The Abuse

Things he did:

1. Threw one of our puppies across the room, infront of our 12 year-old daughter. For about two years, everytime he raised his voice after that the puppy peed herself.
   
2. Rushed at me as I was sitting at the dining room table, and knocked me, the chair and the table over.
3. Pushed me up against the wall, bruising my arm.
4. Called me a f*cking b*tch.
5. Screamed at me a list of all the things I'd ever done, that he thought were wrong.

The Real Choice

In order to understand why I stayed with an abusive husband for over 20 years, you have to understand what my real choices were. The nature of his abusive behaviour was such that I didn't have a chance of winning sole custody of the children, without visitation rights. He never hit them. He pushed and grabbed me. He shouted at me in fits of rage that made his face turn purple, snot stream from his nose and spittal fly from his mouth. He called me names. He had tantrums over the mundane annoyances of everyday life. He blamed it all on me.

It was abuse. It was wrong, but it wasn't enough to keep him from the kids if I had left him. So what were my choices?

1. Stay and try and make the best of it for my kids, acting as a buffer, telling them what he was doing was wrong and that I was trying to get him to stop
2. Leave and accept the courts decisions, which would have almost definitely resulted in his getting some form of regular contact with them
3. Leave and take measures to keep him away from them

I rejected choice number 3, because I knew that he was controlling and resourceful and I didn't judge that I would suceed in alluding him. I rejected choice number 2 because I was sure that if I left him he would be very angry and that he would not cope well with the children on his own. At this point I figured he would either totally lose it and do them or me real physical damage or he would keep his behaviour under enough control that the courts would continue to allow contact.

So what it boiled down to was a choice between staying with him and helping them cope with his violent rages, or leaving him and leaving them to cope with his violent rages alone. For me there was no choice. I stayed until both my daughters were in there late teens and could make their own choices about contact.

Question that wont quit

Why did I stay with an abusive man for 27 years?

Where did it all go wrong?

How can a couple go from bothe being committed to feminism and having an equitable relationship, to him running at me and knocking over me and the chair I'm sitting in, screaming and yelling a litany of my faults, calling me a bitch?

Why do I still want him to see, to really see what he has done to me?

How could I have been abused by a Peace Activist?

5 Things I've never said to my abusive husband

1. You are not a feminist. You cant shove your wife up against the wall, holding onto her arm so tight it leaves bruises and be a feminist.

2. Its not a two way thing. You abused me. I was infuriatingly untidy. Abuse is different from being annoying.

3. What you did to me was domestic violence.

4. I dont care if the other kids taunted you and called you smelly, I'm never going to sleep with a man who doesnt wash

5. Just because your father abused you, doesnt mean you understand how I feel. You see you grew up and the power imbalance between you and your Dad ended. He stopped being scary when you became a man. I never stopped being scared of you because you will always be 6 foot 2 and bigger and stronger than me. I never stopped being scared of you because you are scary.

survival is not enough

Its just another sop from people who think they understand. As if changing our name from Victim to Survivor will make it all okay.

Well I am a Victim, a Victim of childhood sexual abuse, a Victim of incest and a Victim of domestic violence.

I did not survive these things intact. Calling my a Survivor makes me sound noble. It ignores the blood that runs in the gutters, the blood of the children who died, the blood of the wifes and girlfriends who died. It ignores the silent screams of the souls locked in the torment of mental and psychological disintigration. It buys into the idea that surviving abuse makes people stronger.

Abuse didn't make me stronger. It wrecked my immune system. I have two separate chronic neurological conditions. I walk with a cane. I'm afraid of the dark. I cant sleep at night.

People talk of empowering victims to become survivors. But that is not enough. Survival is not enough. Being a victim is not wrong. Moving from being a victim to being a survivor is not progress. I will always be a victim and yes I will always be a survivor in the strict dictionary definition of the word. I didn't die from the abuse, I survived it, but that doesn't define me any more than being a Victim of abuse does. I'm a Victim and a Survivor and I'm angry and I want more. Survivalk is not enough.