relative — that could bring you back early without a confrontation.

If you would rather not go

Refusing outright is difficult and sometimes not safe. What often works better is reducing rather than refusing: travelling separately, arriving later, leaving earlier, staying with your own family for part of it, or having a genuine commitment that shortens the trip.

A reason that exists independently of you — a shift you cannot swap, an appointment already booked, an examination — is far harder to argue with than a preference.

Where the house is full of relatives

This cuts both ways and it is worth being clear-eyed about which way it runs in your household.

For some women a full house is protective, because he will not do anything in front of his brother. For others it is worse, because there are now several people involved in managing her and any complaint is a family matter within an hour. How family-based control works is worth reading if it is the second.

Either way, keep one place that is yours, even if it is only the kitchen at a particular hour or a walk to buy something. Losing every private moment for three weeks is its own harm.

Practical things for the period itself

• Do not raise anything difficult. Money, the marriage, a decision, an accusation. It will not be resolved in that week and it can escalate. Everything can wait until the ordinary weeks return.
• Know which services are open. 112 works throughout. Hospitals do not close. Police stations do not close. Courts and offices do.
• Keep your documents accessible rather than packed away in a box for the holiday.
• Watch the drinking pattern and plan the evenings around it rather than hoping.
• Give the children one instruction — the named place they go if there is shouting — and make sure it works in whichever house you are in. How to do that is set out separately.
• Expect January. School fees, debts from the season and the return to ordinary pressure make the weeks afterwards difficult in their own right.

If your own family is the pressure

Gatherings are where a woman who has left, or is thinking about it, is most likely to be worked on. Several relatives, in a good mood, all making the same case, with the children present and everybody wanting peace.

Decide in advance what you will say, keep it short, and do not defend or argue the details. “I am not discussing it today” is a complete answer and it holds up better than an explanation. Do not agree to a meeting to settle things, and do not sign or promise anything. How that pressure works covers the wider version.

What we do over these periods

We stay reachable, on reduced hours, and 112 covers the rest. It is worth knowing before the season starts what will and will not be available — ask us, and we will tell you plainly which weeks are thin.

If you think a particular period is going to be difficult, that is a very good reason to make contact in the weeks before it rather than during. Planning is much easier while the offices are still open.

Questions people ask

If you need help now

If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, email us at hello@healbridge.org, 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.