“What happened to Amber?”
I remember asking the group.
At the time, I was running a group for women in substance abuse treatment who were also involved with abusive partners. The group specifically focused on domestic violence. Many of the women had partners who were currently serving prison sentences.
When Amber stopped coming to group, her partner had just been released from prison.
A few weeks later, we learned that Amber had gotten back together with him. He was abusive, and everyone knew it. She was not the first woman to go back, and she would not be the last. I remember how devastated I felt.
When Someone Goes Back
I often hear things like, “But he apologized,” or “He’s different now,” or “He’s been taking domestic violence classes.” And having also worked with people who have domestic violence charges, I do believe change is possible. I hope for it. I have seen it happen. But when I have seen real change, it is rarely quick, and it is almost always led by the person committing the abuse being deeply motivated to change. I have not seen many court-ordered domestic violence offenders—mandated to attend batterer intervention or prevention classes—change dramatically in under a year.
That is part of what is so terrifying, and so common, when working with both people who commit domestic violence and those who survive it.
We tend to carry a fixed idea of what a survivor looks like and what someone who perpetrates abuse looks like. But when I worked with both groups, I found myself seeing pieces of humanity in nearly all of them.
Remember the man who was beaten by his father from early childhood to “toughen him up” and “make him into a man.” He grew up in a violent part of the city, surrounded by gangs and drug abuse. Remember when he got cornered at a party by a cousin, had no escape route, and just lost it? Remember how he had been a semi-professional football player, and how his whole life he had been taught to access and use rage to get his needs met?
Remember the woman who married a man who initially seemed kind and thoughtful—a well-respected government employee with a severe history of trauma and abuse—who became more violent as his PTSD worsened and as he used more alcohol and drugs to cope. Remember how he threatened to kill his wife’s child, and her extended family, if she ever tried to leave again?
Domestic violence is not confined to any one income level, race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. In fact, after my time working on a specialized domestic violence team, I encountered even more severe cases while working at a community mental health clinic with people mandated to attend domestic violence prevention classes.
That’s because people who abuse their partners—and the people who love them—do not fit into neat categories.
People who are abusive are not angry all the time. They are not always the obviously frightening person in the corner yelling, screaming, and lying. They can be successful, wealthy, family-oriented, athletic. They can identify as male or female. They can be funny, charming, self-effacing, and even ashamed of their own violence—yet still unable to break free from the cycle of abuse.
What If This Is a ‘We’ Problem?
In that sense, they are people like us. People who have engaged in extreme behaviors, often after enduring extreme, complex, and sometimes ongoing trauma.
If we could begin to see domestic violence as more of a “we” problem than a “them” problem, maybe we could start making real change. Maybe we could move from living in a state with some of the highest reported rates of domestic violence to becoming a place that is less violent, less silent, and more accountable.
We live in a culture that often allows men only one emotional state: rage. Then we act surprised when some men learn to live from that place, as though the way we socialize men has nothing to do with the violence we see.
Just as we are beginning to understand racism not simply as a problem of “racist people,” but as a human and systemic problem that requires all of us to examine our complicity, I believe we must begin to think about violence in much the same way. If we do not see how we participate in the conditions that create violence, we will never be able to stop it.
We all carry anger. We all carry violence. The difference is that many of us have had the resources, support, and tools to keep those feelings from escalating into harm—to ourselves or to others. Many people have not.
So let’s talk more openly about anger. Let’s allow men and women to express it in healthier ways. Let’s address the violence within us, rather than pretending it belongs only to someone else.
