Horrific.

Men like this bring out very homicidal impulses in me. Ironic.

Shivers

Isn't it amazing how even the stories of other survivors seems so insurmountable.

I live with excruciating pain everyday caused by loneliness. I know that I will spend the rest of my life alone. Stories like this really make me wonder how to change society so that such abuse doesn't happen. What is it about our culture that rewards such behaviour? Why do we let it go to such extremes?

I guess I just have too many thoughts about life and death going through my mind this evening.

Reading this makes me shudder.

I almost ended up in a relationship like that. Broke it off before it became anything more than an engagement.

Even at that, it took me two years to get free of him. He stalked me, stalked my parents, and generally had me looking around corners.

Fortunately, a move across the state seemed to finish that off. Either that or something happened to him and I never heard about it.

I had a minor insight, which is perhaps much too obvious to be called an insight, when reading one of the several comments by someone who is sure they would leave the first time something bad happened. I think that too, though it's never been tested. But I think that when women say that, they mean, "if I had dated your abuser, I would have left the first time he hit me."

The real question is, if their own husband, that real person whom they know and love, if he hit them, what would they do? Because it means nothing at all when it's a thought experiment about a hypothetical abuser. You have to imagine your own real, named lover, your own best friend, whom you know up and down and who would never, ever do that to you, because your judgment is so good that you got one of the good ones, one of the best ones, who would never because he could never. If he hits you, that particular guy, not if he were to, hypothetically, but if he does, in the real future, tomorrow, next week what will you (I) do?

I mean, my first reaction to my own suggestion is to say, well, that won't ever happen, because he just wouldn't, I have to make it a hypothetical abuser because that's the only way to realistically imagine it. And of course it's like that for everybody, for everybody's boyfriend, until the first time. I know it's blindingly obvious, but thinking about it that way helped me to not just sympathize but understand, a little.

Thank you, so much, for linking to this.

Could you ruthlessly pick up and take your stuff, maybe even just the clothes on your back, and abandon your entire life?

And this... well, and many other things... but mainly this... is why it took me over 20 years.

A lot of people I'm around seem to understand these days. Probably because I'm on the liberal west coast. But I still run into people who say "Oh yeah? Well, I would never have been weak or stupid like you."

Liar.

Someone else also once told me that we should put all the abused wives and children into jail, because they will only perpetuate the cycle. So of course putting THEM in jail is, like, the best solution.

Idiot.

The really awful part is that... hah... I'm either still being stalked or not. Someday I may come home and find out that someone's waiting on my porch with a gun. And no one can prevent that from happening.

My version of being hit by a bus.

On the upside of things, it's AMAZING how that amount of experience of pain, self-doubt, torture, fear, terror (not to be confused with fear), random betrayal, and (high point!) strangulation is very helpful to writing.

And this is why I drink my special tea.

I think I'll go make a large pot now.

(No, it's got nothing illegal in it. I wish it did, some days.)

Thank you for these links.

Is it a coincidence that this comes up on Valentines Day? I think not. I think bloody martyrdoms and human sacrifices and the depths of our depravity as a species through which we persist while keeping the ravens fed is exactly appropriate to this time of year.

My mom left an abusive marriage. Ten years later, I turned around and picked a guy exactly like him. He systematically tore down my self-esteem, told me I was ugly, brought other girls home and eventually cheated on me and confessed to it with a smile and the expectation I'd accept the new paradigm because I had nothing left except approval and love that would never come (though at the time, I hoped.)

It took four years, but I eventually told him to go fuck himself. Best moment of my life.

And the above commentor is correct...sometimes all it takes are words. His weapons were all verbal, and very effective. I am so, so glad I got out.

Sometimes people don't leave because the person who gave them an out changed their mind. And if your friend won't give you a space on their couch, then who will?

(Not talking about myself.)

I left 22 years ago this coming May. I was lucky, I never wound up in the hospital, and by a lot of measures his abuse was mild -- not by psychological measures, but still. Six years was more than enough.

It wasn't until after I moved out that he went completely nuts. I'm here to tell you that restraining orders aren't worth the paper they're printed on. I'm also here to tell you that a friend willing to lean on a shotgun and drawl about Deliverance wasn't nearly as funny at the time as it is in hindsight, but it worked better than the paperwork. After that he just did things like steal my cat (I eventually got her back, unharmed) and break into my car. But at least he didn't try to confront me face-to-face anymore.

I learned how to disappear in December, 1986. It was, finally, the only thing left to do after being stalked for seven months. 1200 miles and no paper trail and I lost him. I'm 99% sure he's dead now (and I'm pretty sure I could tell you the day he died, or close to it, even though I have no proof), and I'm grateful.

I learned who my real friends were. I don't recommend the method, however.

I am glad you are alive. I, too, have had to bolt quickly. I know, God, I know. You were brave and strong to leave. Happy, Happy Rebirthday.

