Dear Abby: Last week, my 1-year-old son, "Tommy," crawled up on the couch where his father, "Monte," was resting. Tommy smacked his daddy in the face with a toy. Monte slapped Tommy back so hard he left a welt on his face. I grabbed the baby and said some things I perhaps shouldn't have. Monte got so mad at me that he threw me on the couch and began choking me.

A neighbor called Monte's father, "Lyle," to the house. Lyle asked what happened. When I told him Monte had slapped Tommy in the face, Monte called me a liar. Then Lyle turned around and came after me, cornering me in the kitchen. He got in my face and screamed that I was at fault for Monte losing his temper. He said it was because of my "nagging." I was cornered three times. Each time I tried to move away, he'd start up again.

Monte just stood there and watched me holding the baby and getting screamed at. He didn't lift a finger to defend me. I am so hurt. It's one thing to have a fight with my husband, but his father had no place getting in my face. Monte said his dad was trying to prove a point -- that a person can only take so much. Monte said he patted his father on the back for what he did. I am no longer talking to his father. Please help me. I am desperate for guidance. – Shaking in Ohio

Dear Shaking: To slap a 1-year-old baby and leave a welt on his face is child abuse. Throwing you on a couch and trying to choke you is spousal abuse. What his father did is verbal abuse. Monte is standing behind his father because he thinks this is normal behavior. Unless you take your baby and get out of there, your son will turn out just like his father and grandfather. So leave now, before you or your baby are physically, as well as emotionally, damaged.

If you are afraid to leave, call the National Domestic Violence toll-free hotline: (800) 799-7233. Counselors there will help you formulate an escape plan. (For people with hearing impairments, the TTY number to dial is (800) 787-3224.)

Gabby's Reply

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Hi Shaking: Most every reader can easily see that your husband and his father are addicted to abuse; what many might not easily see is that you also are addicted to abuse, to being abused and to creating it.

Taking one incident out of context of your whole relationship is irresponsible. This was not the first time you experienced abuse with either of them. How you handled (created space for) the very first incident caused (created space for) all the rest.

Of all the men in the world it’s no accident that you attracted and seduced someone equally addicted to abuse to marry you. You needed to do it so that you could see yourself in him. The common fallacy is that physical abuse is worse than or hurts more than verbal, non verbal, psychic, or psychological abuse.

You know a rattlesnake’s bite can be deadly. You’ve heard this time and again throughout life. You know that if you choose to put your hand in its space you’d cause the snake to bite you. The snake has no choice. Intruding into a snake’s space invites the snake to do what it’s programmed to do, defend its reality. Neither does your husband have any choice. He is programmed to strike out at those he loves. His reality is that there is something wrong with you and he’ll violently defend that position, even seeking the agreement from the one who trained him to blame. You know this. You’ve always known this. Books and movies throughout life have advised you against dating such a man. You’re not stupid. You knew he behaved abusively. If you look back you can recall he did something on your first date that was a warning. Simply dating him was something your parents/best friend would have advised against.

Now here’s the shocker. You don’t operate from choice. You lost your ability to chose years ago. You have gone unconscious. No conscious woman would submit herself or her son to such behavior for even five more minutes.

You are programmed to attract and marry someone equally addicted to abuse. You are programmed to start fights and lie about who starts them. Not unlike a bar room brawler you are a fighter looking for someone to fight, someone to hit you so that you can blame them for starting the fight, for being more abusive than you. You will keep producing abuse until you tell the truth, that you are the one who puts her hand in his space. It’s important to know that up until reading this reply you have had no choice whatsoever. It’s so bad that you have not even had the ability to choose to leave, such is your addiction.

Put another way, you’ve been operating from the decision to stay married. A decision murders the alternative. Once you decided to stay you lost your ability to choose not to have an abuse-free day. After reading this you’ll no longer be able to tell your son, “I didn’t know.”

You ask for “guidance” but part of your problem is that you cannot do what it will take to not have this in your life anymore. You are so addicted to abusing and being abused that you have no choice but to continue to relate with that family. Your unconscious machinations are such that you will set it up for Monte to truly hurt you or your son so as to be able to call in the police and social workers who will then support you in doing what you know you should do, today. Leave.

Advising you to leave is like advising my cat to not bring mice into the house. He simply can’t not do it.

You are stuck in a condition called hopelessness. You can’t even be trusted to do what’s right for your son. Mothers reading your letter, especially those who have walked in your shoes, silently plead for you to get out, to go to the police station and adamantly refuse to return to that house except that the following conditions be met.

Both of you must live alone for a minimum of six months and each complete (separately) 25 sessions of therapy/counseling. During this time, neither of you can have any kind of communication with each other at all—no messages, no gifts, no letters. The person who breaks this agreement automatically adds another six months to the estrangement.

Instead, because you have no choice, you will stay under that roof, for reasons, and later explain to your son, perhaps through jail bars, why you submitted him to abuse day after day.

When I think of advice that I could give you, that I know you can be trusted to follow, two things come to mind:

You can be trusted to continue badmouthing and blaming your husband and to communicate pathetically, verbally and nonverbally, in a way that triggers his unresolved childhood anger. Simply by being in the same room you trigger his contempt and disrespect. How can he possibly respect you when you continually submit yourself and his son to his aberrant behavior? He’ll have to keep abusing you until you have the courage and intelligence to leave.

Another piece of advice you can be trusted to take is to choose to do nothing (actually it’s not nothing, it’s more of the same) which will automatically create a circumstance to force a change; sickness, accident, jail, or even death, so that you no longer have a choice. It’s possible that what you are up to is setting it up to have him sent to jail. We’ll know in a few years. It depends upon how much you want to hurt your parents. Remaining in the house with him, as sick as you are, is an excellent way of ensuring your parents remain failures.

Now let’s talk about your cause in the matter. He is mirroring your relationship with one or both parents. You have lost your ability to opt for an abuse-free day. You can no longer see your cause of the abuse with your parents. There was a time when you could see that if you didn’t want abuse in your life you should have either reported your parents or leave. Millions of teens leave their parents. It’s not easy but they make a choice to not submit themselves to the abuse another day. The choice for you is no easier now. You have become so used to being put down that you actually need your daily fix of condescensions; you have become so unconscious that you could not hear the very first put-down on your first date with Monte. That’s when you had a choice, to insist that he acknowledge the abuse and clean it up or to not see him until he completed x hours of counseling. You made something more important than being treated respectfully after which he unconsciously lost his respect for you.

A great letter that will allow many in your situation to see themselves. Thank you, Gabby

PS. To slap anyone is abuse regardless of their age or whether or not it leaves a mark (see definition of abuse).

PPS. Check back from time to time. I may edit/add more. (minor edits 1/7/10)

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