EVER WONDER WHY ABUSED PEOPLE GO BACK TO THEIR ABUSERS? I DON'T

The first time Carina hit me was a slap upside my head while we were in the car. We had just started dating a few weeks prior. I was driving Carina—not her real name—to a convenience store and made some smart remark about something so insignificant I have trouble recalling what the subject was. I felt the familiar sting on my skin, the ringing in my ears and the flood of adrenaline. It was a good thing I had already parked the car because I froze—which was my typical response after almost 20 years of the daily beatings that I had endured growing up. Anyway, she went into the store, got what she wanted, then got back in the car like nothing ever happened. That was a relief to me because I certainly didn’t want to dwell on the matter and was happy to move on.

I think she saw me as an easy mark. In fact, she actively pursued our relationship much more than I did at first. I never gave one thought to the possibility that this wasn’t a good idea. Aside from the fact that I had been dating her roommate for the previous several months, that she was six years older than me, that I didn’t like her at all, and that I didn’t find her the least bit physically attractive, she was giving me attention. A lot of it. So, I proceeded to chuck all those otherwise reasonable objections out the door in favor of getting involved in the most toxic relationship I’ve ever had.

It wasn’t a relationship that started out well and then eventually went bad. It started out bad and got worse. We fought a lot. We manipulated each other. We said things to deliberately hurt each other. We also had lots and lots and lots of sex. The best sex I’d ever had up to that point. I was never a skirt chaser—my self-hatred simply wouldn’t allow for it—but I’d had a few relationships that had gotten that far. However, I’d never had one that had gotten that far that quickly and then just continued to escalate. This was the first woman with whom I had really started to experiment sexually beyond the basics of ho-hum humping. So, I was hooked. I was also 19 with the emotional skills of a seven-year old, at best.

The isolation started almost immediately. I was told I could no longer associate with my friends for reasons that she deemed relevant and that I didn’t have the spine to argue over. Access to my family was significantly curtailed. I was told to stop listening to the music I enjoyed and to only listen to what she enjoyed. I could no longer eat the foods that I liked—only what she did. I had to completely change how I looked. I had to account for every minute of the day for which I was not in her presence. Once she learned my schedule, I was given a precise amount of time to show up at her door after class or work. Woe be unto me if I took so much as six minutes to arrive at her place when I was supposed to be there in five. Her jealousy was off the charts, constantly accusing me of either outright cheating or wanting to cheat. I was constantly finding new ways of demonstrating my loyalty to her.

For other people, these things would have been obvious deal breakers. But, for me it was just…normal. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence has all kinds of statistics on intimate partner violence (IPV), but the one thing that they haven’t been able to clearly define is the percentage of women in heterosexual relationships who are the primary aggressor. I’m a member of a demographic minority so small that decades of research have yet to tell me how many of me there are. Or, at least I thought so until I started to meet people who had experienced IPV and was astonished at the number of straight men who fit this category. It’s also entirely possible that the NCADV is, itself, engaging in unconscious bias. The 2016/17 Report on Intimate Partner Violence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the most recent report available) shows that men and women endure domestic violence at much closer—although not quite equal—frequency. However, even the CDC report is itself flawed because it does not break out the statistics into same-sex or heterosexual categories—so there is no way to determine from their data how this breaks down. There are a lot of other studies which come to different conclusions, including that women are more often the initiator of violence than men; and others which conclude that male victims of female IPV are essentially nonexistent. In short, the entire field is fumbling around in the dark because they can’t get reliable data. This is likely because of the level of shame involved. It’s hard enough for a woman in a relationship to admit that she’s being battered. Now, imagine being a man getting battered by a woman. How eager do you think you’d be to air out that particular piece of dirty laundry?

Just when the sex was really heading into the stratosphere—we were trying out all kinds of mind-blowing shit—it came to a screeching halt. She had decided that we would no longer have sex unless we were married. The ostensible reason for her decision was her religious faith. But, this was clearly a power play and I was simply too blind to see it. I was like the person left in disbelief after the season-ending cliffhanger of their favorite show: I had to find out what happens next and I couldn’t wait for it to come back on the air.

