"Things that make you wonder if you're completely crazy"
by digby
It's truly disturbing to see the many grotesque reactions to the Ray Rice video and just as disturbing to see the reactions to his wife's statement about it. Ugh. Once again we see that too many people cannot tell the difference between words and violence. Apparently nobody ever told them the old saying about sticks and stones and breaking bones when they were children.
But it's also sad that so many people cannot have empathy for Janay Rice's situation beyond her status as a victim of horrible violence. Life is complicated, particularly for abused women and children, when love and security is all wrapped up in control and fear. It's very easy for people on the outside to dispense judgment against her for staying but a little understanding about this dynamic is called for.
There's a ton of good stuff being written about this today, but someone called this piece by Hilzoy at Obsidion Wings to my attention and if you read only one thing about this, choose that. As someone who worked for years in battered women's shelters she brought some important personal experience to the issue of "why did she stay?" After addressing the unfortunately fairly common motivation that some abusers threaten their victims' lives if they try to leave, she discusses the psychology that can trap women into this dynamic.
Here's just one early aspect of it:
To start with, it helps to know that (last time I checked) the two most common times for violence to start were the honeymoon and the first pregnancy. By the time you reach either point, you're already in a pretty serious relationship, and leaving is not something that anyone would do lightly.
Moreover, the violence often comes as a real surprise. It's not that there aren't signs: there are. But they are often things like: he falls for you too hard and too fast, or: he wants to be with you all the time. You'd have to be either paranoid or a victim of a previous abusive relationship to leap to the conclusion that either of these things means that abuse might be in your future. (Imagine, in particular, someone whose last relationship was with someone who didn't seem to care about her: imagine her saying to herself: last time he didn't care enough; this time he seems to care too much; am I impossible to please?)
So imagine yourself, in love with someone, on your honeymoon or pregnant, when suddenly this guy just goes ballistic, often for very little reason, and hits you. For a lot of women, this is profoundly shocking and disorienting. There are things that are comprehensible parts of the world, even if they're rare, like having your car stolen; and then there are things that are unexpected in a completely different sense, like having your car turn into an elephant before your eyes: things that make you wonder whether you're completely crazy. Being beaten up by someone who apparently loves you is one of those things.
What this means is that precisely when a woman needs as much confidence in her own judgment as she can muster, the rug is completely pulled out from under her. And it's not just that she questions her judgment because she got involved with this guy in the first place; she questions her judgment because something so completely alien to the world she thinks she knows has just happened.
Under the circumstances, it is very, very hard to say: well, OK, I am married and/or pregnant, I am in this serious relationship, but I will nonetheless decide to leave, now, because I think I have to, and I trust my judgment. Trusting your judgment at that moment is like trusting your sense of balance when someone has just poured a fifth of vodka down your throat
All the women I know, including myself, have engaged in endless rounds of second guessing and self-examination in relationships. Everything seems somewhat mysterious on a certain level in the beginning and a sense of not being able to take anything at face value overrides your own instincts in any number of ways. Most of the time despite your best efforts to understand what's going on, whether good or bad, you end up taking a leap of faith. And that leap is significant enough that just as you wonder if his failing to call for three days means he's backing off, you might also wonder if that angry shove or slap really means that he's a violent abuser. Everything seems in question --- you don't know what's real and what isn't half the time. The positive side of that is the excitement and challenge of a new relationsip. Unfortunately, the negative side is that you can end up committing to someone who hurts you, sometimes physically
Anyway, Hilzoy's piece gets into all that psychology and it's truly important that people read about this and realize that the violent relationship dynamic isvery deeply embedded in the human psyche and our social fabric. If we want to change this and truly make it rare and costly in our culture we're going to have to step back and recognize the complexity of it for both abuser and abused. Simply saying "she should have left him" is part of the problem.
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