Domestic violence: 'She lunged at me and I realised I was trapped'
By James Williams
http://www.telegrap
The Telegraph
15 February 2008
For seven months, a once-confident and talented student was a victim of his
girlfriend's violence. Now in his twenties, James Williams relives the
ordeal - and the moment of clarity that freed him.
I don't remember precisely how the argument started but it was heated. As I
turned my back on my girlfriend, blows rained down from all angles. She was
small but drove me into the corner of the room, consumed by rage, lashing,
biting and spitting like a rabid animal.
Taken by surprise, I had neither the sense nor time to react and sank to
the floor, sobbing and holding my head. Then I felt an extra-hard whap as
she hit me with the heel of her shoe. Grey and white stars bloomed in front
of my eyes.
As I got up and sat quietly on the bed, as blood soaked through my hair,
ran down the side of my face and pooled in my lap. I was dizzy, and had a
strange feeling of not caring about anything.
Then all hell broke loose again. She went mad and started crying, blaming
herself, then me - and weeping hysterically. Later, I stumbled with her to
the hospital, where we gave some lame excuse about a drunk bloke bashing me
outside a pub. I received five stitches in the top of my head.
A week later, we moved in together.
I was a middle-class public-school boy looking for someone fun and
interesting to go out with at university. After a string of short
relationships in which I left whenever things got difficult, I wanted to
make amends.
And in my second year, I met a girl who seemed to fit the bill - Anne. She
was pretty, clever and worshipped by the tutors for her offbeat ideas.
We eventually got together and things seemed to be going well. There was
one funny thing, though: the more we went out during the first month, the
more Anne would flirt with other men, later telling me it was nothing.
Not being a jealous person, I took her word for it - but it became more of
a problem when I realised she was lodging with an elderly woman, who had
hated me on sight, and her grown-up son, who regularly told Anne he was in
love with her and she should leave me. Anne told me all about it, saying
she was being honest to reassure me that nothing was going on. Looking
back, I suspect she knew it would make me jealous and more vulnerable to
her exploitation.
We had lunch with my family for the first time and it was incredibly
uncomfortable. My mother, always the joker, tried to lighten the situation
- but my girlfriend, being rather short, was mortally offended when Mum
produced a cup that would have been at home in a Lilliputian'
Everyone else burst into laughter, but I thought: "I'm going to get it
later." Sure enough, as we travelled home Anne delivered a tirade of abuse
about how I didn't stick up for her, and my family were awful and hated her
- and oh, did I think she was fat?
Still, the argument sorted itself out, and I thought nothing of it. Before
I knew it, the end of term had come and Anne wanted me to find her
somewhere to live in the holidays. I was living in a flat in central
London, but did not have much cash - I was now in my final year, and
working three or four evenings a week. Despite that, she told me that if I
did not pay her rent, I was letting her down.
I obliged. But once she moved into her new place, she started to call me
frequently to make sure I was at home when I said I would be. I began to
get very run-down, which made it much harder to deal with her moods.
It was about then that she started to slap me, quite hard sometimes, and I
felt more and more helpless. I let her get away with it because she always
broke down and said she was sorry.
After a while, she got fed up with the flat she was living in and called me
over to inform me of the fact. I was tired after a long day and a stream of
abuse from her, on the hour every hour.
I just wanted to go home and have some time to myself, but she started to
bring things up: how I didn't defend her to my family, for example. I said
I didn't care and was going home. She began to shout, scream and slap me.
This was the start of the incident that saw me end up in casualty - after
which she accused me of fancying the nurse who stitched me.
Should I have walked away? Perhaps. But by then, she had pushed me into a
strange state of mind in which I felt dependent on her - so we moved in
together. That was truly the beginning of my "breaking".
I was under pressure on all sides: balancing work and my studies; spending
night after night in the sitting room on the sofa-bed because she could not
sleep beside me. And every day there were more arguments and violence.
