This year will mark 10 years since I left the chamber of horrors that was my first marriage. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was as beaten down as any woman who has fled an abusive relationship. Being cussed at and yelled at can have the same effect as being slapped around. Worse, even–you can use makeup to cover bruises, but not the emotional effect of being yelled at. Over the last 10 years–with the benefit of hindsight, of course–I’ve wondered how I stayed in that horror for so long. The answer, to my mind, is simple. All too often, men are afraid that no one will believe them if they say that they are the ones being victimized.
I know this all too well. There were no fewer than two times where I literally had one foot out the door, only to stay because I was afraid no one would believe that I had been abused and reached my breaking point. In December 2004, my then-wife refused to let Rent-a-Center come in to get a washer-dryer combo, and I had to come home and let them in. I’d been on the receiving end of her temper tantrums before, but the prospect that they nearly got us arrested made me decide to leave quietly after Christmas. But as luck would have it, on Christmas Eve she had to go to the hospital. I could have told anyone who would listen that her abusive behavior had gotten well beyond the point I could take, but all anyone would have seen was a man leaving his wife in a hospital bed.
Almost two years later, I came home from work early after coming down with the flu. My ex pitched a fit about putting my job in danger. But literally as I was about to make plans to find somewhere to stay, I learned that no one had started repairing the damage our apartment complex had suffered from a December fire because the landlord had been lowballing the contractors. We had no choice but to move. Had I left then, no one would have seen a man leaving an abusive wife. They would have seen a man leaving a woman in unsafe living conditions.
The thing that really angers me is that after I left my ex, I learned that she had hit her own son in the head out of anger–and never even filed a response when her then-husband mentioned it in a sworn statement I found in their divorce papers. Apparently her other kids suffered as well, because for at least four years before I met her, she could only see them on supervised visits. Had I known that, I would have felt more than justified in leaving her sooner. After all, in what world should you be forced to share a bed with a child abuser? As it was, it took her being either unable or unwilling to let her son stop threatening to beat me up to finally get me to leave.
But it should have never even gotten to that point. When a woman leaves an abusive man, almost no one questions it–at least, no one in the reality-based community. But when a man leaves an abusive woman, all too often people ask, “What the hell kind of man are you?” Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! We need to start sending the message that a man has as much right to pack up and leave as a woman. Abuse is abuse is abuse–regardless of whether the abuser is a man or a woman. A man who walks out on such a nightmare should be loved on, not shamed. I was lucky to get that love–far too many men aren’t.
I also believe that abuse victims of both sexes need to make common cause. As this video showing a woman abusing a man in public shows, when you strip away the genders and the pronouns, domestic abuse is domestic abuse–regardless of whether the abuser is a man or a woman. If victims of both sexes can come together, we can finally put an end to the shaming that abuse victims still suffer.
To any of my brothers who are reading this who are suffering through an abusive relationship or have suffered through one–don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed. You have as much right to cry and to speak up as anyone. And don’t give up on finding friendship and love–take it from me, that helps heal more than anything.