There were a couple of times when I tried to get the physical abuse to stop. The first time I approached her, she seemed to be in a good mood and unlikely to get angry. I told her about the abuse I received as a kid. The daily beatings at the hands of my older brother. The regular shots that my father got in—more verbal than physical but there was still enough to go around. The fact that my mother would get annoyed when I came to her about it, telling me to just ignore my brother—and my response that it was hard to ignore someone who is punching you in the face. I even told Carina about becoming an active participant in my own abuse as a cutter. Carina seemed to really get it, and apologized to me saying she would never do it again. The second time I asked her to stop was three weeks later, after she’d started hitting me again, and I said I really wished she wouldn’t hit me, especially after what I’d already told her. She looked me straight in the eye and said I could wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one filled up first. Again, a total deal breaker for most people—but this was probably the eleventy-billionth time someone had spit in my face when I’d tried to set a boundary—so…normal. I proposed to her a few months later.

A few weeks before the wedding, she had talked with me about what might happen when the priest, David, asked if anyone thought they shouldn’t get married, and how things would work if one of us spoke up. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I toyed with the idea of speaking up, but I also felt under a lot of pressure not to ruin everyone’s plans and all the work we had put into the wedding. I don’t know what her motivations were for broaching the subject in the first place. If she had wanted to end it, she’d had just as many opportunities as me—and she was clearly the one in control here.

Interestingly enough, I never got my chance to speak up. When the priest asked if anyone had a reason why we shouldn’t be married, I heard a man say, “Uh, David, I have something to say.”

I was stunned, and immediately turned around to see who my rescuer was, because I didn’t recognize the voice. I saw a homeless man, standing in the aisle. I found out later that he was an outpatient who had been treated by David when he worked at the state mental hospital as a social worker. David was…not pleased.

“We’re trying to have a wedding here.”

“Well, I know, but I just thought I would say…um…oh…nevermind.”

Then he turned around and walked out. Everyone was shocked, and more than a little amused. It broke the tension in the air and we carried on with the ceremony.

When we got to the vows, everything inside me insisted that I needed to say “I don’t,” and to run out of the church and just keep running. Instead, I plowed forward and said “I do.” I said it because I wanted the abuse to stop, but not the relationship. I said it because I felt I couldn’t make it on my own either financially or emotionally. I said it because we did have good times that really felt genuine and loving—as few and far between as those were—and I clung to them.

We had sex a few times on our wedding night, which was the first time in close to a year, I think. It was great. I felt like we were going to make this work.

The controlling behavior ramped up in a major way. Communication with my family was completely cut off. At one point my mother arrived, unannounced, at our door to see what was going on. Carina lied and said we were just leaving to go to a movie and gave me that look which said, you’d better behave. So, I told my mom yes, we’re just about to leave. So sorry you drove four hours to get here but we don’t have time to visit.

The resentment I was feeling just kept growing. I was having nightmares about screaming at her. I could feel myself wanting to lash out at her, but I just couldn’t cross that line. However, I did start to resist her control and intimidation. Up until this point, I had always acquiesced in any argument, or any discussion which might involve our various and sundry problems. I was The Problem, and therefore I was the one who needed to accommodate and make changes. That message had been delivered loud and clear for the past two years. I was no longer willing to accept the idea that I was the only person at fault and that my wife was somehow completely blameless. The fights we had were bad before. They really started going off the scale when I so much as suggested the possibility, however remote, that she might have some responsibility to acknowledge. There was one incident in particular which stands out: We had decided to take a drive on a particular Saturday to another town to take some pictures, walk around, have lunch, and relax. When we were about halfway there, we got into an argument. I decided that this was the place where I was going to plant my flag. I stated outright that she needed to take her share of the blame. The speed and ferocity of her rage surprised even me. She screamed at the top of her lungs at me, spewing hatred and obscenities, and slamming her fists on the door and the dashboard. She demanded that I turn the car around and I did. She then demanded that I take back what I said and accept that I’m the only one at fault. I refused. She told me to stop the car, so I did. She told me to get out of the car, so I did. She got out of the car, got into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. We were in the middle of nowhere, about 35 miles from home, and she meant to strand me there. In order to keep her from driving off, I sat on the hood of the car, up near the windshield. She looked me right in the eye as she hit the accelerator and I had to grab the edge of the hood with both hands. She drove about 100 feet as fast as she could and then slammed on the brakes to try and throw me off. I jumped off the hood and slammed the driver’s side window with the camera bag I was carrying. It was the first violent outburst I’d ever had with her. I think it shocked her a little because suddenly the entire fight had diffused, and soon I was driving her back home. She spent the next several minutes inspecting the camera inside the bag for damage. I said, “I wasn’t hurt when you tried to throw me off the car. Thank you for asking.” She said she bought that camera.