It came to a dreadful head one night as I was preparing dinner after a long
day of lectures. I was standing over the cooker with my back to the kitchen
when she came in and said: "You forgot to get the right type of milk." I
had indeed forgotten, but pointed out that she hadn't asked me to get any.
As I returned to the cooking, I felt a hard poke in the back and heard the
words "turn round". I obediently did so, and received a slap across the
face that rocked me. "What on earth was that for?" I asked.
Anne replied: "You are lying to me and to yourself. I hate that quality
about you."
I said: "It's only a pint of milk." My face was glowing, but that was when
she began laying into me as if I was a punchbag.
As I ducked and dived, shrugging off most of the blows, and we got to the
stairs. She lunged towards me and snatched at my face. I moved aside and
almost threw her down the stairs. It was a split second in slow motion -
she stumbled past me, with a little of my help, then I pulled her back and
took the fall for both of us.
I realised in that moment that I was trapped: Anne could so easily hurt me,
but I could not hurt her. She ran into the kitchen and picked up a knife.
She threw it at me as hard as she could.
Some men might be thinking: "Why didn't you just restrain her, or bloody
slap her back?" But I am not a violent person and could never hit a woman:
the moment I have just described was the closest I have ever been to doing
so, and I still could not go through with it.
Afterwards, I remember walking into my parents' house and my father saying:
"You look like you're dying." I could hardly contradict him. I had
scratches all over my body, and was profoundly weary from the arguing.
The problem was that, by then, I couldn't get myself out of the mess. I
would accept Anne's punishment for the sake of proving I could take it. I
felt I could not tell my parents; instead, I became increasingly separated
from them and from my friends, because she said they were evil and
unsupportive of our relationship, and I believed her.
I have looked back over the diaries she encouraged me to write - there are
gems such as: "Everything is my father's fault!" I found that my
friendships were falling apart and I kept making excuses for why I could
not meet people; in truth, she did not want me to see them, to maintain her
control.
With hindsight, there were warning signs early on - comments such as "It is
either me or your parents" (this after about two months of going out). One
of my favourites was along the lines of: "Why are you not supporting me
when I can so clearly bring light and radiance into your life?"
I think Anne used a brutal version of the carrot and stick. She would
occasionally put a lot of effort into making me happy when I pleased her,
but when I did something wrong she would use the stick so brutally that I
could not feel resentment because I was just plain scared.
Even after just one month together, I was deeply confused by the games she
was playing with me. After five months together, I would think anything she
wanted me to, just for some peace and quiet.
In the end, our tormented relationship came to an end a few weeks after she
threw the knife - seven months on from the start of our relationship. I had
started to exert more independence, working up courage by getting drunk
first. Then, one day, we were in Ikea - never one of my favourite places.
After a 25-meatball lunch, we took our purchases to the checkout. Suddenly,
I just dropped everything and said: "I can't do this any more.
You have treated me worse than you would a dog and I hate you and it is
over." Anne dropped all her things as well and started crying, and I just
thought: "You deserve this, for all the pain and anguish you have caused me
out of malice and for personal gain." I left Ikea feeling as if I could
dance from one rooftop to the next. The madness was over.
When people hear about a woman being abused by her husband, they think she
is an idiot for not leaving him. But I understand now that such women don't
have enough perspective: it becomes normal to have bruises and bites all
over your body and you simply adjust to it - especially when you're young
and aren't quite sure how relationships should go.
People have told me it is good that a man can talk about what happened
without shame, and even with a little humour. Yes, I did feel ashamed that
I was being tormented by a woman too small to go on the rides at
Chessington World of Adventures.
But the shame only makes it harder to get out of the relationship. How can
you tell your friends, who boast of their sexual adventures, that your
girlfriend is beating you black and blue?
Especially when things turn sour so subtly that you don't notice until you
are hooked on the relationship.
I wish I had had the courage to tell someone about this earlier. I had
assumed domestic violence was something that was known to all, but
experienced rarely. What I had not accounted for was the number of men
suffering abuse at the hands of their female partners. But I have learnt
the hard way.
• All names have been changed