My experience of being in a violent relationship was that looking back on it now it feels as if it has happened to someone else. It has taken a lot of therapy to work through some really tough issues about the way that I was treated by my wife. I tried my hardest not to show how much she was hurting me as this would please her even more as she would use my crying and pleas to mock me, even in front of friends and family she would sit there miming words so that I could see what she was implying, and she loved to watch me squirm. The worst beating I ever received from her was after I had left and moved back to my parents, I had started to begin divorce proceedings against her, when she phoned me at work and begged me to go back and she would seek help and things would be like they had been when we first got married. I wanted to believe this so much, I still loved her and I had missed her so much. I went straight round after work, I wished I never had as soon as that front door shut the punching and kicking started 'who the hell was I to think I could divorce her' I will never forget that sentence as every time she laid into me afterwards she would repeat this, and it was worse if she got drunk as she seemed to take more pleasure in punching and kicking me then. This took place over several months and I withdrew from everyone as I felt that if I didn't speak to anyone then maybe just maybe the attacks might stop, they never did.
Eventually I realised that if I didn't get out of the house soon I wouldn't be walking away but I would be carried out in a box and how she loved to tell me how much better off she would be if I was dead. I grabbed a few things one day and went to stay with a close friend who knew that things were not right between my ex wife and myself but he didn't realise what I had lived through.
The first few months I lived in fear of her finding where I had gone to I didn't even tell anyone in my own family in case they dropped out the address. Everytime the phone rang or someone knocked on the front door I would jump and shake even physically vomiting uncontrollably, I went to see my doctor who gave me some anti depressants, I tried to tell him what had happened but I could never get the words to come out in the right way, my solicitor never believed me and laughed when I tried to explain what had happened and when my ex wife came to my work place threatening me in front of the people I was working with, the police refused at first to become involved as they classed it as a domestic dispute but eventually did say they would go round to where she was living and advise her to keep away after several of my work colleagues kept phoning them about my ex wife's behaviour. I even changed my job to get away from her but she managed to trace me somehow.
It's now been five years since I got out and four years since my divorce came through but it's been the last three years that have been the hardest trying to rebuild myself a life and it was hard to trust anyone especially females, and that's where the personal therapy came in, I am now in a loving relationship and I am very happy with my life. It's good to know that there are groups forming like this now as It's so hard to try and find someone who will listen and not mock or judge you for allowing yourself to be treated a personal punchbag.
IAN
Hello I have just read your webpage about male domestic violence and can I say thanks. Its nice to know that there is someone out there for the guys who get abused by their partners or wives. I am a female who was a victim when my husbad used to abuse me and while I was at a refuge with my 2 children I used to wonder where did the guys go and who do they talk to. Now I know. Guys who get abused are out there and I hope that one day they will get the strength to either call or scream for help. Once again Its nice to know that there is someone there for them.
JP Homewood
