Maybe the real problem is the attitude like yours. They are victims and they deserve to have excuses. Let them be. Yea, let them get the crap beat out of and being emotionally abused. So how constructive is it to criticize my attitude instead of coming up with a more aggressive solution? You can't tell me that having all these women's shelters and offering free counseling are the only solutions.

You can criticize me all you want. You imply that their problems will improve by changing my attitude, but I am not part of their problems. Maybe you need to address the real problem instead of wasting your criticism on me. After two decades of working with domestic violence victims, your answer to my question drawing from your expertise is to criticize me? Or posting a link from Wikipedia? Are you serious? It is always easier to diverge attention from the real problem to a scapegoat.

No, don't consider the fact that I am tired of seeing these women being abused. Pardon me for my anger regardless how much sense I have tried to talk them. That would require too much sensitivity and delicate indiscriminate judgement on your part.

Here is my insensitive crass judgmental uninformed comment to you. WTF is wrong with your attitude?

Victims are constantly told that their perception is wrong, that they are crazy and more often than not, the abuser is a well-liked guy and perceived to be easy going to the outside world (any stats on how many cops are abusers?). No longer trusting their judgement and the cycle of abuse including periods of apologies and then a renewed "honeymoon," the victim keeps hoping that if they change THEIR behavior, the abuse will stop and they will be loved as the abuser promises them that they can be.

Victims are isolated from friends and family quite often and even put into a situation of financial and/or emotional dependence. Additionally, once the abuse rises to the level of moving to leave, the threats and violence invariably escalates. Threats to kill the victim, their children, their family, make their lives a living hell, torture the victim and enter them into a zone of fear that usually paralizes them. Having called the police and having the abuser jailed and released only creates more danger to the victim as the rage and level of violence of the abuser is limitless.

Let's go back to Nicole Brown-Simpson shall we? She called the cops and eventually divorced OJ but she ended up dead.

Please note my careful refrain from labeling victims as women. The fact is that many many men are victims of verbal, emotional, sexual and even physical abuse but this is a massively under-reported problem just as much due to the shame they feel in allowing this to happen to them as the women who fail to report it.

I'm not going to go on any more, but I would simply ask that instead of standing on THAT side of the fence and saying "what's wrong with YOU the victim for staying" that you gain some knowledge, insight and the compassion to understand that it's not as easy it at looks on the outside and rather than judging the victim, perhaps a more productive discussion would be how to stop the cycle of abuse and find a way to shut down the abusers.

xoxo
Ray
I can't help it, I LIKE sex!

Your mentality of putting all the blame on the abuser makes the victim feel more helpless. Your yourself stated that the cycle takes months or years to develop. Recognizing such relationship in early stage gives the victim a chance to stop the progress. The victim has the power to stop the relationship.

If you think victims should stay in the abusive relationship, are you telling me that women's shelters are killing these victims instead of saving them?

My suggestion to you is to keep your mind open until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Many, many women get out and stay out but not because YOU told them to. Victims of abuse have a psychodynamic that you simply cannot understand or empathize with until you've been there.

xoxo
Ray
I can't help it, I LIKE sex!

Again, your attitude toward this issue is enforcing what the abuser is imposing on the victims. Instead, you can empower them by encouraging them to believe themselves having the power to change and the power to get out of the relationship.

The fact is very simple. Abusive relationship is bad. The remedy is stop it and get out of it as soon as possible. If they choose not to leave, maybe that's because they like it or they deserve it. Reality is harsh. But your over-sympathetic attitude isn't helping any either.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Walk a mile in my shoes before you start TELLING me anything.

xoxo
Ray
I can't help it, I LIKE sex!

Again, there are plenty of resources to help these abused victims. All they have to do is to leave and ask for help.

Abuse of any kind (spousal, child, sexual) is wrong. Period. And the abuser, not the victim, is immoral. Saying that the victim is part of the problem is like saying that being a young boy is wrong because they attract priests. You clearly don't understand the manipulative ability of an abuser. It's why they are often referred to as "predators." They have a way of causing confusion and creating a sense dependency in the minds of their victims.

