hugs to IrishLake and Honeychile

lol @ the bold parts.
You did -that's how I meant to say it.:o:p

Hugs to IrishLake and honeychile.

Thanks ya'll, but I'm good! We are in a much better place, and we're there together.

So my divorce lawyer couldn't get there that next morning, so the public defender had to present me to the judge, explain how I had no prior history, explained that I am college educated and was employed as an environmental geologist and priors jobs as a scientist. The bailiff standing behind me starting laughing under his breath, I heard him snort! I looked at him funny when he was walking me out of the courtroom, and he said "I really do apologize, ma'am. It's just that we don't get very many "Scientists" through this courtroom. Your husband must have really messed up! C'mon, Professor, I need to take you back to the holding area." I laughed!

Honey, I'm so very happy that you are in a much better place now, too!

I prosecute domestic violence cases. It is one of the hardest things I do because sometimes I can't tell which spouse is the (bigger?) problem. I also feel like I'm being intrusive into what is a private and difficult moment for them.

Hugs to all out there who have experienced this, and if you are currently experiencing it, think about getting out, please.

Considering that it is my goal, after law school, to prosecute domestic violence cases, I wondered about the toll it takes on the attorneys and other workers involved. Thanks for your insight.

And hugs to both Honey and IrishLake, I'm so glad that you are both in better places now!

If you ever want to chat about it send me a PM. I'm happy to help a sister out! :)

Yes and no one knows what they "would do" until they actually do it.

IrishLake, I appreciate your honesty. However, I doubt the hugs and love that you are receiving would be sent out if you were a GC man talking about hitting his wife.

You don't know the motivation or reason for why I posted my "hugs and love" so whether or not I'd post that for a man hitting his partner is nothing to doubt since that hasn't happened, yet. Someone who took the courage to be open and honest in sharing something so personal in relation to this topic is who I'm sending huge and love to, I'm supporting the action of bringing it into the open, not whether or not I agree with their actions.

I totally agree with this. One of my former classmates told me that she was once in an abusive relationship, or what could have been. She said that he got in her face whenever they would get into a heated argument, until one day he called her the "C" word. She said that's all that it took for her to leave. According to her, they were together for 2 years, and she didn't waste any time getting out. I don't blame her one bit. I would have done the same. I'm thinking that's probably how the violence usually starts.

I was there too. I've talked about it here before. My first husband.. while we were dating, it was little "jokes" that I was "overly sensitive" about. After marriage it escalated quickly into verbal abuse, controlling my money, trying to isolate me from friends and family. I was not easily controlled and the harder I pushed back, the more intense it became.. blockading me into my bedroom so I couldn't leave (I wanted to go for a drive to calm myself down, let the situation settle), physically holding me to keep me from going for a walk to calm down. My own rage was really increasing too, but I never acted on it physically. Then he was slamming doors, tossing things around.. then he threw a jar of jelly at me. I had been going to counseling, alone (because he said he didn't have a problem, I did, he was fine with how things were). The day after the jelly jar thing, I made my exit plan and was out in two weeks. It was scary. I was afraid he would find me.

Fear for myself was part of the reason I left, but it was also fear of the rage that was building up inside of me. I was sure that if we'd stayed together, one of us would kill the other. I just wasn't sure who would do it first. I have never felt that kind of rage again. I was lucky that I could get out because we had no kids, no house.. we'd only been married for 14 months. I can't explain the terror I had that he would find me. The most dangerous time, according to all the experts, is when you leave. Those Lifetime movies aren't a bunch of hooey, they are more real than most think.

The other thing that people don't realize is that these intense relationships are usually just as intensely good as they are intensely bad. The good times are extreme.. ecstatic. The bad times are peppered in among them. It makes it easier to think that it is going to be ok because you can almost forget when things are amazingly good. They always go bad again though. Intensely passionate to intensely violent, over and over and over...

VandalSquirrel, regardless of whatever, I doubt that a GC man who shared what IrishLake shared would receive the response that she has received. That gendered response to intimate partner violence is why I created this thread.

There are less men here than women to begin with, but if say, Senusret I posted something similar I'd support him as well. I'll definitely put out there I have more knowledge about same sex partner violence than the average GCer and that is often less reported and less understood than woman on man heterosexual DV.

Man-on-woman violence tends to be perceived differently than woman-on-man, man-on-man, and woman-on-woman violence. If a GC man shared the lesson that he and his wife learned after a violent altercation in which he punched her, he was arrested, and his wife felt bad seeing him in court--that would receive a different response from GCers. If a GC man said everything that IrishLake said but reversed the genders, it would receive a different response from GCers.

I appreciate IrishLake's honesty so my posts are not about her. It is simply the case that the responses to her post are extremely common. It is extremely common for people to respond to women in a manner that they tend not to respond to men. That includes the fact that women are more likely to share their experiences as the abusee or the abuser than men are. Men would not share if they were abused and they would not share if they abused someone else (even if they learned a huge lesson from it and it strengthened the relationship).