Live

I'll try, but it's not easy." Chapter 12 from No Visible Wounds

A Woman's Pain in Acknowledging Abuse

The poet Goethe, wrote, "None are more helplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free." Though he may have been referring to Dr. Fautus in his bondage to the devil, his word apply equally well to many women in bondage to their abusers. While Faust lives a full and happy life, forgetful of the price his bargain will exact upon his death, the abused woman lives restriced, rationalizing her pain each day while she lives.

Hospital emergency rooms are accustomed to treating women who claim accidental injury instead of batteing: their bleeding cuts are due to broken glass, their body bruises to falling downstairs, their broken noses to running into a door. I used to see a woman on my block, who appeared regularly with a black eye, which she attributed to her two-yar-old's having kicked her while she changed his clothes. She stuck to her story until her husband was arrested for murdering a youn woman in a drug trafficking deal, at which time she admitted to the police that she had suffered years of abuse.

If it takes a catastrophe for a woman with black eyes or cuts and bruises to face up to the fact of abuse, imagine how much more difficult it is for women with invisible wounds to admit abuse even to themselves. There is no one to validate the nonphysical battering they take in the form of words and manipulation and covert actions, no one to say, "oh, you poor thing. Why do you stand it?"

The nonphysically abused woman most often doesn't put a label on what her man does to her. She knows how dumb and helpless and hopeless he makesher feel, but instead of recognizing her mistreatment as abuse, she questions herself, not him. As Dr. Joanna Landau puts it, "If the man doesn't drink, hit her or fool around with women, and if he provides, she figures he must be a bargain." The woman, therefore, arrives at one of two conclusions.

On the one hand she may convince herself that her expectations are unreasonable in thinking he should treat her with more respect, grant her equal rights, share the finances, or let her be with her friends and family more. She comes to the conclusion that she wants too much, that she doesn't understand marriage. She thinks she will learn. On the other hand, she may simply refuse to see what her husband does to her. Most of us are accustomed to using denial in painful situations - to avoid accepting a negative prognosis when a loved one is seriously ill, to refuse to believe a child is into drugs, to brugh aside fear when a task cannot be avoided. So a woman finds it less difficult to deny her husband's abuse than to acknowledge it and deal with it.


Next....turning away from the truth...

Several factors aid and abet a woman in her refusal to face the fact of abuse:

The Woman's Role as Peacemaker

First is a woman's basic instinct to make things right. Underneath the stereotpe of compliance that has been drawn of women lies the nature of her role as caregiver; since the best care can be given only in peaceful surroundings, she has long backed away from conflict. Even the lioness that has made the kill for her family's meal gives no challenge to her mate as he stalks in for first pickings but stands back and waits until he has had his fill. Men are fighters; women are appeasers. How often we have heard people say, "If women ran the world, we couldn't send their sons and husbands to be killed as Churchhill and Roosevelt did, and maybe it is true that Neville Chamberlain, disparagingly called "the old lady," they would acquiesce to keep peace.

Given her pacifying nature, therefore, the battered woman exerts great energy to fulfill her role. She may do it with a conscious effort to avoid confrontation by acceding to her husband's demands or with unconscious rationalizations to shift the problem away from him onto herself or with the mechanism of denial by subconsciously looking the other way. Whichever device she uses works-at least for awhile. For one woman it may work for 18 months; for another, 15 years; for Irene it worked for 42 years; and for a friend of mine it is still working after 51.

Other People's Opinions

A second factor in the difficulty of facing abuse is the opinions of other people.

Since an abuser is a master at manipulation and deception, he is well able to convince the outside world that he is what one judge who was wise enough to see through hi act in a divorce case sarcastically called "Mr. Perfect." While battering his wfe at home, he can turn on the charm for other women with flattery and can outshine other men with his wit and consideration. Mr Perfect creates a persona that fools them all.

Therefore, other men and women, instead of validating the abused woman's feelings, help her deny them. When they repeatedly tell her what a wonderful man her husband is and what fun and how thoughtful, she begins to doubt herself, wondering whether she is inventing her hurts and fears. Eventually ashe erases the picture she has painted of her husband as an abuser, replacing it with the image everyone else tells her exists. He must b a pretty good husband after all, she decides.

One woman hadn't reached that point whem in desperation she told her friend, "You know, you're crazy. And is an out-and-out son of a bitch. He may not beat me, but he controls every move I make and treats me like his slave, his imbecile slave at that." Her friend looked stunned as she concluded, "I'm miserable and don't know what to do."

"You want to know what to do?" her friend answered, trying to hide her impatience. "Forget it. He's a nice guy, and you're lucky to have him. Go home and stop being crazy." The woman did go home, and she convinced herself for three yeatrs that she wasn't crazy...until she was.

Irene found herself in the same kind of situation wth Sam. His secretaries, she says, raved about him at office parties because he never ordered but asked them to do things; the lower-echelon executives who reported to him and his other business associates treated him like a father figure; and the CEO told her more than once that Sam was the smartest man in the company and the most honest because he didn't cheat on expense accounts.

How could such an exemplary person be mistreating me? Irene wondered. Sam is a great guy. Everyone says so. Amid this positive feedback, Irene came to the conclusion that she was imaging Sam's oppressive behavior, that she couldn't possibly be right because whe didn't know then what she has since discovered: that it is possible for a man like Sam, who is gentle and considerate in the work world, to have problems and needs that make him a tyrannical controller in the home world. Robert Louis Stevenson didn't create Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from thin air.

