Often when people hear the term “abuse” their first initial thought is physical violence against a partner, typically a woman. One of the reasons for this is because of the media; men are often portrayed as strong and emotionally “stable” giving young, growing boys the impression they are weak for showing emotions.
The stories in the media are always said to be damaging for young girls which is absolutely right as there are so many valid reasons for women and young girls to feel so pressured to be “perfect” as there are so many magazines where women are super skinny and are portrayed to have near to no flaws, but nobody ever likes to talk about the damage it does to men and young boys. Men in magazines and in the media are either seen as incredibly masculine, athletic or powerful, as well as being the initial villain before any evidence comes through. This leaves men feeling weak for wanting to come clean about abuse thrown their way.
After doing some research I came across a page designated to male abuse, where men were open to share their stories. Some of them were truly brutal and the most common thing is how they’ve waited several years to open up about it, which is such a sad thought; someone who had been through such a difficult situation and they could have had it dealt with, decided to leave it be and have their partner go free because they genuinely feared for their life, as well as what other people would label them as.
In one of the stories I came across, a man stated that it first began with verbal abuse, which is where it usually begins, simple name calling with that extra hint of venom in their voice before slowly becoming worse. Which is exactly what happened, he stated that she first started hurling verbal abuse at him and would blackmail him into staying by threatening her own life, he said that she took several pills one night but had in fact spat them out soon after, simply to scare him. Which is why he stayed.
Supposedly the first time she got physical was at home when she snapped – he admitted that even to this day he doesn’t know what provoked her, but she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and attacked him with it. The second time she followed him around the house throwing punches at him, hit him with a pint glass and knocked him to the ground and promptly began to knee him in the head. However, he said that despite these other attacks, the most shocking one to him was on their wedding night. She punched and kicked him repeatedly and dug her nails into his cheek, she later got angry at him for the cuts on his cheek for “ruining their honeymoon pictures”.
Another story was about how his wife first got aggressive after their first child was born, it can be common for a child to bring some tension into a relationship/marriage however it began with her arguing very frequently; picking at any little thing she could, for example, one night they went out with friends and he urged that they go back to their newborn as it was beginning to get quite late. As they were in front of friends, she agreed with some hesitance before they left. He said once they began walking back to the car she argued relentlessly about it, even stating he “belittled her” in front of friends. Once they got home, she became more aggressive; first shouting before she gradually escalated to smashing a mirror over his head. As he didn’t want the already heated argument to worsen, he slept on the couch and dropped the whole thing.
When morning came, she acted as if nothing happened so he left the situation be. A little while after the first incident, he received a call from work asking for him to do extra shifts to which he refused as he had been working 60 hours per work and with the the newborn baby, he was exhausted. This led to yet another argument as she claimed she wanted some new clothes, as the arguing continued she eventually smashed a glass door and threw pieces at him, this left him with scratches over his face and neck. He fled the house to the closest people he knew and asked them if he could stay for a while to which they happily agreed.
Once he returned home, he found her crying and she apologised profusely. A few years passed and everything seemed normal once again, until they lost their second child leaving them both distraught. This led to her once again returning to her aggressive state, she began arguing about anything she could and she began going out a lot more and coming home extremely late. He later discovered she had spend £5000 on cocaine and had in fact been unfaithful to him, but he still loved her and was determined to make it work so he forgave her.
They had another child which seemed to go well at first until she continued being quite distant leaving him to care for their two children. One night she attacked him causing him to flee from the house and get the neighbours to call the police, however she also called the police getting them both arrested. She was under the influence from drinking that night so they had to wait for her to sober up in order to interview her, but interviewed him straight away. Although he had marks on him, they let them both go.
After the past few incidents, they decided to have a fresh start and put all of it behind them for the sake of their children. However after a while there were accusations and rumours that he cheated on her all of which were fake, this caused the tension to return leading to a few more arguments, but nothing too extreme. One night she decides to invite a few friends round; the woman he had supposedly cheating on her with, included.