)-:

What is there to say? Twenty years later and I'm still not convinced I ever really escaped.

And sometimes you don't leave because, deep down, you don't really believe that anybody else would treat you any differently. That's a hard one to fight.

And between that post and this one, I just realized that all the little niggly things that seemed sour to me about my friend's relationship probably actually qualify as emotional abuse. I'm pretty much the only friend she has left anymore because I refuse to say one damn word about her boyfriend; everyone else admitted they didn't like him, and they and she have never spoken since.

Oh God.

I managed to leave before I got hit. After months of being talked down to, treated like crap if I "put him in a bad mood", called names, being isolated from friends that he "just didn't like", repeated attempts to con me into falling into bed with him even though I didn't want to, and a bunch of other crap, I walked. All it took was him screaming at me on the way home from a date where he treated me like pond scum over a food choice decision, because he'd "had a bad day" at work, before I realized that if he was doing to me in public what he was doing in private, there was a gigantic problem he was never going to acknowledge.

I found out later on when a friend dated him that he may have hit her. Nobody can confirm it, and she refused to say, but apparently she alluded to it more than once in conversation with folks. She left him shortly thereafter, over some comment he'd made about how he'd never, ever leave if she ever got pregnant, even if she didn't want him around. *shudder* I can only hope anyone else he dated after the fact didn't hang around. Bleh.

Thank you for linking to this. I have a lot more to say and no more words tonight. But thank you very much.

...Can we fix the world now?

Never been there. Don't want to be. Helping a friend who was took a large part of my life that I regretted at the time but now know I've done nothing better. Anyone who is on the receiving end, do what the bear says and love yourself enough to get help.

Anyone on the dishing out end, I don't understand you. I don't think I want to understand you. But you can get help too. So do it.

Thank you for linking to these. I have a somewhat better understanding. Thankfully, to my knowledge, I don't know anyone currently in that situation. And if I do find a friend in that scenario I will help as best I can.

I was a director of Brighton Women's Centre for 7 years. Asking why they don't just leave is like asking why hostages don't just escape.

Apart from a punch to my shoulder and being lifted from the ground by the front of my shirt, I was in a psycologically violent relationship "only". We were together 7 years.

My ex is actually attracted to strong women, so the common notion that women must be weak and spineless to stay with such a guy is idiocy.

It's not black and white. Abusers often take months and even years to weave their net and they can be extremely charming, sweet and loving at the beginning, while they slowly wear down their partner's self-confidence, making the partner believe that everything is his/her fault, that he/she is socially incapable, hysterical and selfish - "look how you made an utter arse out of yourself again in the supermarket!".

They mess with your mind and at first it's so subtle that you don't even notice it, same thing with the verbal abuse. I remember one evening we spent with some of my old school friends, where I thought my ex had a good night and had actually been very sweet. Only to later have my friends one by one pull me aside and ask why I let him talk to me that way.

I rented the upstairs apartment from a friend and his boyfriend (whom I'd had little contact with before moving in). On the second day, I somehow managed to lose the key to my (separate) door and needed to wait a week for the locksmith to make a new one.

"Oh, God" said my friend. "Okay, I'll give you my extra key, and you can sneak in and out of our entrance, so Mike doesn't find out."

He finally "forgave" me for disliking the bf when the latter made the mistake of hitting me in front of him, and after I moved out (while they were away on vacation), he made a big speech about how he made his own decisions about who he could and couldn't talk to blah blah blah, but - is it redundant to point out I've scarcely seen him since? I mean, I called his boyfriend abusive. How could he forgive something like that?

He was last seen telling me he wanted to get a retail job so that he could talk to people besides his boyfriend on a daily basis. Then they got engaged and he stopped speaking to me, which means I no longer get to hear 'cute' anecdotes like "Mike had a dream that I left him and he hit me and punched a hole in the wall."

I don't know what the point of this comment is, except that every time I read something like these posts I feel like I've failed in a really substantial way. I'm thankful to you for linking them, if only because something relatively indirect like this seems more effective than a thousand he-has-no-right-to-treat-you-like-that lectures, which, in retrospect, do more harm than good. I suppose. I don't know.

Argh.

Thanks.

And why must one immediately hear "Oh but women are abusive TOO" when this is 90 percent male behavior? For cultural reasons, yes, not biological absolutes, but *still*. Women are afraid in our country FOR A REASON. Not because we're all crazy paranoid of men.

My apologies for the above comment. The "women can be abusive" thing hits my buttons because it seems sometimes like a dodge on how men are encouraged to behave in our society, which is not always well. Yes, both sexes can behave abusively. Men are more encouraged to be actively violent, however. At least in my opinion. If it becomes "everyone does it", that makes it inevitable and unchangeable. Which is completely not what anyone said. I'm just explaining why I went "grrr".