When Irene and I discuss Sam and her marriage now, when she relived it for me over a period of weeks a I listened, taping her words, she often wept. "I don't think I'll ever stop bein sad over learnng this lesson too late to help him and help me and help us," she sighed.

The Need for Denial

A third factor contributing to the difficulty of facing abuse is probably the most common of all: the woman doesn't want to face it.
A person who determines to deny reality can find a wide assortment of ways to do it, most of which we see-and use-every day. For instance, despite conclusive evidence that smoking causes disease, smokers deny statistics and continue to light up; despite the fact that no mortal escapes the sagging, wrinkling, and graying of old age, men and women pour millions into cosmetics, face-lifts, and hair dyes to convince themselves otherwise; despite warnings that pollution will be our earth's undoing, we say, "That doesn't mean me" and go on emitting toxic waste.

All women want a good marriage. Those who have one feel safe in picking at insignificant nuisances because the basic relationship is sound enough to weather them. However, a woman whose marriage is abusive may consider the pains and problems of a confrontation too risky, feeling the whole relationship would blow apart as if with a car bomb, leaving them with nothing but wounds to bind up and nurse. These women want to be in a good marriage, and by changing their perception of reality they can put themselves in the marriage they want. The human mind is frequently a magic wand.

A woman in the middle of a second divorce after seven years with a nonphysically abusive husband attributed her refusal to acknowledge abuse years earlier to the hope of avoiding the devastation she had felt after a divorce from her previous husband. "Once was a failure, but two divorces! Then I'd really be a loser," she exclaimed and stayed on for 5 more years of abuse.

Even one failed marriage poses questions that shake a woman's self-confidence about her judgment and wifely skills, and espeically in the midst of abuse does she lay blame on herself rather than on her mate. Therefore, to hang on to self-confidnce and let go of blame, she looks at her marriage through glasses that are not only rose-colored but also so fogged over as to dim its outlines altogether.

The surest way to clear her vision is to provide information that will break through the fog of her wishful thinking and light her relationship with the glare of reality. Although books, movies, and newspaper headlines are making it more and more difficult to ignore physical abuse with its photogenic injuries, nonphysical abuse tends to remain as invisible as the wounds it inflicts. Even women caught in abusive relationships for years-10, 30, or 50-can't identify them as abusive.

In the Introduction to this book I reprinted a list of 19 behaviors used byabusive men, comiled by the Battered Women's Task Force of the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. I think it is worthwhile to present the list again to let women-and men-see specifically what actions are abusive and to know that these actions are abusive and to know that these actions are offenses not only against women but also against the law and warrant cour-ordered protection. Again, note that only one of them is physical. Just the other day I saw a judge-a woman judge-lean across her desk in court, look in the eye a man who had threatened and harassed his wife until she was afraid to enter their home, and aske him, "Are you aware that I can put you in jail if you do this again?"
"Yes, your honor," the man answered, somewhat chastened.
"Don't forget it," warned the judge.
A;though I am encouraged by the seriousness with which this judge and others I have seen take some cases of abuse, I am less than encouraged by their lack of follow-through: in all my time at the Family Court, I have never seen a judge send a man to jail for nonphysically abusing a woman.

Men's behavir may be considered nonphysically abusive if they do one or more of the following:

1 Hit, punch, slap, shove or bite you.

2 Threathen to hurt you or your children

3 Threaten to hurt friends or family members

4 Have sudden outbursts of anger or rage

5 Behave in an overprotective manner

6 Become jealous without reason

7 Prevent you from seeing family or friend

8 Prevent you from going where you want, when you want, without repercussions

9 Prevent your from working or attending school

10 Destroy personal property or sentimental items

11 Deny you access to family assets such as bank accounts, credit cards, or the car

12 Contol all finances and force you to account for what you spend

13 Force you to have sex against your will

14 Force you to engage in sexual acts you o not enjoy

15 Insult you or call you derogator names

16 Use intimidation or manipulation to control you or your children

17 Humiliate you in front of your children

18 Turn minor incidents into major arguments

19 Abuse or threaten to abuse pets

There is one more characteristic of nonphysically abusive behavior that is included in most other lists and causes great grief to women:

20 Withdawing emotional, verbal, or sexual contact.

I regularly speak with women who detail the horrors of their marriage in a state of uncertainty, wondering whether they are foolish in coming to court and should just drop the subject and go home. The greatest reassuance I can offer is the preceding list, which tells them more clearly than any words I can utter, "What he is dong is wrong." By identifying the actions of nonphysical battering, women validate themselves so they can believe without a doubt, "What I am doing is right."

Until they are able to look abuse in the eye, however, women excuse the outrage of a man's actions by blaming, if not themselves, their abuser's bad temper. "He just can't control himself when he's frustrated," women tell me repeatedly. Yet studies indicate that a large majority of abusive men control themselvs very well when it is to their advantage-wit their buddies, for instance, or at work in front of their boss-and selectively explode only when it serves their purpose. In other words, while an abuse outburt may appear to arise from a lack of control, it most assuredly is used to selecively exert control.