As we’ve already established, the NCADV does not have statistics regarding the prevalence of men who are battered by women in heterosexual relationships. However, they do discuss what motivates battered women to begin engaging in violence of their own and in looking back I can identify with quite a number of those reasons for why I acted the way I did. I felt a need for justice against her previous continued assaults on me. I felt that violence was my only means of self-protection. I didn’t feel safe. I did it to gain a sense of control, even if for a short period. I did it because I was incredibly stressed out. Mostly, though, I did it without thinking because I was starting to lose control of my own reactions. It’s important also to make a distinction between what my wife was doing to me and what I was doing to her. The NCADV distinguishes between Use of Force and Battering. Use of Force is defined as physical, mental and emotional behaviors used toward an intimate partner to gain short term control of a chaotic, abusive and/or battering situation. That’s what I was doing to her. Battering is a pattern of coercive control, intimidation and oppression effectively used to instill fear and maintain long term relationship domination. That’s what she was doing to me.

Within three months of getting married, she was pregnant. This wasn’t great news for a whole host of reasons, but there was an additional complication. She had crippling morning sickness. It couldn’t even really be called “morning sickness” because it was all day sickness. Today, we know this condition isn’t morning sickness at all, but an acute clinical condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. You may have heard of Kate Middleton’s experience with it. Carina threw up morning, noon and night. She was constantly on the verge of dehydration and had lost her appetite so she was having trouble maintaining—much less gaining—weight. She was weak and couldn’t really take care of herself. So, I had to step up. I was already doing the bulk of the housework so that didn’t change. What did change was that I needed to literally spoon feed her, dress her, undress her, bathe her and hold her hair back while she vomited uncontrollably, then clean her up afterward. I was also in the middle of my own, internal, war while also filled with the sense that I was screwed no matter what. I was damned if I threw up my hands and said I’d had enough—because I would be abandoning my pregnant wife and our child. I was also damned if I just kept going because it put an incredible amount of strain on me at a point when I really didn’t have anything left to give. I was in a familiar place: stuck, with no friendly direction.

A few weeks after she got pregnant I had my first experience with food poisoning. One of my classes was at night, so Carina would spend that time at her mother’s place across town, where I would pick her up afterward. One night, when I arrived to take her home, I was offered the takeout that Carina simply couldn’t bring herself to eat. I was starving and wasn’t looking forward to cooking dinner that late at home, so I chowed down. Eight hours later, I woke up running to the bathroom, just barely making it in time. I spent the next few days sharing time in the bathroom with my wife, with the added benefit of having to sit on the toilet while puking into a trash can. We were both completely laid out. She gave me some of her Phenergan which knocked me cold for a couple of days until my body could recover. In the meantime, she hadn’t bathed, changed her pajamas or eaten anything. When she went to the bathroom to throw up, she crawled on her hands and knees.

Just before she had gotten pregnant, I had started seeing a counselor. I told her about some of the problems with my marriage, but I was very careful not to talk about the physical abuse that I was receiving. Shame and embarrassment are powerful silencers. The counselor instructed me to find some rigorous physical exercise in which to engage, outside the house, at least one hour every day. With the demands on my time this was not an easy thing to arrange. But I eventually found a solution, which was to bang a racquetball around at the campus athletic center on weekdays and bang a tennis ball off an outdoor backboard at the local high school on weekends. Negotiating the time with Carina wasn’t easy but she allowed it.

