To anyone who left a partner because of domestic violence, or it hoping to take that step...

[MmeLindor.]

Please read this moving article by Patrick Stewart and know that you have done so much to protect your children and that no matter how hard it was/is on them right now, they will always always love you for getting out.

Warning, it may well make you cry.

It is such an interesting thread to see the POV of both child and women of DV.

I totally empathise and sympathise with how a child can be traumatised and scarred by DV, however I still remain slightly uncomfortable that 'the mothers' seem to be getting all the blame for not protecting their children. It is a father's job to protect children too, and in ALL these cases it is the father that is the abuser so ultimately HE is the one to blame. He is the one who brought destruction and fear and hurt to the family, not the mothers. These men destroy everything in their path without a care in the world and it is not the women's fault if they are understandably paralysed by their treatment and the living fear. Every single one of us on here who have been abused by men did not leave at the first abuse incident, generally because you don't see it for what it is. And that is the very horrible nature of abuse......it takes time and learning to see it. I am so sorry your mum has not even acknowledged what has gone on jasminerice however she WAS a victim, probably traumatised and very probably went through horrendous things that you never even knew about. I am truly truly not having a go, I just think, especially from your last post ("I think she would have been a wonderful mother if she were with another man") that the ONLY person to blame is your father. And maybe some mediation of some description might help you and your mother come to terms with what your father did to both of you.

LadyBla There is so much truth in what you say. I don't know what else to say. Maybe, as much as it was ingrained in my mum to stay with her abuser, it is also ingrained in me that she should have put me,her DC, first. I realise that is too simplistic.
I really wish children were taught more in schools about healthy relationships and red flags. I know that it is not just the schools responsibilty but it would be a good place to start.

Stick I'm so sorry that your Mum did that :( . I haven't read every post on here. At the moment I can't, so I don't know if you said what age you were when she left you. I will try to read the thread properly soon.

Solo I was 16, just about to take my exams. I have no memory of living in a DV free home.
Possibly that is why I'm a bit blinkered and see it mainly from the childrens point of view.

solo, yes my mother is still with my dad.

Lady BB, yes of course my dad is to blame because he was the actual abuser. In hindsight I can see that he went through some sort of breakdown and kind of turned into a 'psycho' overnight (that's how I perceived it as a child anyway) and went from being a caring dad with whom I was very close, to an angry dad who suddenly hated me. I blame him obviously for being so abusive, but he had a severe mental illness that went unrecognised and undiagnosed and untreated. And I know it was the illness that made him act the way he did towards me. And I feel now, after many years, I've reached a place of forgiveness for him. Although there are still some things he has said and done that I will never forgive him for.

Whereas my mother was not mentally ill. She was just scared. Too scared to ever stand up for me let alone leave my dad. I stood up for her in fact when I was just a child. And I just despise her for being so weak, for not finding the strength from somewhere inside to protect her child. Some of us are born weak and some of us are born strong. She is weak and pathetic in my eyes, she took the easy route and stayed as opposed to the much harder and scary option of leaving. I don't despise my dad because he was ill, I don't believe his character is inherently flawed like my mother's. He doesn't lie, he doesn't cheat, he doesn't manipulate and I respect that. I don't respect my mother at all, she lies, she cheats, she manipulates, she takes the easy option every time, she refuses to take responsibilty for her part in my horrible childhood. At least my dad acknowledged in a tiny way that he had treated me badly by saying he regretted the past. All my mother has done is feel sorry for herself and what she went through. She is a waste of space and the sooner she dies the better as far as I'm concerned.

What illness did he have?

I don't know. It's irrelevant. I hope you do not subscribe to the view that mother's can do no wrong and would never fail their children. My last counsellor did. She was very accepting when I described my dad's abuse to her and made no excuses for his behaviour and she said it was wrong and unacceptable. But when I told her about some quite cruel things my mother did when I was very young, she made excuses for my mother's behaviour and implicitly blamed me for being a difficult child.

There is a strong societal taboo about believing that mothers as well as fathers can be cruel and neglectful/abusive towards their children. People seem far more ready to believe that a father was abusive but far less inclined to accept that a mother was also cruel/neglectful/abusive.

In the main it was my father who was highly abusive whilst my mother was neglectful. But my mother was also quite cruel at times eg I remember being very young and she would play hide and seek with me. But she would hide in a place I would NEVER find her and stay there until I was crying and terrified that she had actually left the house and left me home alone.

jasmine - I agree with that. My mum left my dad after having an affair with his best friend for 3 years. She walked away from my brother and I without a second look. She still has no regrets.
Yet when I talk about her to friends etc, they express disapproval that I am angry about it. That I felt hurt, disappointed, let down and rejected. Not all mothers are good or put their children first. But society doesn't seem able to face that.

Of course I don't subscribe to the view that all mothers are good. There are people in my family who have been horrendous mothers.

However I do also think there is a myth that mental illness causes men to be abusive and that is what I was getting at. I have no doubt your mother was neglectful like you say and therefore it is a double whammy for you to deal with which is all the worse.

LadyBB, I've never heard of the 'myth' that mental illness causes men to be abusive. Where did you hear that?

And in fact I do believe that mental illness is ultimately behind unhealthy damaging behaviour. A person who is emotionally healthy with good self esteem would not be abusive towards another person. I don't believe in inherently bad/evil people. I believe people do bad things, usually because of something that has happened to them.

Have you read any Alice Miller? I would recommend that you do as you come across as very misinformed to me.

