It's incredible how many people - friends, family, co-workers, internet sprites - will encourage you (especially if you're female) "not to think the worst". To magic up implausible explanations and excuses. To accept they just don't know better. To feel sorry for the poor love, he's stressed - as seen in every single report of a family murder/suicide. To take on the burden of our fear and pain plus his discomfort, his reputation and our shame.
When some homicidal lunatic chops up his wife and children then hangs himself, over half the media coverage focuses on what a lovely man he was, but stressed. It's as though lovely men, when anxious, might naturally be expected to kill their families. And whose job is it to keep them calm? Their wives, of course. We're supposed to treat men as gods and, simultaneously, toddlers who don't know how to manage their emotions. The subtext is that our lives, and our children's, depend on it.
This existential threat runs underneath every confrontation between women and men; nearer the surface in some cases than in others. I was raised by a tempestuously violent man and a woman who tenderly "understood" him. I learned a great deal about what not to do when Daddy was tired or worried, because if I did the wrong things he would hit me. I learned very little about whether anyone should hit me at all. I learned not to have problems, not to tell anyone about family life, and never to let anyone see Mum's bruises or hear her crying. I was a fully-trained, staggeringly tolerant victim.
Women like me are, confusingly, called "strong". Strong in terms of endurance, yes, but it's far stronger to know we're worth better than that and get the fuck out of there.