February 20th, 1993: It’s been roughly a week since I’d been able to get away to exercise. I asked Carina if she would be OK for an hour and she said she would. This was a Saturday so I needed to go to the high school. When I arrived, it had started raining. I should have just given up and gone home, but I felt like I really needed to do this, so I got out and started hitting the ball. Within 10 minutes the weather had changed from rain to hail. I didn’t care. I banged that soggy tennis ball in the hail until my hour was up, feeling much better.

When I got home and walked into the bedroom to change, Carina took one look at me and flipped out. I was completely soaked and had several welts on my face from the hail storm. She starts yelling at me from the bed, asking me what the hell I was thinking. If I got sick again who would take care of her? This was an excellent question, but it was one that I realized I could not answer at that moment. I couldn’t answer it because I needed to keep my mouth shut. I needed to keep my mouth shut because if I opened it at all, I would say things that could not be taken back. Things that would destroy what was left of our marriage. I was doing everything I could to keep the lid on the pressure cooker. I just needed to change into some dry clothes and get the hell out of that house again so I could calm down.

There was one big problem with my plan: withholding verbal communication made Carina insanely, unreasonably angry. But this time was different. I was unraveling quickly and I knew it. So, I kept peeling off the wet clothes and putting on dry ones. She got so angry that she got out of bed on her own power for the first time in what felt like weeks. She got in my face and screamed, “SAY SOMETHING, DAMMIT!” I just stared at her. I needed to get around her and get out of the house. She slapped me across the face and turned and walked away.

That was the point at which everything changed. The past 2 ½ years of abuse—hell, the abuse from my entire childhood—came shrieking out of me and I ran up behind my wife who was two months pregnant, got my arm around her neck and started screaming. I don’t remember specifically what I said—the whole episode is a blur—but I’m pretty sure I screamed that I hated her and I wished she was dead. We fell to the floor and I think for the first time she was truly afraid of what might happen next because her voice had changed in a way that I’d never heard before. She sounded unsteady and pleaded for me to let her go. After what felt like forever but was probably 30 seconds, I released her and headed for the door. She met me there and said, “When you come back, I will still be here, I will still love you, and I will still be your wife.” I couldn’t say anything at all and I left.

After that, everything came apart pretty quickly. She had a warrant put out for my arrest and I also received a temporary restraining order that day. She was playing the part of the terrorized wife very well. I arrived at the court house at the appointed day and time for a hearing to determine if the restraining order should be extended for 90 days. I have no money so I have no lawyer. I also have nobody to ask for help because of the extreme isolation she had enforced. Her family hired a high-profile attorney in town to represent her. The judge asked me if I had any objections to the order and I told him that some of it was true, but some of it was not. I asked the judge if the order meant that she also had to stay away from me and he said it did. At that point I told him that I honestly didn’t care what he did because I didn’t want to have anything to do with her and if the order meant she had to stay away from me then so be it. I wasn’t about to tell him that I was actually the battered spouse. The first reason has already been established: shame and embarrassment. The other reason was also quite simple: there was no way in hell that he, or anyone else, would believe me. Women simply don’t batter men. It’s a stupid notion on its face. I’d just been arrested and convicted of aggravated battery because her story was an easy story to believe. She’d also been smarter and much more calculating when she abused me because there were rarely any visible marks—or she left marks that could have easily been explained away. However, she had bruises on her neck from my use of force. Suffice it to say, the order got extended, and not because the judge was worried about my safety.

