Is it ok for a man to hit a woman if she slaps him first?

[Comparethemarket]

Just looking for opinions on this as I don't want to reveal anything to RL friends.

I was reflecting on my relationship with my ex, which was abusive in many ways (and certainly toxic, if not abusive).

Sometimes I'd say something, or ask something eg wanting reassurance (yes, I know that's needy, but there were circumstances in which I felt very insecure for good reason).

When I'd ask something about "us" there were times he'd lose his temper, shouting and screaming at me. I'd try to calm him down and plead with him to stop. On a couple of occasions he then pulled up something that just made me snap and I slapped him across the face (one of these times was saying something derogatory about my then teen children, another time he was shouting and screaming, threatening to leave and I just saw red).

I know I shouldn't have slapped him across the face, but immediately that I did on both occasions he hit me back, much harder. The first time he split my lip in retaliation and the second time I was bruised for a week afterwards.

I said it was my fault because I slapped him first, so he was therefore the victim of physical abuse.

I know everything about this relationship was so very wrong and I'm not asking for opinions on that. I'm out of it now and it will stay that way.

I know I was wrong to slap him first. I saw red and it was a way of trying to defend myself whilst he was screaming at me and telling me he didn't care.

Is he right though? Was I the one being abusive by hitting him, or saying something which made him angry in the first place?

Please no judgements. I'm just struggling to process what has happened.

A woman slapping a man in the face is not the same as a man punching a woman in the face. One is designed to shock and humiliate, one is designed to strike fear and cause damage. What you did was wrong but what he did is considerably worse. Decent men know you never, ever hit a woman.

This sounds like reactive abuse. He verbally abused you and pushed you so far that it resulted in you physically assaulting him. Read up on reactive abuse.

It is never ok, unless it is necessary in self defence. Retaliation is not self defence.

I bet he just loved grounding you down into breaking point and slapping him to give him a reason to punch you.
I think there is alot of misunderstanding of male abuse on this thread.
He was wrong to push you so far and he was wrong to punch you in response to a slap.

Was he in any danger? If not, then no he shouldn't have hit you.

In most cases, a man would be able to move you out of the way and leave the situation. If that was possible, then that's the option he should have taken.

That doesn't mean it was in any way Ok for you to hit him though.

It's cowardly to slap anyone if you think they can't or won't slap you back.

It's exactly why school children bully younger kids - because they don't think they'll get slapped back.

It is abusive no matter what the size or strength difference.

Of course you should not have slapped him , you know that
but the force he used was disproportionate and
he knew that
it was abusive and had the police been called he would have been arrested and charged because there was physical evidence

it’s good to process and reflect with a aim of doing better next time , but don’t dwell, you’ve fine the hard thing and gotten out

OP I've been in a very similar relationship in the past that thankfully is fully behind me now. I'm glad you are also out of it. Those saying it doesn't matter on the gender have probably never been in a physically abusive relationship with a male. They can do a woman serious harm. A slap from a woman is not the same as a punch from a man. Neither is to be condoned however. My ex went on to abuse his next partner resulting in a MARAC. Your ex is not the victim here.

Yes I understand there are abusive women out there but it is unusual for them to be consistently physically abusive (although there are a few exceptions).

Sometimes it's impossible to walk away from a verbally abusive partner when they follow you or barge through locked doors.

You were wrong to hit him. He was wrong to hit you back. He is bigger and stronger than you so it stands to reason that him hitting you is inherently more dangerous and could do a lot more damage. But the principle is the same for both of you - no-one should be hitting their partner.

It sounds like a toxic relationship where you were both abusive. Just be glad it's over and hopefully you'll do things differently in your next relationship. Disagreements are part of life but they can be handled calmly without screaming and shouting and violence.

I'm sorry but I really object to posters saying you are both abusive. This clearly shows a lack of understanding of abusive relationships.

No, they're not exactly the same thing: they're too slightly different kinds of physical abuse - just like stabbing somebody through the heart and shooting them with a gun are different kinds of murder.

Thank you for your responses.

To those that say the correct response to verbal abuse is just to walk away, it's not always that simple. I wish it were. I'm not trying to justify that I slapped him across the face, I know that was the wrong reaction.

Sometimes these outbursts would come seemingly out of nowhere. I would try to start a calm conversation about something I felt needed to be talked about and he would lose his temper very quickly.

One time for example, we'd just had fantastic sex , we were cuddled up and I felt very close to him. I asked him about where we stood (we were very on/off for the entire time) and he lost his temper, shouting and calling me names. I would beg and plead with him to stop and calm down. If I shut down and said nothing he'd get more angry. If I left for 5-10 minutes to try and calm the situation down he'd start again as soon as I came back inside.

He'd usually be angry for several days. I'd then apologise for making him angry and it would be good for a few weeks until it started again.

It's a lot more nuanced than "who hit first?" Or "they hit so hit them back".

No one should be hitting anyone. That's the blanket rule.

