Athol Kay on Violence

Athol considers the various options a man has when faced with a violent female partner:

[Y]ou have to accept that once someone starts being willing to use Violence against you, it will continue until something breaks the cycle.

There are four possible outcomes…

(1) You do nothing, she keeps smacking you when you’re insolent. You learn to be whatever she decides is “good” and figure out ways to apologize for things that are her fault, lose all sense of a personal identity, clean up the messes she makes and generally turn yourself into a human shield if she ever looks sideways at the children.

(2) You respond with greater Violence and hit her back harder than she hits you. Well… this might work briefly, but honestly the more predictable outcome is simply an escalation of both of you playing the Violence strategy toward the full colonoscopy of emergency services and interventions. There’s not really a winner here.

(3) You quit the relationship. Actually this may not be a bad option. If there are no kids involved and no particular reason to stay, you really may as well bail on someone who displays this level of poor judgment. I’m betting she’s not exactly a peach in the other areas of her life either.

(4) You get Outside Force involved. This is the only possible route if you want to try and address the situation and also keep the relationship intact. The trick here is that you have to make this as defensively clear that you are not the abuser as you can. Video or audio of her acting violent and/or verbally aggressive, while you are clearly not doing anything other than defensively trying to block and dodge may be helpful. If you are injured and she isn’t, head to the Emergency Room and say what happened, which will then trigger a police visit to follow up on your defensive injuries.

Being more cynical about the system than Athol, I very much disagree with his conclusion. From what I have seen and read, (4) is skipping past Go and going directly to the full and aforementioned colonoscopy. If one reads Theodore Dalrymple's chronicle of witnessing violent abuse and intersexual relations as an emergency physician, it is apparent that (2) is actually the smarter bet.

Why? Because the woman is always more malleable than a system that relies upon and profits from a continuing supply of "abused" women. Any contact with the system, even voluntary contact from a genuinely abused man, permits it to manufacture an "abused" woman, even from a woman who is herself the abuser. And it will not hesitate to do so.

Men simply cannot rely upon Outside Force. It is too treacherous and too readily turned against them. Therefore, the only real options are (2) and (3), which means the only option if one wishes to salvage the relationship is (2). My disagreement notwithstanding, I must note that there is genuine wisdom in his concluding statement: "once someone can hit you and get away with it, they don’t stop hitting you."

Posted in: Advice,Practice