Men as victims: Domestic abuse knows no gender bounds
By Lynda Clancy
http://rockland.villagesoup.com/Community/Story.cfm?StoryID=31270
MIDCOAST (Feb 20, 2005): Chuck had no idea he was being abused until a friend pointed out that healthy relationships do not thrive on threats, lies and statues being flung at one's head.
Until then, Chuck was living day to day, attempting to hold together a household of two children and many cats and an 8-year-old marriage to a woman who spent much of the day on the couch barking orders.
Although he is now ready to talk about the abuse he struggled with almost 20 years ago, Chuck prefers not to use his real name. As he sat last week upstairs at the Camden Deli overlooking the harbor, emotions crossed his face, resurfacing from a painful past that seemed to grab and shake him from inside. His former wife killed herself not long after Chuck finally walked out the door, and that alone has made his path circumspect.
"It has crippled my life for 20 years," he said.
Chuck's motivation for talking about his life with abuse is partly to illustrate that while domestic violence is predominantly perpetrated on women, it also works the other way. And he believes it is all symptomatic of a large, disturbing picture of a culture eaten by fear and consumed by the worship of power.
For him, society must make a conscious decision not to condone abuse in any form, and he works hard trying to understand the deeper causes beneath domestic violence and bullying.
"Kindness is seen as a weakness," he said. "And the weak are seen as deserving of what they get."
And while it may be cultural, he also admits there are strong psychological traits to consider. Abusers tend to exhibit similar traits -- they are charming and articulate, and can be tremendous liars and manipulators.
Decades later, he succinctly describes his own abusive relationship.
"What happens is you get into a relationship in which one of two people is afraid of whatever the other person might cause to happen," he said. "In my case, I was neatly and tidily excised from my family and friends. And I had something to lose by admitting to my making a mistake."
It didn't start that way: "People don't move in with each other and start beating on each other," he said. "But gradually, one person's power is eroded and that is the stage setting."
Chuck's own power eroded quickly when at age 24 he married an older woman with two young children. The initial manipulation descended into a web of deceit that he said she managed to stretch around their lives.
"She told lies about us to everyone, so I had nowhere to go," he said. "It was emotional blackmail. She had immense power over me because of the lies she told."
But he stayed, despite the physical abuse -- "my 105-pound wife throwing things and hitting me," he said, almost amazed -- as well as a deepening financial nightmare. Chuck would go off to work while his wife remained home watching the shopping channel on cable television. The bills would arrive and he would pay them; eight years after her death, he was still paying off credit card debts.
Part of keeping the status quo, he said, is the desire to prove to oneself that one still can be loved. And there is the fact that he was the household provider, the protector motivated by a sense of duty.
"In a situation like that, you will shift your reality to get by," he said. "All you think about is managing the crises and the emergencies."
Getting by meant getting up each day to go to work, and then going to the grocery store, driving home, making dinner and doing the chores.
"All I cared about was getting up, cleaning up after the cats, shopping, making dinner and going to bed," he said. He worked hard to keep the peace.
"I would do anything not to have a fight," he said. "She knew when she could wear you down with temper tantrums and she was always ready for another round. It was like swimming through mud."
Until one day his friend Tricia painted a different picture of his life. She too sat at the Camden Deli with Chuck last week and recalled events that occurred 20 years ago.
"It looked like a tragedy unfolding," she said.
In the end it was a tragedy. Chuck's wife overdosed on tranquilizers and alcohol -- perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally. Her new boyfriend discovered her body.
Today Tricia and Chuck live a quiet life in a new community, in a new state. Still, he ponders the causes of abuse and considers the socioeconomic angle, how Americans' Puritan roots have shaped them and the phenomenon of modern day stress. He is still ashamed of himself for succumbing to abuse.
But he always circles back to the idea of hope, which was the lifeline Tricia tossed him.
"How do we instill hope in someone who's lost?" he asked. "With me it was knowing that there was something better. The key to getting people out is giving them hope. Anyone trapped by violent power needs help, and it must be offered repeatedly."
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Based in Camden, Staff Reporter Lynda Clancy can be reached at 207-236-8468 or by e-mail at lclancy@villagesoup.com.