She filed for divorce and, with the help of her family, used the same lawyer to try and make the terms as punitive as possible. Her family had a lot of money. They weren’t 1%-ers—probably more like 10%-ers—but compared to me they might as well have been the Bezos family. I was completely cut off from my family (who wouldn’t have had the money to help me anyway) and I was on my own. One thing became clear rather quickly and that was her intention to finalize the divorce and move across the country as soon as possible. She wanted to live near her father and have the baby there which would make the entire custody process even more advantageous for her. Strangely enough, this provided me with a fair amount of leverage in the divorce proceedings. There were a great many items in the initial petition to which I was not about to agree, and a court date wasn’t set until after the baby would be born. So, I listed my objections and what I wanted changed. The two biggest ones that I recall were the reasons for the divorce and the payment of alimony. First of all, I was broke so alimony was out of the question. Secondly, she wanted the divorce to be on the grounds of physical, mental and emotional abuse by me. While I was certainly willing to admit my own fault, it was perfectly clear over the past 2 ½ years that I was the only one who would. So, I pushed for irreconcilable differences. I figured a long enough delay would put her in a position to have the baby before moving, which would mean dealing with the custody battle locally where I could at least be present. I was also hoping that I could delay this long enough that maybe we could work things out and get back together. I didn’t care about the abuse. I felt completely lost and she was the only human relationship I had left. Ever wonder why abused people keep going back voluntarily to an abusive partner? I don’t.

She balked initially at all of it, but I had time on my side. I communicated through her lawyer that I was perfectly willing to wait until we hashed this all out in court. Hearing that, she started negotiating terms. It still took another two months because she really, really, really wanted the decree to state that I was the abuser forever and ever, amen. But, as the due date for the baby got closer, she finally blinked and agreed. While I was certainly happy that I got what I wanted in the divorce arrangement, I was not happy about the fact that I knew she’d be across the country two weeks after the papers were signed. But I was making this up as I went along so it was the best I could do at the time.

A date was set for me to go to her attorney’s office and sign the settlement. I asked her attorney beforehand if he could arrange for her to be there when I did. I had a lot of things to apologize for, but I couldn’t do that because of the restraining order (which was still in effect) and I wanted her to hear them before she left. Over those few months her attorney had gotten to know me a little bit and I think he realized that I wasn’t the monster she was making me out to be so he said he would make sure she was there.

On a beautiful May afternoon, I walked into his office where she sat with a counselor from a local battered wives’ organization that she’d been seeing. The counselor could have burned me alive with her stare. My soon-to-be-ex-wife, who had so masterfully played the role of frightened, battered spouse, was cool as a cucumber. I had written down everything I wanted to say because I knew I’d screw it up if I tried to wing it. It took a lot longer to get through than I expected because at times I was crying uncontrollably and simply couldn’t speak. No sooner had I gotten through it when she tore into me. She told me how awful I was to her and how much I hurt her and all I could do was sit there and bawl and take it. Eventually she ran out of steam and the attorney asked me if I was ready to sign the papers. I nodded and he led me to his assistant’s desk where I could barely see where I was supposed to sign because I was blinded by tears. Under normal circumstances nobody would ever say my signature was legible, but in this instance I was shaking so badly that my hand flew all over the place. I didn’t even recognize my own handwriting. Then I wobbled out of the office to my car and wailed for some interminable period before I felt calm enough to drive away.

My counselor had told me to come see her after the signing. I spent most of the time crying in her office while she did paperwork. When I was calm enough to talk, she asked me if I knew why she had told me to engage in daily, rigorous, physical exercise. I said I did not. She said, “Because I was trying to keep you from killing your wife. You were under incredible strain and I was afraid you’d snap if you didn’t work off some of it.” I asked her why she hadn’t told me that in the beginning. She said she didn’t think I could have accepted the truth of the situation. I realized that she was right.

The day after the signing of the settlement, I received a phone call from her attorney. He said my ex wanted to meet me for lunch to arrange how I would pick up my stuff that was still at the house. I said I would do it only if she signed a release to not have me prosecuted for violating the restraining order, which was still in effect. She agreed. So, a couple of days later, I’m in a restaurant, sitting across a table from her while she ate lunch and I just stared at my plate because I felt too unsafe to eat. This person, who had proclaimed her mortal fear of me and my violence against her to anyone who would listen, sat there and ate her Cobb salad, chatting away without a care in the world. Finally, she asked me if I wanted to just get the stuff now and I said that would be fine, so we left and I met her at the house. She had most of my stuff packed and ready to go, but said there were still some things in the bedroom she hadn’t gotten to yet so I went in there to check it out. She showed me what hadn’t been packed and I started dealing with it. She sat on the bed and asked me if I wanted to feel her belly. I hesitated. She said it was OK. So, I sat on the bed and put my hand on her…and wept. As much pain as she had caused me, and as much as I’d grown to hate her…I was still lost without her and I knew it.

