In the guys’s (very) partial defense, I’d like to cite Erin Pizzey. She was the inventor of the idea of domestic shelters for women and children, and was for a long time a hero of feminists.
Then she strayed off the plantation by publishing her findings that many women in abusive relationships were addicts to the rush of emotional violence and in her opinion precipitated the episodes something over 50% of the time. This allowed the addict to violent emotions to cycle through anticipation, the extreme emotions of the violence, the abject apologies of her mate and the sympathy of all about her. Whereupon the cycle repeats itself, ad nauseum.
In Pizzey’s opinion, formed over a very long time and interviews with thousands of women, something close to 2/3 of the women who were abused by their mates fit into this group.
Which is not to say that there aren’t many women who don’t and are closer to the classic victim of the bad dude of the feminist story. I had a family member in this group. Her (large) husband beat her repeatedly and badly, until several of us had a discussion with him in which it was pointed out that he’d find it difficult to beat her with his arms and legs broken. Never laid a finger on her again, left her a few months later, and a year or so later she married a very nice man.
OTOH, about 20 years my best friend from high school married a nice lady with three young daughters. She had recently left an abusive husband. He adored her and treated her like a queen and her daughters like princesses. Five years later she left him because he was “boring.” A couple of years after that she married for the third time, to a guy who apparently beats her up regularly.
Wiki: “Pizzey distinguishes between “genuine battered women” and “violence-prone women;” the former defined as “the unwilling and innocent victim of his or her partner’s violence” and the latter defined as “the unwilling victim of his or her own violence.” This study reports that 62% of the sample population were more accurately described as “violence prone.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey#Overview
This is course contradicted the feminists’ men-bad, women-helpless victims essential myth. She was drummed out of the movement, was harassed, family members threatened, her dog even killed. She had to flee the UK for North America.
Which kind of relationship the couple in question had I do not know. Nor do I approve of men beating up women under any circumstances, but I do know that the story is often a lot more murky than the feminist myths would lead you to believe.
Well, that explains my previous post. I will never understand people being addicted to getting beat up. You cannot get any more pathetic than that.
Let me say first, some guys have an insane hair trigger temper that is set off by, pretty much, Nothing. OTOH, an ex friend’s ex hub has said (she divorced two others for hitting her) “I never hit her myself, but i can see why some others would”.