It turned into an interrogation leading to her shouting at the two of them, although they were denying they did anything. Deciding not to add fuel to the fire, he removes himself from the conversation whilst she dismissed the friends. Once he returned he found her waiting for him and immediately began attacking him; scratching and biting his face, he told the children to go upstairs but they refused to leave his side as they try prying their mother off of him. Once he was able to break free, he takes the kids upstairs and runs to the master bedroom where he pushed the bed up against the door and used the house phone to call the police, minutes later she managed to get in through the door and continued attacking him, this time bitting at his eye and ear.
Thankfully able to break free, he ran outside with his children where the police and an ambulance arrived. The police took statements and photos of what happened, the next day he was called and told they were pressing charges leaving him full custody of the children who are now safe and much better off without their mother.
One story covered something that I have seen a lot of abusive people do in order to remain “innocent”, in this story he met his partner on an online dating app. He later discovered that she was a recovering alcoholic and had four children – all of which lived with their father as they removed from her care after she had a drunken suicide attempt. But they both a child together and soon began planning the rest of their life together.
As the relationship progressed, her attitude soon became sour and she started to become very controlling and manipulative; checking his emails, his text messages and his Facebook account, even going as far as impersonating him and messaging girls on his account. After that she slowly became more and more violent – threatening him, throwing a laptop at hime and continuous shouting.
He also had a son from a previous relationship, who she repeatedly singled out by giving him his meal last, slamming his plate onto the table and even soaked his clothes after they had been ironed. She would refuse to let him have dessert after dinner and just alienated him. Not to mention, he was exposed to watching her scream and become violent towards his father.
She eventually stopped him from seeing friends from work as she would question his intentions and make him feel guilty, she later threw him out of their shared home and began spreading rumours about him and even overdosed – all within the two months their newborn child had been born. He later discovered that she had been drinking throughout this period.
He tried to mend their very fragile relationship and the peace lasted for 5 months before her bad habits made another appearance. Having had enough, he left her.
She took this opportunity to tell the social worker that he had been violent and abusive towards her, to which they told her that she should have no unsupervised contact with him for her safety. He wasn’t invited to the meetings with the social worker to share his sides of things. She later lied to the police by saying that he had stolen some of her possessions leading to him unable to collect his possessions. He lost nearly all of his belongings including £800 deposit on the house.
Throughout a 14 month period, she abused him over the phone calls they shared, email and text. She threatened to make him lose his job and contact with his son and he continues to fight for custody of his son.
I believe it so unbelievably unfair how easily people believe the woman’s side of the story sometimes – especially in cases like this where she has an obviously troubled past with her struggle with alcoholism, not to mention how she lost custody to the four children she already had…and yet she is allowed to have the two children – one of which she repeatedly mistreated.
In a lot of the cases of domestic abuse we see, the person giving the abuse is always very quick to make false accusations against the other party in order to hide the fact they are the ones at fault. When it comes to cases where the woman is the one abusing their partner they usually use this to their advantage as they flip the accusations and claim it is self defence and they were scared, etc. Of course, they are not always false claims but here are so many cases where they lie about the abuse when they are the ones who are violent and abusive. In my opinion it’s sad that none of these stories have been really talked about – and all the other stories who have been completely ignored, I think it is downright repulsive that people can simply dust serious cases like this under the rug, simply because it is a man who is the victim.
In a similar story a man had been married to his partner for 10 years before he was able to gain the courage to divorce her after years of abuse not only towards him but to their son. She had a drinking problem which only caused her violent outbursts to worsen throughout the length of their relationship. During this, he had tried to commit suicide twice as he was left uncertain of another way out of the abuse.
The last time she attacked him, she stabbed him in the head to which he fled the house all while bleeding profusely and managed to call the police before collapsing, once he awoke in the hospital he had no memory of actually getting there.
Throughout their relationship he refused to tell anybody about the abuse as she made him feel at fault, causing him to question his every move and begin to truly believe he had deserved it.
Once they separated, he was prevented from seeing his son for 2 years. After a long court process, he was finally granted sole custody of his son and is currently living a new life with a new partner – he admitted that it took him a while to back into a relationship.
stevenson.snaps 