And it's not your place to doubt or not doubt whether my mother was neglectful.

jasmine - It's obvious your mother was very harmful to you. :( I don't think LBB was trying to minimise this, but was trying to understand it from her pov in order to offer a different perspective. No one can relate to your life because it's unique to you. I genuinely think she was trying to help, not upset

I was not criticising in any way.
As for what I meant by the myth that mental illness causes abuse...low self esteem is not a mental illness. Schizophrenia is, for example. And furthermore low self esteem is present in many people but they do not all abuse people. So although there may be a correlation there is definitely not a causal relationship.
I don't want this to come across as arsey because it is not intended that way. It is intended to show that abuse is not something that can be explained away by a mental illness as very few men who are abusers have any mental illness present.

LadyBB, who said low self esteem is a mental illness? Not me. And don't patronise me by 'explaining' that schizophrenia is a mental illness. What are your qualifications anyway in the mental health field? You are coming across as arsey and extremely ignorant. LadyBlahBlah, you got your name right at least.

Toothbrush, I appreciate your post but we don't even know what experience Lady B has of this issue since she has not posted her own story. And I find her tone and assertions arsey, annoying and upsetting and as I have already said she is misinformed. If she wants to talk about myths she should go elswhere because as I understand it this thread is about reality not myths.

Ladyblahblah you say " in ALL these cases it is the father that is the abuser so ultimately HE is the one to blame" I take offence at that because my father did not abuse me, he was a victim of my mother's abuse too. I would also like to add that in my experience women who have suffered domestic violence do not excuse their abusers behaviour away by mental illness.

Jasmine I totally understand where you are coming from.

jasminerice, I've been following this thread and I really struggle with why people do the things they do, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you said: "I believe people do bad things, usually because of something that has happened to them".

I do believe that some people are bad / evil though. It's the nurture / nature debate.

It's really interesting to see views from the side of a 'child' as well as the wife. It's unfortunate that there are no views of a husband that has been abused too / or from someone who has committed the abuse - because it is only them who can say why they have done what they did.

As for the mental health part of all this, well who are we to say whether someone has / hasn't got mental health issues? It is down to each individual case. Some abusers will have mental health issues. Fact. Some won't. Fact.

Maybe I should have named myself "Iliketositonthefence" but nothing in life is simple and there are two sides to every story.

I think it's how people deal with the bad things that happen to them. Bad things happened to me, really bad things but they didn't make me a bad person, I am the total opposite. We all have a choice as to the kind of person we become, I chose to be the complete opposite of my mother. There is also the matter of responsibility, yes, some people have had a bad time but if they choose to repeat the pattern and go on to be abusive themselves then they have to take responsibility for that, not blame their background or the person that abused them.

Timefor, yes that's very true. But I don't think we all have the capacity and ability to 'see' what happened to us and take steps not to repeat the pattern.

I mentioned Alice Miller above. Her book "The Drama of the Gifted Child" is about how an abused child can overcome the damage done to the soul by the abuse and become a healthy, whole person. But as the title says, the ability to be able to do this seems to be a 'gift' that one is born with or not as the case may be. My mother was not blessed with such a gift, that much is obvious to me, her capacity to self reflect, her capacity for strength and courage, her determination to survive and ensure the survival of her children were all way below what was required.

There are many others like her sadly. I read about it all the time on here. Posters who are being abused and whose children are witnessing and/or experiencing abuse. So often they seem unwilling and/unable to 'see' the abuse and elect to stay in the relationship. It seems to be only a small minority of mothers who have the inherent courage and determination for survival that make the break and leave their abusers.

I would really recommend Alice Miller's book(s), they really helped me in healing from the trauma and emotional damage done to me as a child.

Yes, I agree that not everyone has the ability to break free from the cycle of abuse and sadly the pattern will be repeated in a lot of cases.

It really is a huge thing with many different aspects depending on circumstances which are personal to each individual. It's all very sad.

I like the idea of having been born with a gift though

I think sometimes there are reasons why people stay that are beyond our comprehension because we don't share their value or belief system. When I was living overseas and planning my departure I had an English friend whose husband was far worse than my own (he was convicted of raping another woman, although he swears he didn't...) She was far more financially secure than me - owned a house in the UK - and I couldn't understand why she didn't leave. She told me that if she left her husband it 'would kill' her parents who were staunch Catholics and who had already disowned one of her siblings. The idea of being disowned by her parents was very frightening to her, even though she was in her thirties. This was beyond my comprehension, but it was clearly very important to her.

Also, and again I don't understand why, I think some people feel ashamed of what has happened to them. I think I felt a little ashamed about my own situation: ashamed that someone as strong as I believe myself to be had allowed myself to be sucked into an abusive situation. It made me feel foolish. I can't rationalise that feeling at all, but I know I felt it.

I can totally relate to your last paragraph woollyideas for some reason I felt ashamed too, also embarrassed, I don't know why because I had done nothing to feel embarrassed or ashamed about. My mind was full of conflicting feelings and emotions that I don't think I will ever understand.

I think we feel ashamed of our own abuse partly because our abusers condition us to. They convince us insidiously that we are to blame for their behaviour. That everyone can see how awful we are and what they have to put up with. My dad told me more than once that I was difficult to live with and must have provoked my ex in some way. My dh would absolutely disagree with that.

But back then, I felt admitting abuse was a sign that I was weak. That I'd failed in my first adult relationship. I can't believe how much I've changed...it feels like another life now.

It's bizarre, isn't it? I wonder if the perpetrators feel shame? I don't think my ex did. I think he totally justfified it to himself by saying I 'made him' lose his temper. He once said to me 'if you would only apologise and admit that everything was your fault, we could start with a clean slate and pretend all this never happened.'

X post lazarusb!