Any survivors of domestic violence here?

You don't need to "live it" to understand. You never lived through what I did also, so does that mean you could never relate to the basic pain or desperation? Ha, you probably couldn't because you are capable of being sensitive towards yourself--but not necessarily to others.

There is also something called "brain cells". You,lady, are so self-obsessed and angry at men due to your past abusive relationship, and baised towards anybody who has not "lived it". I grew up with an alcoholic stepfather which was a form of living it, I assure you. And I had no shelter or safe house to go to either.

And yes, I understand there is an emotional factor to it,which adds to the dysfunction. That is why we have mental-hospitals,along with shelters. Or were you too proud to admit yourself to a mental-hospital,as though you were in a position to pick & choose. We call this compromise when you in a mighty bad pinch,and not capable of finding a way out.

Have you ever considered that the abuse you incurred was partially your fault? Maybe you lacked the intelligence and common sense that it takes. So, what's the point; that a woman is doomed if there is no precious shelter? Many abused women would find YOU in the minority. Yeah, sure, your ex=abuser was going to stalk you all over the globe when he has no idea of where you are,or is that your excuse to throw in the chips and play victim? And ,naturally, if it was a man being stalked, your sentiments would be different.

I'm a survivor of domestic violence, not just once but a few times. I always believed it was my fault and never thought to ask myself why I would find someone like that. i now now it was because I was abused as a child and didn't feel l deserved to be loved.Furthermore, it was the way I grew up and never thought that my parents who said I was stupid. i mean they were the adults and i was told that i was to honor thy mother and father. So when i got married i was in an abusive marriage. he physically beat me, said mean things, etc. he wouldn't let me work, so i didn't have any money except for the money he let me have which was very little. In fact , on my 30th birthday my Dad raped me for the last time and I became pregnant. My husband waked in and called me a slut. A few days later, he raped me and beat me up. he said if I was going to act like a slut he was going to treat me like one. He hit me and broke things the entire marriage. i once told my grandmother about the abuse, and thought she would understand because she was beaten up a few times herself in her marriage. Not only did she not believe me, she said that he was such a nice man and i must stop doing whatever i was doing to make him act that way. She said that husbands don't hit their wives for no reason. Wives always get hit when they deserve it.If I didn't want to get hi, stop acting like a brat. I told her i didn't act like a brat and she said by my saying that and not agreeing with her that if she was my husband she would have hit me.After that I then knew i didn't have anyone. She even said I was a bad wife for tattling on my husband and not being loyal. I would call the police and they knew i had bipolar, so they would ask if I was taking my medication. I assured I was. Then they told me that if I pressed charges I would have my kids taken away from me, due to my mental illness. They told me that no bones were broken, just items of mine so they wouldn't arrest him. he then would apologize to the police and to me. He would act nice for a few days and it would happen again. i stopped calling the police because the last time i called them, they told me that they were going to arrest me for having them come for nothing more than my neck being black and blur due to his trying to strangle me. I has a swollen eye, but again no broken bones. I gave up calling the police after that. I kept the child and became pregnant with my second child 8 1/2 months after my first one was born. I stayed because I didn't have any money and very very few marketable skills. Furthermore, I found out after my second child was born I wasn't healthy. I have biploar and was afraid that they would put my kids in foster care if I went to a shelter. I found out that I have stage 4 kidney disease. Due to the abuse i had, I didn't have any friends, and i stayed. I became pregnant a 3rd time and if any one is asking why I slept with my husband was for a few reasons. I was of course lonely, but more importantly I was afraid what he would do to me if I refused. Any way after i became pregant and this was now in 2005, he totally freaked out. he kept screaming for the baby inside me to die, and he kept hitting my stomach. I ended up miscarring.We went to a counselor and it worked a for a few months, but he stopped sleeping from me. I ended up having an affair and asked him for a divorce. There is a lot more to this, but I'm keeping it simple. I wanted the kids, but he wouldn't let me have them even though I was a better parent. They looked at the fact that I have a mental illness and the man I was going to be with wasn't working and my not working and the court with my ex's family hiring a very expensive lawyer gave him custody. The man I was having an affair with and was going to marry broke up with me after he had us move over 1,500 miles away and stole my money and abused me as well. I ended up moving even further away from my kids, because i couldn't move back to where I originally with. My mom let me stay with her, but she abused me so much even while I was living there. I ended up having a nervous breakdown. I ended up in an adult home and met the man of my dreams. He and i adore each other and are each other's best friend. I realize now why i was in all these abusive relationships and would never be so desperate again. I now like myself and know that I deserve to be loved and respected.

