Kindness, mercy and pity overcame my urge to intervene. I watched helplessly as Joseph and Elizabeth hit each other carelessly. I didn’t know the root of their conflicts. Like the other puzzled onlookers, I wondered what goes wrong after a man and a woman, who have lived together for a long time, plan and implement their way forward into their success and failure and triumphs, became enemies. Suddenly, like a flash of lightening, Elizabeth hit Joseph around the kidney region. He slowly fell down into unconsciousness, coma… death. A murderous woman she might have been. Did she expect some ecstasy? She seemed, she felt nothing after felling her husband down – not joy, not sadness, not remorse nor regret. Everybody scattered into the thin air. There was none that wanted to be a witness.
As I walked past them, my blander tight enough, the gate into my house metres away, endless thoughts spun through my mind. Why is it that marriage has become an institution of love and tears? When will a family set up be a magic world of caring attitudes that define courtship? What ingredients fuel the need to beat, maim and possibly kill? Does fighting make things better? Do couples get back to the drawing table of their lives after kicking the hell out of each other? Do they live in fear after reconciliation? Is there a possibility of a past conflict resurfacing to haunt the relationship in future? Is respect for one another maintained after such a bitter duel? What picture does violence portray to onlookers? Are such couples comfortable as gossips of their duel make dinner stories as possible neighbours analyze the situation?
The truth dawned in bits. People don’t fall in love with bad guys. They don’t fall in love with people who treat them right though nice responsible people are all over around. They are not attracted to them but seek to enjoy a character associated with them. Relationships are today built on understanding of a celebrity, a man or a woman whose appearance, voice, gestures, match the model. Instant rapport develops if the friend falls on the margins of the seemingly created model. The first time one gets physically intimate is very important. It defines the way forward for all future dates. A person seeks similar environs to turn on moods. If it was a happy event, a person ends up seeking dates that remind him or her of such a scenario. If it was a sad event, there is the possibility for a spouse to feel cheated, victimized, intimidated…
Emotional situation
As adults, we seek emotional situations like those of our childhood. If your parents were not around much of the time, you are used to feeling ignored so you seek partners who must learn to ignore you, even if they care for you. A partner seeks individual space, private life and does not want interference. Like during neglected childhood times, interference of people should only be necessary as when the spouse wants something done –just like during meal times then when the spouse could have had time to be among other people. If your parents fought, this seed of thought has been planted in your heart. It’s what you have programmed your mind to do and achieve. If you failed to get enough parental love, you expect your spouse to compensate no matter how tired he might be. If your own parents looked down on you, possibly the father felt you were not his child, you end up feeling you don’t deserve to be loved. You feel hated, suspect your spouse for being more or less the same, because you have so much evidence of such a behaviour in your mind.
Symptoms of domestic violence
Threats: does your partner threaten your life? For instance, he might kill you or beat you up? Does your partner service the life of a mistress? Do you feel neglected? Does you spouse fail to meet his obligations even on a fat salary package? Doesn’t your partner want you to discuss his budget with you? Does he beg to keep to himself or herself?
Humiliation
Does your partner insult you in the presence of your friends? Does he or she talk badly about you when discussing family matters with friends? Does your partner bully you in public including ignoring you? Does your partner want your company when only in the premises of your home? Does your partner lower your dignity before the kids by telling them how useless you are? Does your partner tell you he had other friends to fall to even if you were to quit marriage? Are you an excellent communicator than your partner and knows, in presence of friends, you are likely to humiliate his academic credentials with your uncalled for irrelevant inputs into discussions?
Conformity
Every home has its own standards. Are you a match to his financial standards? Do you dress well and represent your spouse well? Does your friend leave you if going out and only insists you to be with him only when going shopping in a nearby mall? Do you feel secure when walking by your spouse or do you think a lover could pop up and distort your happy evening out? Do you live up to his or her expectations? Under what circumstances did you meet? Did you meet your spouse at a party or through the Internet? Were you prepared for the union? When your spouse talks about dialogue protocols, dressing etiquettes, moral standards, thought content, do you understand what he expects of you? When you try to please your spouse, does the partner feel satisfied by your effort or does the partner retort ‘I had a similar treatment in a particular hotel?’ Does your spouse respect your views about building the home together? Does your spouse value your inputs or does the partner consider them inappropriate and substandard? When you mistakenly receive your spouse’s call, does the spouse dictate his life and your own, in the house, has landmarks or borders? Does your spouse accuse you of overstepping your roles and responsibilities?
