Reply to How do you know a man will be violent?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everything they do is a sign, in hindsight. Actually every single one of you have a "sign" in your relationship, but it is not a sign until he actually hits you.

I had some "signs" so I went to a therapist and we did couples therapy.

I was told, it's not what he does, it's your reaction.
I needed to figure out his love language and blah blah blah.
I needed to put more effort into the marriage since the kids were sucking my energy away from him.
I needed to make sure I was not keeping score with the chores.
I needed to make sure our sex life was not stale, and all that BS.

I spent 3 years with a therapist and a marriage counselor; they were told ALL THE SIGNS but they never said, hey this is toxic, you need to leave. All the Dr. Phil BS was fed to me, marriage is hard, raising kids are harder, your H is stressed you need to be a light place for him to land, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The think is my H was way nicer and kinder and involved with the kids than all my friends H's who never hit them. But, if they ever do, I have about 300 signs that showed they would. [/quote]

this poster is exactly right.  I was in a relationship where my partner was doing things that were absolutely unacceptable.  Because he hadn't hit me (yet), the therapists pulled all of these "therapitic techniques out.  I finally left because I simply decided that our 2 kids and I would not live with the unacceptable behaviors.  Everyone on this thread is focusing on tbe wrong thing -- how do you know he will hit you - when the real question is for what reason is it OK to walk away?

The answer to that last question is, frankly, it is always OK to walk away for any reason.  Feel uncomfortable? Demeaned? Constricted?  Criticized? Unloved in the way you want to be lived?  Nit exclusive enough or too exclusive?

As women, we have to have permission to seek out relationships on our terms, and that is a far broader thing than simply "is he going to hit me?"
[/quote]

Thanks, Captain Obvious. The real issue is that most of these women lack either self-esteem or any amount of critical thinking.[/quote]

No, that is not the real issue. The real issue is that our culture has broadly accepted and normalized abuse from men.  Marital rape wasn't prosecutable until 1973.  Date rape is still largely unprosecutable and even when prosecuted is largely unpunished.  The #metoo movement demonstrates the extent to which sexual assault and harrassment is embedded in our culture and relationships.  And our economic disempowerment (lower wages, less career mobility, no maternity leave, no widely available reasonable childcare, poor levels of child support post-divorce, and unequal parental burden-sharing) makes it very hard to leave an abusive relationship, especially before the hitting starts.

But sure, blame male abuse on dumb women with low self-esteem. [/quote]

And once again you are missing the point because you're so intent on placing blame somewhere. Nobody is debating whether or not abuse is wrong. Nobody is debating whether abuse is the fault of the abuser or the victim. We are discussing how someone could identify a potential abuser and the answer is that there are almost always many, many signs in the abuser's behavior. Those signs exist regardless of whether the victim recognizes them for what they are.[/quote]

Once again you are missing the point. All the "signs" exist in normally developing relationships that never are abusive.

The answer is, it's very hard because the signs are also things that happen in normal relationships and only 20/20 in hindsight.

Also, many women stay to protect their children from abuse because the best abusers don't leave behind "evidence" for court and courts are still run by men, who are abusers, and don't recognize the "signs". [/quote]

There are [b]tons of women judges[/b] and most of the time [b]women win everything when it goes to court[/b] [/quote]

No there are not. No they don't. [/quote]

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