Dear David and Family,
I was delighted to hear you discussing Anger Management on Radio National Life Matter’s today 17.8.09.
My Dad got his Irish up occasionally but my parent’s strongest words were, “We need to discuss this after the kids are in bed”. They’d retire to their room and I’d hear a murmur of voices as I nodded off to sleep. By morning they were a unified team ready to announce the new game plan. Thus I was ill-prepared; a lamb to the slaughter for my husband who’d grown up in a home lacking mutual respect.
Not believing he’d choose to intentionally harm me, I naively succumbed to his mind games. The cycle progressed. I struggled to get us to marriage guidance counseling. (Fearful of reprisals I hadn’t dared mention being threatened with a knife the night before). The counselor saw a frazzled woman and a calm man in a suit. He agreed with the man, this woman was clearly sly and manipulative. He told me that I was the one who must modify my behaviour. I tried, feeling like I was peddling a 100 miles per minute and getting nowhere. The incidents escalated. After a particularly terrifying one I left with the kids for his mum’s, interstate. I agreed to return only if he did the Anger Management Course at Relationships Australia. He did. But not mandated like the other men he concluded that he was clearly problem free. But he did find the new found skills handy in messing up his wife’s head.
Desperate, I went to a psychiatrist. “My husband tells me every day that I’m crazy. After ten years of it I’m starting to believe him. I’m ready to leave. Should I?” I asked. “No, that’s unwise” she replied, “No what you need is medication and therapy instead”. She and other professionals pathologised me to the point that I no longer trusted my gut instinct. So we continued living on egg-shells for another two years. Then our 2 y.o.s childcare did a mandatory report without my knowledge. Family services rang and said I must get my kids out or they’d intervene. I was scared stiff. I’d be jobless, penniless & homeless. I feared my kids would be removed. I’d nursed kids sexually abused by supposed carers from the system. I couldn’t risk it.
We went directly to a refuge. There, every woman agreed with me; they’d prefer to be threatened with a knife or gun then to endure all those mind games. All ten had been diagnosed with post-natal depression following the birth of their first child. But not one professional had quizzed, “Do you ever feel like you’re walking on egg shells?”.
Raised as a devout Catholic I’d seen marriage as a sacred vocation. So I stood by my man in good times and bad, sickness (surely it was mental sickness) and in health. He and I had sworn to love and to honour each other. But he breeched the marriage contract the minute behaving dishonourably became his norm. Sadly many folk do the same.
I believe most men don’t set out to harm their families. When I was a midwife every new dad only wanted the very best for the tiny baby nestled in his arms. But then stress kicks in and so too the bad old coping mechanisms. I tried to steer my man towards help, on his own terms, before it was too late. But such men treat women's words with contempt.
Deep down my man was/is decent…but messed up. Combine this with a wife made to feel unworthy by the nuns at school meant that naively I ‘turned the other cheek’, green-lighting bad behavior. And yet everyone deserves to live in dignity and feel safe. I failed to set firm boundaries and walk away when he continued to disrespect our basic human rights. Thus our kids got messed up too. At the refuge, aged 10, our son tried to hang himself. His rationale, “I never want to grow up to be a man. All men are evil”.
Meanwhile my ex’s career and salary soars. I’ve had to forfeit mine to constantly pick up the pieces when he stuffs up. He’s made an effort to change and is much improved. But then he loses it and undoes a year’s work of patching up. I still cajole Miss 11 to stay with Dad every second week. But when she comes in bawling afterwards I feel so frustrated and sorry for him. Sadly he reaps what he sows. Now his only son, aged 17, and daughter 16, refuse to spend time with him.
Angry men are more likely to hear another man; especially one who‘s been in their shoes.
That’s why I’m so grateful to you for the work you do with them. They deserve help yet have been marginalized for a long time.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Joan
PS Please commend your men for their courage.
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