It's EVIL, pure and simple. To lay any of the problem in the lap of the victim is playing into the hands of the abuser.

You might want to stop and examine whose team you're on and who you're supporting. Stop listening to Dr. Phil and pay attention to what our friend Ray is saying.

b_a_g
"50 is the new 30"

A young boy could walk away and tell people what the priests have tried to do. Many have. I don't blame them for being a young male. I don't blame them for being molested by a priest. But I do blame them partially if they don't tell anybody about the molesting priest.

You clearly undermines a victim's will power to stop the abusive relationship. Like your friend, Ray, you are encouraging the victims to be hold no responsibility or accountability whatsoever. Are you one of those who bitches about high gas price while you drive a SUV with 14 mpg making unnecessary road trips all the time? Yes, you are not to blame. The evil Islamic OPEC is to blame! Don't forget to attend the next Quran burning event to honor the 9/11. If you lack the brain power to comprehend my sarcasm, it means STFU and grow more brain cells before you open your pie hole.

More like he doesn't understand why someone being abused would stay in a relationship and get upset over someone suggesting she should leave that relationship. I can't say I do either. One reason I have never married is that women by nature have very screwed up logic and reasoning processes. You illustrate that quite well with your comments...

BoneDonor

No amount of brain wattage could compensate for what ALS victims like him endure just from the disease, never mind domestic abuse. Ugh.

She was hospitalized for a while, with bad brusing and had to get stitches from this coward doing this shit to her. It broke my heart to see her like that, I kept on telling her she has to leave the man because if she doesn't leave him, he's going to think it is okay to put his hands on her.

But no, she didn't leave him. Things were okay again with them, it was like a couple weeks out of the month they had their moments and then all hell broke loose. She called me and cried to me, telling me she is broken inside and out, and has to get out of the relationship. She was afraid to call the police because if he was sent to jail, he would still find her when he got out.

A year later, same thing happen, she was beaten again and again repeatly and she finally played the role as the tough person and she flipped the script on the man she was dating, made up acted like everything was fine, and she finally was able to break through from this man.

From this day, she has became a lot STRONGER, and is living her life well, single though, afraid to be in another relationship, but Im proud of her. I felt so hopeless because I really was scared to get involved to try to help her because on my end, Im just another female, trying to help out my gf and not knowing what he will do to me.

Hate to break this to you, but that is not a 'communication' problem. In fact, you might say that the gentleman in question was communicating quite effectively.

Women have a bad habit of looking for the hidden meaning in conversations, even when it's "hidden" right in front of their noses...

BoneDonor

Women have many support groups but men don't, because they don't handle it that way.

Years of criticism, hateful words, and disrespect, can't be unsaid or undone.

I have heard this from two different women out of their own experiences, and you are correct. In general, while we may offer them what we believe to be 'useful advise', in the end, it will really be up the these women to stand on their own and walk away from those negative relationships.

For one of the women I met, I had the impression that several of her bad experiences and perhaps abuse received during her life helped her to gain a lot of inner strength and confidence. She seems to be a very mature and intelligent person beyond her years. I do not know how she was exactly before more than what she commented on her early life, but she is surely, IMO, a most admirable woman who has used that self gained strength to define goals for her life and purse them. She either left the abusive man, or they simply separated.

Now the other woman in trouble was in this bad relationship with a man who was constantly in jail because of drugs use and domestic violence towards her. They had a kid together, and she was always trying to change this man because she "loved him", she said. They were together for more than ten years, and finally, one time he got out of jail and went to live with another woman. This crushed the first woman heart and finally she understood he was not good for her (crisis). So he left her, not she. Today she seems to have put her life together a bit more, but does not show high self esteem, confidence or ambition for a better future. She might have gotten complacent with what she has at the moment.

I believe when abused women recognize themselves in the mirror as intelligent, powerful beings with the will, strength and courage to live their own lives, they create the change they need. They discover they must enter into a crisis in order to make the change happen and be prepared to confront any possible backlash. This discovery or realization has to come from their own introspection. It seems, however, it maybe easier said than done, or we wouldn't have so many reports of abused women.