Then she kissed me. Just a gentle one on the lips. Within five minutes we were having sex. Afterward, while we were laying there covered in sweat, she asked me if I wanted to see something cool. I said sure. She said that if I used my hand to bring her to orgasm, I would see an outline of the baby. Several minutes later I’m watching a very tiny hand and arm moving across her belly. It was incredible.

I spent the night there. And the next night. And the night after that. The past 2 ½ years of pain and abuse had simply vanished. The sex was just as good as it had always been. She wasn’t mean to me and didn’t threaten me with violence or even try to control me. I felt comfortable around her. I felt that I could be honest and open with her and I wanted to do nice things for her for no other reason than because I loved her. It was everything I had been hoping for in our relationship. It was such a relief. I spent the next two weeks at the house (except for the times when we had sex at my place), helping her pack and prepare for the trip across the country just as happily as if I was going with her, even though I knew at the time that wasn’t the plan.

On moving day, I helped her get and pack the truck and then we kissed and said goodbye. I watched her drive away wishing with everything I had that I could be going with her.

After a few days, she was at her father’s house and we set up a calling schedule so we could talk without worrying about her father finding out. We talked every day for roughly an hour each time. Carina and I talked about all kinds of things. We talked about when I could come out to visit. We talked about the possibility of me being there for the birth. We had phone sex—a lot of it. We also talked about the custody arrangements. She suggested, very reasonably to my ear, that I should give her sole physical and legal custody of the baby. Physical custody was for obvious reasons with us living so far apart. Legal custody, she reasoned, because if the baby needed some kind of immediate medical attention that the doctors would require my consent for treatment and it would be very hard to reach me. Well, I certainly didn’t want to risk that, so I agreed (I also had no idea at the time how parental consent really works). She sent me a copy of a sonogram she’d had recently—keeping the bait on the hook. I couldn’t tell head from tail, but I knew my child was in there somewhere and I was so happy to have that image. We talked every day for the next few months. One August day I got a phone call from a priest that we both knew, who told me that my daughter had been born and everyone was healthy and doing well. I was ecstatic.

I knew she would be in the hospital for the next day or two so I waited until the third or fourth day and then called right on our regular schedule. The phone rang and rang and rang until her father’s answering machine picked up so I hung up. This went on for the next few days until one day when I called and her father picked up the phone. I asked if I could speak with her and he said that wasn’t going to happen and hung up on me.

By this time, I was confused and didn’t know what was happening. So, a couple of days later I decided I was going to call during an unscheduled time, from a pay phone. Sure enough, she picks up the phone. I was so relieved.

“Thank God, you answered the phone.”

“I can’t talk to you.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t.”

“Please tell me.”

“This is for the best.”

“The best for who?”

“Goodbye.”

Those were the last words I ever spoke with her. The custody papers showed up via certified mail a few days later.

This time the custody agreement was made entirely on terms favorable to Carina and I was simply informed of the outcome and essentially told to deal with it. I was given a P.O. Box address to send the child support checks. It was only then when I fully understood how she had played me and I felt like a complete idiot.

I sent my daughter gifts for Christmas and her birthday, with the full expectation that Carina would likely either repackage the gifts as being from her, or give them away or throw them out. But, I did it anyway because hope springs eternal. However, one thing I also did was to keep the receipts for the gifts and I sent them registered mail so that Carina had to sign for them. If there came a time when my daughter would ask me why I’d abandoned her, I wanted to be able to show her that I did what I could with the limited resources I had.

