Why do Men do this to themselves?

A little backstory . . .

My BIL (brother-in-law) is young, 22 to be exact. He is the type of guy who wants to fall in love, settle down, and start a family. He is loving, creative, a little hyper, but overall a great kid. He has had some problems with drugs for a couple years and we’re trying to help him through it without going the route of rehab (he has no insurance).

About 2 years ago, during his roughest time with a very popular speed drug, he met a girl (19 years old). She seemed wonderful. She was trying to get away from the drug scene as well and they decided they’d help one another. Love quickly blossomed, they thought they were meant for each other.

The family, for the most part, liked her. Her and my MIL (mother-in-law) hit it off immediately and we saw more and more of her. They wanted to get married, we warned them it was too soon, but they were determined. We decided to have the families meet and we all fell in love with her family, they are immigrants and showed us a culture and world we had never seen. They were loving, generous, and overall very happy people. The girl had said she had problems with her family and wasn’t very close to them, moving out of their home at the age of 16. It seemed this relationship was helping her to forge a new bond with them.

Not heeding our warning to take things slow, they forged ahead with wedding plans. Since they were both young and had trouble holding down jobs, the families had to foot the bill. Luckily, they had a small wedding and a beautiful dinner at her parents afterwards (caviar, salmon, the whole nine yards). We were shocked at the display, they had always told us her family didn’t have much money and we thought they had blown all their savings on the new double house they recently built to house them and the grandparents in an affluent neighborhood. But we don’t think much of that is our business, just things don’t add up quite well. Her mother works an office job and her father drives a semi. I come from a long line of semi-drivers and I know what the income is like. But I digress, it’s none of my concern.

We quickly found out that instead of helping each other through their drug problems, they were perpetuating them. One would want to quit, the other wouldn’t. Back and forth this went on for months. Between the two families, they paid for their rent and utilities for over a year. They couldn’t stay off the drugs long enough to keep a job, they would lose sleep, get sick frequently, blow all their money they did earn on drugs, they even went as far as selling their personal items for more drugs. It was spiraling out of control.

My husband never really trusted her, he said she seemed fake. If only we had listened . . .

About 6 months ago, the calls started. Every day one of them would call me crying (I’m the “listener” in the family). They started fighting incessantly. We shut them off to money and forced them to work, by this time they had borrowed over $5,000. We thought if they worked, they would fight less because they wouldn’t be around each other 24 hours a day and feel like they were doing something with their lives. They had dreams of going back to school and starting their careers, but they also had a sense of entitlement. They didn’t want restaurant jobs, or gas station jobs, they felt they deserved 9-5 jobs in an office making $30,000 a year. It just doesn’t work that way with no education or experience.

They started wearing on one another, then the drug problem got worse. The depression kicked in and they started drifting from each other. The fighting got worse. In February, my BIL came to us one evening and said he wanted to stay with us for a couple days. She had punched him in the nose. Not wanting him to be away from her, she called and called. The next morning we found her asleep in her car in the driveway. They talked and he went home.

This continued for the next couple months, we had him over once or twice more. Then he stayed with his mother a couple times and she would stalk him there too. She started rubbing my MIL the wrong way and the anger and resentment started to build. We told him he needed to leaver her, but he couldn’t. He loved her. When she would hit him (and this happened several times), we would tell him to call the police on her. He didn’t want to do that to her because he knew what would happen.

My BIL has always been the type of guy who was gentle to everyone and everything. He has this magnetic-like force with children and animals and anyone who meets him finds him kind and loving. He’s a momma’s boy and hippy in all sense of the word.

A couple weeks ago, the fights were getting worse. At this time they have been married a short 8 months. He was leaving for a couple days at a time and she was getting upset over it. He decided that he had jumped into things a little too quickly and was wanting out of the relationship. He told her he wasn’t in love with her anymore and wanted to part ways. She didn’t like that.

The fighting got worse. From his account (and from hers), she would barricade him in the house, if he tried to leave she would chase him down the road screaming at him, at 4 in the morning. Last week, they argued for 3 days straight, they were both on speed again. No sleep, no food. Things escalated quickly and she started to punch him, bite him, kick him, and scratch him. Their friends and neighbors saw a little of it and overheard the arguing. She was out of control and he was trying to subdue her by holding her arms down. At one point, he put a pillow over her face for a few seconds to muffle her screaming. She had kicked him in the stomach and grabbed his balls and pulled. She told him if he left her, she would call the police.

My BIL manages to escape from the house and call his mother. He tells her she is hitting him and he wants someone to come pick him up (his car had been towed yet again). My MIL tells him she can’t (she lives almost an hour away) and he should either go stay with friends for a while or call the police. He still does not want her to get in trouble, he just wants out as peacefully as possible.

He manages to stay away from his house for roughly 6 hours. He visits his friend across the street. His friend steps outside and sees the police at their house. My BIL walks outside to look and her mother points him out and yells “There he is!”. So he walks over and proceeds to be handcuffed. She told the police he tried to kill her and he slammed her head in the floor multiple times. My BIL is taken to jail.

