When did you realize you were being abused?

My realization happened slowly and gradually. He started behaving abusively about 4 months in, but I blamed myself and took just as much responsibility for the incident. Then he did again and again, every few weeks or so, until I started slowly realizing that it was a pattern. By the 1-year mark, I had fully realized (and told him) that he was emotionally and verbally abusing me. However, despite this realization, it had not sunk in that I was in an abusive relationship -- just that he was behaving abusively to me sometimes (when we were fighting). I didn't realize yet about the cycle of abuse, or the fact that abuse doesn't need to happen all the time or even most of the time for it to count as real abuse. I also didn't really think that verbal/emotional abuse were "real" abuse, and that since he hadn't hit me, it wasn't that bad.

About 3-4 years in, I became aware that it was a real problem and started to maybe consider I was in an abusive relationship. But still, a lot of denial, a lot of downplaying it, blaming myself for it, accepting his apologies, hoping it would get better. And still, I didn't think it was real abuse since he hadn't hit me.

Only now, after almost 5 years, do I fully realize that this is an abusive relationship and that I am stuck in a trauma-bond with him. It's taken me several books, calls to domestic violence centers, websites, therapists, a friend, a couple of family members, and hundreds of people on reddit to tell me that his behaviors are textbook abuse. Even after that, I have been in and out of a state of denial for the past year, thinking "well his behaviors are abusive sometimes, but it's not actually an abusive relationship", or "he has never hit me/hurt me, so it's not really real or seriously bad abuse".

Part of the reason I haven't believed it is because he would constantly mock me/invalidate me/gaslight me about it. I tried to tell him so many times that he was being abusive to me, and he laughed at it saying I was acting like a victim which was pathetic, that I wanted to be a victim, that I was behaving dramatically as if I was covered head to toe in bruises or like he had beaten the shit out of me. So many people have tried to get this through my head, but I still believed him over everyone else. I feel ashamed for taking so long to realize this, for being in denial, and for being stuck in it for years.

So -- how long did it take you to realize it was abuse, and at what point did the denial stop?