Um, that would be a thread by misstee, not Missy2U.
Some guy leaving his wife, huh?
Um, that would be a thread by misstee, not Missy2U.
Hell, why am I bothering?
Oh geez!! I thoroughly and in all other ways apologize! Cognitive earthquake on my part! It was the ‘Miss’ beginnings to both your user names… I’m sorry !! Seriously sorry!
I’ll kick my own ass And shove my foot further into my mouth!
{{Phlosphr}} I would also like to apologize for my over the top reaction. 
Someone wrote very well on this subject on livejournal recently:
The abusive relationship I was in never got physical, but it was very intense emotional abusiveness (his other partner got it much worse than I did). And, perhapy oddly, it started out because he was particularly crippled.
Y’see, he couldn’t take any sort of criticism. He was one of those people who thinks that other people either love him and consider him perfect or hate his guts and want him to die. So if it was ever, “Hey, man, I wish you wouldn’t do that, it bugs me,” he’d go into this suicidal “You don’t love me!” spiral, and . . . well, of course, I had to pull him out of it, cheer him up, make it all okay.
Which meant, among other things, that the little things that bugged me never changed, because he wouldn’t consider them; everything immediately turned into a stroke-his-ego session. And then the little things started getting bigger, nastier; he started demanding things without accepting a “No”, and if the no stuck it would be with the breakdown and the chaos and the investment in him so that he could be okay enough to deal with how he’d hurt me – which he never was.
He didn’t snag me through my lack of self-esteem; he snagged me through his, through my tendency to want to help people I care about out. And I stayed even after all of his nice, fun guy traits faded away into the manipulative emotion-ripping stuff, because of the fun-guy that used to be there, if I could only get him on an even keel. I eventually left because he picked a ‘no’ not to respect that I wouldn’t forgive him for, and he spent months after that trying to get me back by grovelling and raging and playing pathetic and wounded in all the ways that worked before.
His other partner came out of her relationship with him when she got out not only with some nasty baggage about certain behaviour patterns, but body image problems and some sexual dysfunction. 
catsix – sounds like your friend is an example of the statistical evidence that female abusers are more likely to use weapons than male ones, like saucepans. . . I hope he can get out of that situation.
I have two friends that were in abusive relationships. One is still in hers, the other got out of his.
This is exactly what happened to my “got out of it” friend. I remember one story where his wife hit him with a skillet or some other pan, pointed a rifle at him, and when the police came, he was the one dragged off to jail, despite his bruises and cuts. Because, you see, women don’t beat their husbands. :rolleyes: They got divorced pretty quick after that.
The other friend has pretty much given up on her marriage. She almost left him last year, but she was afraid of raising three kids on her own, she was afraid of finding a place to live where he couldn’t find her, basically she was afraid of the unknown. I firmly believe that this quote by Tisiphone describes why she’s still “married”:
She had several “friends” asking her if she was sure this was best for her children, her spiritual path, her peace of mind. Pretty much feeding her fear of the unknown. But they did it so nicely! Questions like, “Are you sure your kids will be all right at the battered women’s shelter?” and commenting on how forgiving she was when she broke down and talked to him at work when he kept calling her. At the same time, she had several other friends (myself included) who were telling her, “Come on over to my house! Bring the kids! I’ll help you out!” I’ve discovered that to an abused person, those sound like empty promises and platitudes.
There are so many factors in abusive relationships it’s not even funny. Person A provokes Person B who then proceeds to beat the everlasting out of Person A…whose fault is it? Especially when you factor in childhood experiences, self-esteem issues, drugs and alcohol, children, and more from the Eternal List of Contributing Factors. I just came in from a thread where people were debating the validity of medicalizing antisocial behavior, so I’m just pondering the depths of the human mind. This is what it’s all come out as, for what it’s worth.
I’m saying that if she is hitting him, beating him, smashing him in the head with kitchen implements, that he has every right to use whatever physical force is necessary to stop her from harming him.
I don’t think, and didn’t say, that he should stay in the relationship and just continually duke it out. I do believe that the first time she got violent he should have done what he had to to end the immediate situation, and then leave her. And I still think he should leave her. If she gets violent with him, it’s foolish to think he’s not allowed to use any force at all to protect himself.
But he should leave. And I hope he does before it’s too late.
Trying to get him out. I brought him up here because I think the actual question is why anyone would stay in an abusive relationship. I don’t understand how he went from a self-assured strong person to this, and I probably never will. I just hope he has enough left to save himself.