We find out about 10 p.m. that evening he’s in jail. The only thing we can picture is him standing in the corner of the holding cell in a puddle of his own piss and a snot bubble hanging from his nose. We know jail is the last thing he can handle.

The next morning is the arraignment. Seeing my BIL standing there in the courtroom shackled is too much for us to handle. We all break down in tears. When his wife walks in, the tears dry up with hatred. How could she do this to him?

The cops refused to take a statement from him during the booking and how she didn’t get arrested as well baffles me. This poor kid, the one who gets his feelings hurt so easily, the one who just wants to be loved and give love in return. We bail him out of jail and that evening we take him to urgent care. We have dictation from the doctor that he was beat up by his wife and I took multiple photos of the bruises, cuts, bite marks, etc. This feels like a nightmare.

We take him to his house to get his tuff, we need a police escort because of the protection order. She has thrown away some of his stuff and has destroyed his television. All his stuff is piled up by the front door. We make two quick trips and manage to get what we can.

Over the past week, she has tried calling him. She leaves long messages saying she loves him and misses him, and that she didn’t think it would turn out this way and she didn’t mean to get him in trouble. She says her parents emotionally blackmailed her into calling the cops. She can’t understand why he won’t call her.

Do you think we’re going to let you set him up? You have got to be smoking crack.

So he gets divorce papers this week. She wants to drop the protection order and have a “talk” with him. She wants one of two things to happen: if he wants to be with her, she wants to drop charges and have him go to rehab, if he doesn’t want to be with her, she’s going full-force and get him locked away.

Why does this not seem right to me?

Why don’t men call the police more often if their wives/girlfriends beat up on them? It doesn’t make you manly to take it from them. Now because of the way the legal system is, he doesn’t stand a chance unless we get a jury trial. We can prove she has been emotionally abusing and stalking him. I want her psychologically tested, but I’m not sure if that will happen. We did find out that he has had several conversations with her parents about her hitting him, so we know we can subpoena them, but I’m not sure if they’ll lie to protect her. Because my in-laws are getting divorced, my DH and I have been paying for the bail and the retainer fee for the lawyer. We can’t afford to pay any more.

I pray that not all hope is lost. We’re afraid if he goes to prison, he will never be this carefree, loving, happy boy we all know and love anymore. This will ruin his spirit and destroy his chances of having a real job for a long time.

I don’t have the energy to swear or this would have went to the pit. I just needed to get this out to you, especially to those of you in the legal field. We don’t know what to do except wait and see what happens. This is so sad, not just for us, but for my BIL and his future.

If I can help anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, I’ve done enough good with this. Please, if you are being abused, please seek help and get as far away as you can. Thanks for taking the time to listen.

:frowning:

I hope you keep copies of those messages. I hope things work out for your BiL

As far as to why men do that?

Well it is rather hard to do and you don’t know if anyone will believe you and by this time you know too well how manipulative she can be and you can picture the act that she will put on for the cops. Or her family, or your friends and people tend to believe the woman in these cases and saying, I only defended myself usually doesn’t garner anything but suspicion.

That’s very sad PinkMarabou. I hope everything works out for your BIL. :frowning:

If you really believe he is (mostly) innocent, and she was the abuser, then he should fight it in court.

A tape recorder is a life saver in these situations. There can be legal problems with recording a phone call, but not in person.

Yes, we taped all the messages. I tried calling her and talking about it, but she’s sticking to her story. I did get her to admit that part of the police report is wrong. She admitted he never slammed her head into the floor. Her whole argument is when he tried to muffle her screaming, she said he tried to suffocate her. Since no one was there, who really knows. But we have 20+ character witnesses for him and 1 physical witness to her screaming and 1 physical witness that she’s beat him before. Plus the conversations he’s had with her parents.

She said the cuts and bruises are from her trying to get him off her. Personally (and I’ve been very close to both of them), I think she’s been coached on what to say and may even believe it now. My BIL feels defeated. He feels like there’s no way anyone is going to believe him since there were no eye-witnesses and since the heirachy of victims goes: 1. children 2. women 3. men.

It’s all just so sad for him and all of us. She’s even trying to pull the sympathy card: “my grandmother almost had a heart-attack, my aunt went to the hospital, and my mom has been sick”. Her dad has been no where to be found.

Thanks for the well-wishes and we intend to fight her tooth and nail on this. We’re hoping for a jury trial.

Actually, in my state, only one person has to know it is being recorded. And that one person is me. Already cleared it up with our lawyer. So far, she’s not budging, but everyone thinks she trusts me and will eventually tell me something.

My friends younger brother was in a similarly abusive marriage at a young age. No drugs, just a manipulative drama queen that thought smacking him around was acceptable behavior because she’s just a girl, she wasn’t really hurting him. :rolleyes:

He didn’t want to call the cops either, and the one time my friend witnessed a fight and called the cops herself, they flat out laughed at the guy’s story. The wife didn’t have a mark on her, the husband did, and the cops still asked her if she wanted to press charges on him. Comments like ‘a little thing like her?’ and ‘you need to get your woman under control’ or ‘no wonder she smacks him if he’s not being a man’ led him to just lie and not even attempt to press charges.