My aunt has married a number of times and a lot of them were men who beat her and my cousins. She has been married now to wonderful man for many years.

The thing people don't understand is those who were abused as kids or abused by a spouse lose their spirit. They are broken and actually think they don't deserve a good man. So they seek out the worst. They often believe they deserve to be hurt. They said the wrong thing or didn't vacuum the rug correctly. It is a life long pattern.

Therapy helped my aunt. I doubt back in the 70s Francine was offered therapy or if she was it wasn't as advanced as it is today.

As a small child, I remember 3 instances of my father fighting my mother and each time alcohol was involved. I remember him having her by her hair and we kids (4 in all) jumped him. My sister was the oldest and she must have been 10 and my youngest brother was maybe 3. We were all over him like a gang of monkeys, jumping on his back, biting him on his legs, hands and arms and hitting him in the head. He was having a really hard time because while he was trying to get us off of him, my mom broke free and started beating him with a broom. We were all in the back of the house at first but then he went toward the kitchen and we suddenly heard a gun shot. Then we all ran to the kitchen and he was lying on the kitchen floor with his eyes closed with ketchup all over the place, pretending to be dead. Then my mama started beating him again with the broom and she was saying something like "Get your ass up off that damn floor and clean this sh!t up, you damn fool" but as kids we thought that he had actually killed himself and she was beating our dead father so we were screaming and begging her to stop it.

There was another time when she was washing her hair and he was holding her head under the water and she couldn't get up. My younger brother and I were the only two kids home that day because we were only like 2 and 4 but my older siblings were in school. To this day, I hate the smell of that shampoo because every time I smell it, it brings back that same fear that I had that day.

Then, there was one Halloween and my grandmother threw a party at her house but there was this guy there that we didn't know. Most likely he came over with one of my uncles but just like in the movie, the guy starts paying a little too much attention to my mother and I think he said something to my mother that my dad felt was disrespectful to him and the next thing we knew, he and the guy were fighting. My uncles had to break it up and we all had to leave, which made us kids mad because we had to miss all the fun but my mother was mad and embarrassed because he disrespected her mother's house but he took it as though she was mad and taking up for the guy. My grandmother's house was like a 20 minute drive from our house and they argued until we were about 5 minutes away from home and he abruptly stopped the car and got out. We had a car with a sunroof and he went over to her side of the car and reached through the sunroof to pull her by her hair (My mama had really long hair that's why all of their fights involved her hair)and started beating her in the head. Then he told her to get out of the car and walk home. By this time it was about 9 or 10 at night and she grabbed us and told us to get out of the car too but as we were walking home, he was riding beside us and threatening her to get back in the car and, trying to make us kids get back in too. He did this all the way home. I remember because back then wearing car seats and seatbelts wasn't as serious as today and my mother had my younger brother, who was only 1 at the time, in her lap the whole time he was hitting her in the head and she had to carry him the whole walk home.

But then after that, he stopped drinking and he stopped his violent episodes. In fact, I had blocked it all out of my mind so by the time I was a teenager, I had no memory of my dad ever being violent with my mom. I knew that they would have an argument every now and then like most couples but oddly, I was able to totally block out the abuse as if it never happened. Then one day I was in a store when a shampoo bottle fell and wasted on the floor. It had the exact scent of the shampoo that my mama was using that day when he was holding her head under water and that fear came back just as strong as it was that day. I even started to hyperventilate, right there in the store. After that the memory of the day we jumped him and he was pretending to be dead became clearer because for some reason, I always remembered it but I thought it was just a dream but my sister verified that it wasn't a dream.


I woke up this way...