Driving force of violence
Violence is not about anger, pain, frustration, fear, stress, alcohol, bitterness, tiredness or hunger. Violence is a pre-determined action. It is a result of what one has been planning to do. Simply put, violence is a way of displaying anger, stress, and frustration, pain… Violence is a habit and grows as one grows. Like a teacher marking a student’s paper, such a violent person seeks for errors that you have made, keeps a track of your possibly doubtful actions in a diary only to unleash them when that opportunity shall mature. Violence matures and when your spouse thinks it’s high time to lose control, you face what has been brewing in his heart or mind. At this destined time, any small wrong doing like just being late to prepare supper or a call at an odd hour of the night, is enough to open the doors of insults, sarcastic talk amid laughter only to learn his or her moods are on the red light. Just one more word and you get hit with a fist, slap or even whatever has been kept in case. Sometimes, magistrates and judges err by dictating the person’s mental potential to be investigated before he or she could stand a trial. Yet, alone, they regret their actions. They silently curse their spouses for being tormenting, unreasonable, too intruding,… A social worker only makes matters worse when she or he comes up with a need for individual or private life in a spouse. The netted bag is let lose, to marvel at his or her wit and become more virulent!
The road to recovery
If you can’t repair a small crack, you should invest to build an entire wall. There is need to seek foundation to erase your negative thoughts. Who do you fall to when you need a counsel? Do you get encouraged to hold on the oar of life or are you made more insensitive to your spouse? Does your spouse seek forgiveness? Do you have time to ask your spouse if he or she is happy and if not why? Do you have time to mend your relationship? A relationship is like a dress worn without being replaced by another and might get torn due to conflicts or differences of opinion. Do you sympathize or empathize with your spouse’s situation? Or do you just take it for carelessness? Do you solve problems with your spouse or do you seek ways of laying blame on one another? Do you have time to reflect on past life of your spouse? Maybe, poor family background, for instance, lack of parental love, family separations, or poor upbringing could shed light into your problems and be in a position to mend them. Before this, do you believe you could overcome your anger, frustrations, stress, pain… Do you have a dust bin in your heart to empty your own anger, emotional break downs, frustrations, stress… Are you able to control your actions? Are you able to give dialogue a chance? When you speak, do you dictate, command or rule? Do you leave a door for an advice? Do you know how to dispense your anger?
You are responsible for your own actions. If you are one of the violent men or women on the loose, why don’t you attack everybody in sight? Why do people pretend and alter situations to soil the social vitae of their spouses? Do such people know, a word of abuse, neglect or irresponsibility, once on the media spotlight, could determine the future of their careers?
Sharing ideas
It becomes hard to listen to a domestic violence victim’s tales. If you are sympathetic, empathetic and compassionate enough, you are likely to feel you are not safe either. The tale, “It began when…” and it rhymes with what you evidently observe your spouse doing, on relating experiences, a sense of insecurity creeps in and you too become another mentally tormented victim to be counseled too. With this projection of inner thoughts on life experiences, the likelihood to inquire from your spouse is high. The spouse may become suspicious; you don’t trust them! Or maybe, sad to say, you are not likely to give directions of a path or road to a stranger unless you have traveled by it. This is suggestive; immediately your spouse will take you for unfaithfulness. You wanted the spouse to understand the need for variety. Withdrawal symptoms are sparked.
Counseling is about transforming the lives from situation of discomfort to comfort or rather, internal struggle into peace, the way you would feel. Counseling should go miles to assure a victim that all is well. Counseling is emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and even physically draining profession. It involves getting into phenomeno-logical world of a victim to be able to positively reflect it back to you. As a counselor, if you reflect on the negative edge of your own life, you are likely to let your spouse feel the magnitude. He has to show he cares. He will start to shut your career with words like, ‘I earn enough money for our upkeep’. Otherwise he will be open. ‘Your own interaction with clients is affecting our family. Please learn to leave your work at your work place.’ A mid-wife smiles when a baby is born. A counselor ought to feel the same way when a prospect or client finally says, ‘I feel okay now. I can go on with life.’
A journal would be of help. It is a write up of one’s experiences and frustrations. It’s a way of pouring out disturbing encounters in life threatening situations otherwise, they come back to haunt you like an evil spirit.
Self assessment
The spirit to revenge is born of a faulty belief system. For instance, I am supposed to manipulate my spouse, it’s my right to demand whatever I want at any time. It’s my right to be heard. I have the right to control my spouse and prune unbecoming behaviour by any means possible. My creator made me a Supreme Being and could always be a mentor, a leader, guide, or counsel. Yes, it’s okay. But safety gets the first priority. You are a person. You are a human being like your victim. Try to think, and understand, your spouse can live happily without your input. Let men and women look beyond their own selfish gains. Let’s seek counsel, get educated even on matters on living together positively. If it’s hard to get educated or visit a consultant, fearing to lower your self-esteem in the society, always start a conversation on a given area of a relationship with your colleagues. They will inform you and widen your horizons of thought. Create a friend in problems and seek counsel on what to inform him or her and you shall be informed. Otherwise, if you can’t be a student to learn, even when you still consider yourself a teacher, you will be the first person to fall when your binding vows with your spouse break apart. You will cry alone and without a friend to lend a shoulder. Like a default system, you need to straighten up things. Don’t try to distort order. Like I usually advise my friends, ‘hospital ceilings are boring. Please act safely. Let your words and actions have some dignity.’ It is probably what the world of domestic violence needs most
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