Domestic abuse: not a gender issue | Andrew Pain | TEDxLeamingtonSpa

[Applause] it was a hot and sunny day in the South of France and on the surface we must still look like the perfect young family we lived in a beautiful market town amid rolling vineyards the money poured in from my business we owned two properties we owned two cars we had two beautiful daughters and a cute dog but on that hot and sunny day in the South of France I was a shaking wreck you see my wife had asked me to put some shelves up in the sitting room a simple job you might think but I'm rubbish at DIY and we both knew that she was setting me up to fail because either I suggest we get someone else in to do the work but she'd had been disappointed that I wasn't trying to better myself like the other real men that we knew and her disappointment generally led to rage and violence where she bites me kick me grab at my face with her sharp nails and punch me as she had a hell of a punch she floored me completely on a number of occasions or maybe I could just man up and do the work myself but when I made a mess of it I generally did with DIY projects my stomach would be churning with fear because I'd know what was coming next disappointments followed by rage and violence that was the pattern so on that hot and sunny day in the South of France I'm doing my best with these damn shelves but things are going wrong they were holes in the wall for my drilling but they're not lining up I'm making a mess I'm starting to panic and suddenly she's here she's inspecting the work and she is not happy with what she sees she skips a disappointment bit this time she heads straight to rage she's shouting and screaming about my ineptitude I'm begging I'm feeding look I'm sorry I'll start again I'll do a better job next time she grabs a pencil I just sharpen and stabs me repeatedly in the for I feel the sharp pain the blood pouring out I'm feeling sick and from nowhere like my guardian angel our English neighbor bursts through our unlocked front door she's heard the Shang and screaming she persuades my wife to go next door with her to calm down and later that evening that neighbor said to me Andrew you two realize this is domestic abuse as crazy as this may sound I'd endured seven years of this and not once that I ever considered myself to be the victim of domestic abuse and yet my wife had poured chaos and fear into my life from the very beginning of our relationship she hats bizarre and unpredictable mood swings so I never know what was coming next or what might provoke her she threatened me with knives she'd attacked me with anything that she could lay a hands on such as the half full metal watering cap which he slammed into my ribs or the candlestick which he slammed over my head she'd talk and talk about suicide about her childhood allegedly full of abuse about her many illnesses and there were many a parent's illnesses hepatitis C bronchitis anorexia a brain tumor the size of an orange even staged heart attacks and of course I now realize that this was all done to turn me into her worried and attentive carer and she manipulated my relationships particularly those with the close family and friends in order to isolate me from any possible wake-up call or network of support my wife was a skilled puppeteer and she pulled my strings in all directions till I was too dizzy to think straight you know I honestly believed it was all my fault the if I didn't keep provoking her then she wouldn't keep getting mad at me and the violence would stop I have felt so ashamed before the self-help books and counseling sessions that I consumed I never could find the magic answer for how to be that better husband who didn't provoke his wife for how to be that better husband who deserve love and respect shame this terrible thing you know it's an effective silencer he won't speak out if he feel ashamed about something and let's face it in a world of Manning up and who wears the trousers no self-respecting man is going to willingly admit it's being knocked about by his wife so you probably all thinking well why didn't you leave you could have just walked out the door but leaving isn't as simple as it sounds because abusers rob you of your confidence your optimism and your support networks so that when you're in it you can't really see beyond it you're just surviving day by day you're just working overtime to prevent your abusers triggers from being pulled and then of course there's a children we had two daughters together if I'd leave I knowingly leave my daughters in the hands of an abusive person what loving father's going to do that and of course if I leave I have to accept that I'm gonna see far less of my daughter's moving forward as my wife will no doubt use my desire to see my daughters as a weapon against me to help her take back control of the situation and to take revenge on me for having had the audacity to have walked away that fear of not seeing your children that fear is what keeps fathers trapped for years in abusive relationships and then if I leave there's also the fear of facing false accusations of domestic abuse and I'll give you an example so when I face my ex-wife in the family courts after we got divorced she requested a screen in court due to her alleged fear of me citing years of domestic abuse