Genuine self defence involves using reasonable force. It is not retaliation. A man hitting a woman hard enough to break skin or bruise her for a week, after having first been in her face (presumably, given he was close enough for Op to slap) screaming abuse, is not a victim. Op was not the one in control, he was from start to finish. It's not the same dynamic as women that genuinely abuse their partners.

There's a difference between a woman slapping a man and him pushing her, manhandling her out of the room to close the door, or grabbing her wrist forcefully to stop a second hit, and just whacking her in the face because she did it first. One is trying to make sure she doesn't hurt him and is kept away from him. The second is retaliation specifically to hurt her back and worse.

Abusive men often push their victims verbally and emotionally to breaking point so that they lash out, and then the man has the ability to slap her around but it's fine because he's the victim. It's a recognised form of abuse in itself.

You weren't abusive OP so forget the people telling you you were just as bad because you weren't. Reactive abuse is a thing.
He manipulated the situation so he could hit you and justify it to himself and to you.
Abuse men do this all the time and then play the victim. It aids their cycle of abuse and further makes it confusing and hard to leave as you think you are to blame.
Can't believe people still fall for it.
Classic classic tale. Nothing seems to have been learnt from the Gabby Petito video does it?
She was being abused, scratched him, got labelled the abuser while he was treated as the victim and now she's dead.
We need to all stop playing into their hands, and look at the bigger picture.

So which are the acceptable ways in which a man can 'only' shock and humiliate a woman?

Does that mean that I'm not allowed to punch my child, but I can freely 'just' slap them, if they annoy me or misbehave, to shock them into better behaviour?

Decent people know that you don't hit people, unless it's unavoidable in self-defence.

I was just about to talk about this.

@Comparethemarket no, it wasn't OK for him to hit you, and from what you've said, he used considerably more force than you did. A split lip requires pretty hard contact.

As has been said, there is a behaviour that arises in domestic abuse where one partner will bully and provoke the other until they react, allowing the first partner to swiftly claim victim status and tell themselves that their own behaviour was not their fault or responsibility even if they've gone on to inflict more serious harm. Saw my father do it all the time.

We like to think of these relationships as very black and white and one sided - a violent man and a sweet little woman who wouldn't say boo to a goose. But that's not really how it works IRL.

So would you class a woman who has been verbally abused for hours, tried to walk away but wasn't able, shaking with fear, having their partner bellowing in their face, and snaps and slaps them, as abusive or acting in self defence?

I once witnessed my father stand in front of the kitchen door and put his weight against it so that my mother couldn't leave the room while he said 'you're an arsehole and a cunt' to her over and over and over. I was very young, probably 7 or 8.

I witnessed it because he trapped me in the room with them on purpose. There's no way to walk away from that. My mother got more and more upset, begging him to stop, trying to open the door. He wouldn't budge.

He once said that yes he punched her in the face but she kicked him in the shin so she was worse. He would also explode seemingly from nowhere - fine one minute, absolutely furious the next, boiling red in the face about to have a stroke level of angry. Completely out of proportion to whatever the alleged 'crime' was supposed to be. It made him very unpredictable, which is extremely manipulative because you can never relax, not even for a second.

Absolute monster of a man.

Taking all other context aside, in my opinion, if you hit someone, you should expect them to hit you back.

However, in your example, you were both abusive. You escalated that abuse though and made it physical. You give no hint that he would of hit you of you hadn't hit him.

If there's ever a next time, leave before that happens.

Also, I saw red is no excuse for not being able to control yourself. Do better.

Is this the advice we give children, to hit back in the playground? I don't think so.

It's not acceptable for anyone to be hit but if someone hit me I would definitely hit back

To those that say the correct response to verbal abuse is just to walk away, it's not always that simple. I wish it were.

Where did you get the idea anyone's saying it's simple?

It's not, but you need to learn to keep your hands to yourself when you're angry.

For your own sake and safety more than anything else.

Men shouldn't hit women. They're cowards if they do. If you want to hit someone hit a bloke.
In boxing you have to be the same weight?!
I wouldn't dream of hitting someone smaller than me. Even if I was a bloody steroid addled football hooligan.

The man that split my lip, and the rest, I literally still have nightmares about him 25 years later.

So any man who does that is a fucking wrong un and deserves a life of loneliness and seclusion.

I'm in no way trying to justify or minimise the abuse that he perpetrated; but was he physically preventing her from leaving?

If so, then I would say she was justified in using any necessary physical force in self-defence; but considering that a slap seems to lead him to respond physically with significantly more force, it would seem that it isn't very efficient as self-defence.

Did OP actually say that she felt there was no alternative but to slap him in self-defence? From what I read, it was an angry response to him saying truly nasty things - but not actually self-defence.

At any rate, my original response was to the minimising of a slap, as though it were somehow 'acceptable' violence.

Once you hit him he should have left you.
Tbh once you were fighting and he was insulting your children etc you should have left him.
thank goodness it’s over.