Eventually they wound up divorcing, much to our relief, but I can understand why guys could feel that they wouldn’t be taken seriously or that they must somehow deserve it or that it’s really not bad enough to want to get her in trouble, etc. Why those women feel it’s okay to act that way, that one I don’t so much understand.

I’m glad he’s got the two of you sticking by him, what a horrible situation.

What’s scary is that when I talked to her, she said since she’s a foot shorter than him and 60 lbs. lighter, there’s “not much that (she) could do” to hurt him like that. I call bullshit on that. If you’re angry enough (and they call it crimes of passion for a reason), it doesn’t matter what your size is. She’s really putting on an act, but when her family is not around, she misses him and wants him back.

It’s very unfortunate, but in situations like this, the police are a liability, not a help for abused men. The guy can be standing there bleeding, and he’s the one who gets the handcuffs and charges. The size of the woman doesn’t matter; she could take a baseball bat to a man if she was sufficiently angry and out of control.

Your brother-in-law needs to be talking to a lawyer and getting the best advice he can. He really needs to have absolutely no contact with this woman at all. If he’s lucky, she will be a no-show at any court proceedings and they will be dropped. Even if he doesn’t go to jail, being victimized like this will change him. He needs counselling, and he needs it pronto.

I was once chatting with an acquaintance who casually dropped that he was divorced. “That’s too bad, what happened?” “I hit her.” I was stunned. This guy was like 6’5" well over 200# and 100% beef. I couldn’t imagine that he had a woman of similar stature and was a little outraged he would so blithely admit to smacking his woman.

“Uh, why’d you hit her?”
“Well, I came home one night and she started yelling at me about something which escalated into an argument. She wandered into the kitchen and came out with a knife. Before I knew what was happening she had jammed it into my chest. It got stuck in a rib. I punched her in the face and knocked her out & called the cops.” She was a little thing, like 5’2" but mean as a snake it turns out.

Blew my mind. I’d always wondered where that scar came from.

featherlou, he doesn’t have any contact with her. Not at all, he hasn’t spoken a word. I was instructed by the lawyer to call her and see if she would crack. Especially since I have been very close to her for the past 2 years. We told him because of the protection order, he cannot have ANY contact with her. He is abiding, she is not and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Inigo Montoya, see that is exactly why this sucks so much. It doesn’t seem to matter one whit what the woman does to the man, if he lays a hand on her, he’s in trouble. We think because he held her arms down, they’ll get my BIL on unlawful restraint. He’s looking at 6 months if they get him. That’s why we’re trying to get her to crack.

I wanted to meet her in person, but everyone is afraid if the conversation does not go how she would like it to, she’ll go to the cops and say I hit her: “She’s a quarter inch taller than me! How can I defend myself??”

You know, I’ve always been a moderate feminist, but this shit is over the line. There needs to be a happy medium to all this. They can’t just believe the woman automatically, especially when there’s evidence of her hurting him.

This all just sucks really bad.

Like you said earlier, this is about attitudes regarding men and women - it’s not a feminism thing. Perhaps the laws regarding domestic violence will give you a chance to help your brother-in-law. Anyway, this situation is awful, and I hope you can do something to keep him from being jailed for protecting himself.

I would contact Judge Judy or some other such court. Young people may like the idea of being onTV. And this sounds like a case she may take… Either way I truly feel for you. Support is the only thing you can give at this time.

I’m glad to hear it. I’m sure he’s kicking himself in the head for not wanting to hurt her and not having her up on charges any time she beat him in the past.

That’s about exactly how I feel about this kind of crap. It’s not right for anyone to hurt their partner, male, female, gay or straight. I really hope this turns out for the best for your brother-in-law, and he doesn’t get down on all women or down on life because of it.

What a frightening and maddening situation. My heart goes out to you and your family. However, as much as I know it is helpful to have a place to vent and feedback that can be reassuring, I’d HIGHLY recommend contacting an administrator and asking to have this thread completely removed from access (and hope it’s not cached somewhere on the 'net as of yet). You’d be amazed at how easy it can be to find usernames and handles and message board postings even when RL names aren’t involved, and the last thing you want is your SIL’s attorney’s finding your posts and using them against your brother, seeing as how you admit he restrained her and held a pillow over her face. I’d be very careful who you tell what to, especially on such a public medium.

I wish you all the best of luck!

You’re probably right about that. Although he isn’t denying he did that, just her account of it and his account of it is completely different. I’ll ask a mod to close it and delete it. I apologize, sometimes my anger and sadness get the best of me.

Pink, I’m so sorry to hear about this. I worried about them getting married so young but I never thought anything like this would happen. I watch some medical shows on the Discovery Health Channel and I see men who get stabbed by their wives, or beaten up pretty bad. Then they get up out of their bed and say they are going home for dinner, because she probably won’t be mad any more.

I think I mentioned something on this board before about a murder I know happened, where a wife beat up her husband with a frying pan and no one suspected a thing. He died hours later. I hardly think it would have been ignored if it had been the other way around. It’s a sad and hopeless thing.

If you need to talk, please let me know. I go over to Columbus every day now. Actually my husband told me the other day to see if we could get together with you guys again. Write me an email or call me.