and then as someone who was representing herself in court she pushed and pushed the judge to allow her to personally cross-examine me how could she be so afraid of me on the one hand that she's requesting a screening call I hid so confident of herself on the other hand that she was absolutely determined to personally cross-examine me you couldn't make it up and although I can laugh today about the absurd nature of that contradiction at the time can you imagine how distressing it was for me to be the only man in that courtroom of women facing false allegations of domestic abuse and then to be aggressively cross-examined by my female abuser for about an hour can you imagine how distressing that was men are suffering in silence and society is not helping because society generally assumes that when it comes to domestic abuse its women and children who were going to suffer a couple of months ago the BBC ran an article about the number of domestic violence related murders in the UK having reached a five-year high and the headline image that they used for that article was six photographs of six faces of six tragically murdered women now I've blurred out their faces out of respect to the families of those women but my point is in the article the BBC state that 75% of domestic violence related murder in the UK involves women as victims leaving 25% involving men as victims so don't you think that a headline image which accurately portrays the true face of domestic violence related murder in the UK it would have had eight photographs wouldn't it six women and two men do the maths domestic abuse where men are the victims is far more common than you may think in fact in the UK last year of the 2 million reported cases of domestic abuse one-third involve men as victims I'm one in six men in the UK will experience domestic abuse at some point in their lifetime now looking around this fabulous venue today there must be a hundred men here I wonder how many of you can truly identify with some of the experiences that I'm describing if we're serious about tackling domestic abuse if we're serious about protecting our daughters and our sons then we need to accept an uncomfortable truth which is that women also abuse women abused women women abused men men abused men men abused women domestic abuse is not a man versus women issue it's a human issue and we need to start thinking about it and talking about it as a human issue if we're serious about tackling it we need to take a step change in our approach towards domestic abuse and the very first step is to encourage women and men who have been abused to come forward with their stories to be acknowledged to be heard so we can learn from them and truly understand the causes and signs of domestic abuse so if we can look out for one another and so we can truly understand the challenges faced by female and male victims of domestic abuse so we can empower women and men to leave the horrors of abuse behind them and move forward to rebuild their lives now I'm one of the lucky ones I got to rebuild my life I'm now blissfully remarried to a wonderful woman she lights up my world she's brilliant my two daughters got moved to us by the courts in an extraordinary legal case and we have three joyful young boys and it's my privilege to serve people at all levels of society including men struggling with abuse and I'm now at peace about what happened because I've chosen to forgive now some people choose to forgive because they want to set themselves free that wasn't the case for me because I actually quite liked feeling bitter and angry for a while my bitterness was like a comfy pair of joggers I didn't want to take them off but bitter people make stupid decisions because bitterness is an all-consuming black hole and when you're spinning around in the darkness you can't see clearly you won't make rational decisions now I didn't want to make stupid decisions I wanted to make good decisions smart decisions and so for that reason I trained myself over time to see every situation which involve my ex-wife not through the eyes of a bitter victim but through the eyes of a wise and external observer detached from the raw emotion and as I made that my habit I started to see two people I started to see a broken woman in pain struggling with mental health issues and a naive young man who thought he could mend that broken woman by Stanley with her over time but when I chose to say like that it was easier to forgive now it's two things I'd say to you if you're caught in an abusive relationship the first is talk to someone you trust the brother in labor Kali your friend but don't suffer in silence due to shame pride or fear I know that just cuz you're causing an abusive relationship doesn't mean you're weak or stupid anyone can get caught in an abusive relationship and you will have shown incredible strength hanging in there day after day as you do and the second thing I'd say to you is that better is possible for you the grass really is greener on the other side of the hill so never lose hope and never give up [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 134,463

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Family, Men, Mental health, Relationships, Violence

Id: 9HgPICMQLls

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020