Since seeing my friend in this situation, and the reactions of those who find out, I have begun to stop thinking of partner abuse as something women are victims of, and start thinking of it as something people are victims of. This is a human problem.
If we could figure out why someone stays with an abuser, there’d be no abuse.
bravo. way to add levity and real word facts to this conversation. My first reaction to this post was it was going to be another stereotypical post about sadistic men and defenseless women, as if domestic violence begins & ends with that scenario. All the in betweens and non-socially condemned versions of domestic violence were going to be lost and ignored.
Id say an abusive childhood is the main factor in a woman entering/maintain an abusive relationship. what do the women on this post who’ve been in abusive relationships have in their childhoods?
by that i mean do all the women here who have been in abusive relationships grow up in abusive or deprived environments? i didn’t read the entire post thoroughly, but id assume so.
i hate when crap like that happens, i have male friends who tell the same stories, their girlfriends become violent and they restrain them and the cops only arrest them.
The only good part is the shock of nobody giving a shit about them hopefully gives them teh strength to leave. That is probably just wishful thinking though but you’d assume cops wanting to spit on you because you are a victim of violence would wake you up pretty fast to how bad the situation is and tell you to leave.
Abusive relationships are certainly not all cut to the same pattern.
I never hit anyone, after one fight in second grade, until I had been married for three years. I certainly had no expectation of hitting my wife, nor any feeling that such a thing was right. But then almost nothing about my marriage was what I thought it would be.
I wanted to be all the things my ex, and our children wanted and needed. But that was not possible. And somehow, all that I did do, was unimportant to my ex. The only things that really mattered were the things I didn’t do. I didn’t cry much, and I practically never yelled.
You see, those things proved that I really didn’t care. I was never willing to “show my real feelings.” I was never willing to “share my true emotions.” What that worked out to mean was that I didn’t get mad when I didn’t get my way. If I had really loved her, I would have gotten angry. And over the years she began raising the ante. After a while I realized that I was used to getting pinched in the middle of an embrace, or bitten. Getting hit wasn’t even noticeable.
After five years I had finally hit my ex four times. I was big, and strong. She fell down, and on two occasions bled.
It took everything I had emotionally to leave her. I went back after three months in a mental hospital, and treatment. I hit her again, although this time it was no more that a swat. But it was enough to get me to leave again.
I can’t have a relationship with a woman anymore. It’s a shame, too, because I love women. And I really love kids. But I just haven’t got it in me any more.
But I’ve never hit anyone since I left.
Tris
Originally posted by DougC
While this post raised some hackles, I will concur and re-phrase Doug’s comments as follows: I wouldn’t say that women “like it”, but I would say that, logically, there seems to be some psychological benefit [whether healthy or not] derived from staying in such a relationship. I would say the same sort of dynamic [ie, a psychological benefit] is present in many situations where people maintain illogical patterns of behavior: anorexia, alcoholism, those who constantly and seemingly deliberately fail at things, delinquent teens and adults. No one can convince me that any of these people are happy; however there is a reason why the behavior recurs, whatever that reason may be.. And I must add a big disclaimer here, namely, these comments aren’t meant to judge or belittle victims of abuse, it’s nothing more or less than an unsubstantiated observation. (Note: IANA psycholgist or psychiatrist).
A previous girlfriend of mine went back to her old boyfriend. This was over 10 years ago.
She was a talented woman, that didn’t seem to have any faith in herself.
She and I got together when we became room-mates. She told me - “Why am I with this ASSHOLE of a boyfriend when there are nice guys like you around.”
Her ‘boyfriend’was a piece or work and an idiot to boot, no other way to put it. He claimed that both his hands where blown off in the military. And they re-attached them. No scares, no disability, nothing. Just a story from the guy that I, and my brother call Reverend Jim. And no, he was never in the military. Thank god.
Rae (my girl for a while) was/is a talented intelligent person. Manager of an art gallery. Why she went back to a total piece of shit like Jim, I will never know.
She called the cops TWICE on that piece of shit. He beat her.
I’m a happy guy now. Married for 6 years.
I hope that Rae is doing great. But I have my doubts. I wish I could have helped her more.
I think I failed her.
That will always hurt, and I hope to god she made it away from that asshole Jim.
No, No, No. I did fail to help. I’ll just go from there and love my wife.
I did get something right.