After a few years of this, and nothing getting any better, I decided that I needed to find a way to see my daughter. I wrote to Carina and asked her how we could arrange a visit. Within a week I received a letter from her newest attorney who stated that I would have to deal with him. He informed me that Carina had told him emphatically that I was not to be allowed to see my daughter. He also said that he informed her there was no legal way for him to do that. I had a legal right for visitation and that he couldn’t stop me, but he could make the arrangements if she didn’t want to do it. So, arrangements were made for me to fly there and see my daughter (supervised by her Godparents) at one of those kiddie entertainment places with the ball pits and human-sized hamster tunnels.

I got to see my daughter roughly a week after her fourth birthday, for two hours. I milked every minute I could and can still remember the visit as clearly as if it were yesterday. At two separate points during the visit, I asked my daughter if she knew who I was. Each time, she got very quiet and lowered her head. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t push her. When the time was up (actually, I pushed it an extra 15 minutes or so, much to the consternation of her Godfather), I asked her to give me a hug and I told her I would see her again as soon as I could.

About six months later, I contacted my ex’s attorney again to see about setting up another visitation. He wrote me back stating that he was no longer representing her and that I needed to contact her new attorney. I called her former attorney to find out what was going on and he reported that after the visitation she fired him stating that if he wasn’t willing to prevent me from seeing my daughter then she’d find someone who would. When I reached out to the new attorney, he told me flat out that I would not be seeing my daughter and that if I wanted to fight it, I could take Carina to court. He knew full well that I didn’t have the money to do that, and my previous experience with that state’s civil system had fully demonstrated that I was not going to be heard if I didn’t have a lawyer. I had just learned a hard lesson about making promises to my daughter that I couldn’t keep.

A few years after that, Carina closed the only point of direct contact I had. I received one of the gifts back in the mail with a stamp stating “Unclaimed: Return to Sender.” Soon afterward, my next child support payment was returned to me because she had closed the P.O. Box. The message was clear: Go Away.

Time passed. My daughter turned 18 and went to college. I only knew this because of the occasional Google search which would come back with a new result now and then, but not always. I didn’t have any social media accounts, because Carina had manipulated the resources of the state to intimidate me to the point that I was afraid of being visible online. But I would occasionally ask friends who had social media accounts to see if my daughter was online. She wasn’t. Her mother was. I could only assume that my ex was enforcing the same strict controls over my daughter’s life that she had enforced over mine. While I didn’t know my daughter’s address, I did know which school she was attending and it was far enough away that I figured she couldn’t be living with her mother. So, I drafted a letter and enclosed a picture from the day we met and sent it via general delivery at the school. Within a week I had gotten an answer. She put the letter, unopened, into a new envelope and mailed it back to me. She was not interested in hearing from me, and even less interested in possibly learning what had taken so long. You know what? I can’t blame her.

More time passed. An old friend of mine told me that she’d done a social media search and found that my daughter had gotten married and had a baby. My wife found a picture online. She looked very happy as a 26-year-old wife and mother. She’s 30 now.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of my daughter and how I failed her. But I’ve had to compartmentalize that part of my life and keep moving forward in spite of it all. The alternative is a life where I not only destroy myself, but the lives and well-being of the people I care about most. I continue to screw up plenty of times because nobody can live a faultless life—but I do my best to make things right any way I can. It keeps the nightmares away most of the time.

In recent years, I tried reaching out to local domestic violence organizations to try and offer my time to speak with other male victims of IPV. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone. But every time I called a different organization, they immediately assumed that I was a former abuser who was looking to talk to other current abusers. It didn’t matter that I introduced myself by stating clearly that I was abused at the hands of a woman. It didn’t matter that I explained it again after their incorrect assumption about me. They simply could not fathom a world in which a woman could—or would—batter a man. It’s a hard story to believe. So, instead, I wrote it down in the hope that maybe sharing this might help someone. I don’t hope for a lot of things these days, but I hope I’m right about this.

Andy Finley works as a medical software analyst for a children’s hospital. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife of twenty years. When the weather is warm, they take their Golden Boxer, Madison, swimming in a nearby lake. Andy learned how to make a mean Turkish Baklava, and loves teaching people how to make their own.