We’ve heard a lot lately about men in positions of power, taking advantage of vulnerable women. Sexual harassment and assault in Parliament House, in our high courts, in big business. But what about that other kind, that we don’t hear about? That insidious, hidden abuse, where most victims don’t even realise they’re victims until it’s too late. Where it comes from the one person you should be able to trust. The person who is supposed to love and protect you.
My husband.
I grew up with the patriarchal Christian notion that good women got married and had children. I had a typical white nuclear family where my father was the breadwinner and my mother raised the children, getting low paid part-time work once we were older. We had a house in the suburbs, went to public school, played weekend sport and went to Scouts and Guides. This lovely nuclear family life was the Great Australian Dream.
My indoctrination to society did not, however, prepare me for my real life journey.
I had heard vaguely about domestic violence, but only in the context of the stereotypical “wife basher” who dished out bruises and broken bones. That was something that happened to “other people” who were to be pitied; poor people, foreign people, people of other religions. It didn’t happen to decent middle-class white folks. I had no idea how insidious domestic abuse could be. And then I met my husband.
We worked together. He picked me as empathetic and told a sob story of how he still lived with his “horrible ex” because he had nowhere to go. I got sucked in quickly. The relationship moved fast, with the two of us moving in together within a few months of our first date.
Soon, I had paid off all his debts and defaults and had bought him a car because his “crazy ex” had taken all his money. In hindsight, those were all huge red flags that I was dating an abusive narcissist, but at that time in my life, I didn’t know what a healthy relationship was. I didn’t know what a narcissist was. I had never heard of narcissism or narcissistic abuse.
I fell for his love-bombing because I thought it was real. The mask of the narcissist is not easy to see when you are young and naïve. Within three months of us living together, he was pushing for me to get pregnant. I didn’t see this for the control that it was.
The abuse started before we were married. His first step in controlling me was to isolate me from my support network. We moved away to a new city, away from my family. I knew nobody there. We found a house and all seemed right with the world. Except it wasn’t.
I soon had black eyes and hands around my throat. My friends were telling me to run, but I lied to them that it was accidental and stayed. He lured me back in with the typical script of narcissistic abuse – it was an accident, lots of apparently sincere apologies and promises to go to anger management.
At other times, he would tell me it was “just a joke” when he made a nasty remark. I began to believe it. He even cried and told me how his older brother sexually abused him as a child, and enlisted his mother to tell me that he didn’t mean it.
Then there was sex. Lots of make-up sex. The next excuse at the ready.
I didn’t know this was sexual abuse. You probably don’t know this is sexual abuse. In the beginning, I laughed it off when he came out of the shower and thrust his penis in my face. I was mildly irritated when he would say “I love you,” and if I didn’t respond immediately, he would repeat it more and more forcefully until I replied “I love you too.” (He does this to our children now).
But this was the start of 13 years of increasing abuse. This is how these kind of perpetrators get away with it again and again. They keep it behind closed doors. They have a string of well-practiced excuses as to why it was an accident or a joke. They appear to be “good blokes” to the outside world. They are not.
This “good bloke” mask is why victims are not believed. How often do you see it used as an excuse after yet another woman is killed by her partner/ex-partner? The “good bloke pushed too far” rhetoric.
Victims often share their truth only to be told they’re overreacting. My own family told me “it can’t be that bad”. People suggest for you to go to marriage counselling to fix a problem perceived as combined.
I began to doubt my own reality, and that’s how my husband kept me in grasp. The abuse became normal as I lost my sense of self and denied my own thoughts, emotions and responses. I was wrong, everyone else was right.
The world doesn’t want to hear these truths. It makes people uncomfortable that what they see outside the relationship is not the reality.
But my story needs to be told, every story needs to be told, to show vulnerable people that this behaviour is not normal and it’s not okay. And for the “men are victims too” mob, a disclaimer: My experience was of a male perpetrator, as are the majority of domestic abuse cases, but this behaviour can be perpetrated by men and women. If you see any suspicious behaviours in your partner, get help and get evidence. Take pictures, recordings, go to your doctor and disclose what’s happening. Your life may depend on it.
My husband didn’t rape me in the sense that most people see it. He didn’t hold me down and force his penis inside me like you see on SVU. It was much more subtle, like the frog in hot water analogy – it started off lukewarm with the heat slowly turned up until the frog (me) doesn’t realise it’s about to boil.
It started with little things like waving his penis in my face when I was doing other things. It moved to belittling me regularly and employing guilt trips as another common tactic. His idea of foreplay was to say “I want to rape you”, shoving a hand down my pants. If I didn’t want to have sex, I was a “nasty bitch”, or “a prude”, or “a bad wife”.
If it was his birthday, or our anniversary, or if he’d just had a bad day, I was expected to offer him sex like a good wife. If he had been drinking, the belittling usually escalated to hour-long tirades of verbal abuse, interspersed with small acts of physical abuse like flicking me with a tea-towel or pushing me into the wall as he stormed off to sulk. After we had children, it got worse.
He constantly demanded oral sex. I told him I didn’t like doing it, I told him why, over and over again. Except that was the wrong answer. He would launch into yet another lecture about how everyone does it, a good wife would do it. The guilt trips always started, and the storm-off-and-sulk routine was common. He tried to push my head into his groin. Sometimes I would give in, just to avoid the argument. The next day I would get flowers or chocolates. I didn’t know this was coercive control. I didn’t know it was coercive rape.
He implied that it was my wifely duty to service him. It was also my wifely duty to do all the housework because I did nothing all day and he did everything. In reality, I worked full time plus regular overtime, while he worked part time. He did start at 5am, but was home by 12. As a nurse, I worked regular night duty.
He also body-shamed me, often. If I had my period, he would call me dirty, filthy, disgusting, and would shudder and make noises of disgust. He would complain that it was extremely unfair that he couldn’t have sex with me. He would also tell me if I ever “let myself go” he would never touch me again.
After I had children, he would carry on about having to wait a few weeks, and the need for condoms. He would hiss at me that my vagina better not have stretched. He wanted a mirror on the ceiling. I didn’t.
As time went on, he developed new tricks. If I said no, he would aggressively masturbate on me. His aggression increased until I was just too scared to say no. Over a foot taller than me, his physical advantage was significant. Then he started the threats of cheating, because he would have to “get it elsewhere” if I didn’t do it. Finally, he threatened suicide. I now know that this is a common control tactic by a narcissistic abuser, but back then I had no idea.
When I found a large kitchen knife under the mattress, that was the last straw. I moved into the lounge room, but his demands didn’t stop. I spent an entire pregnancy sleeping on the couch.
And the kitchen knife? Well that was for cutting holes in the mattress to masturbate with. I realised what they were when I discovered used condoms and sticky residue around the holes. When he finally moved out, he declared he was taking the bed – he thought he was being dominant by leaving me nowhere to sleep. I was glad to see it go. I had slept on the lounge for three years to avoid his abuse.
Once my husband had finally moved out, his mother threatened me and demanded that I remove the ADVO because I had “gone too far”. She claimed that men getting drunk and violent is “just what men do.” I wonder, to this day, what she has put up with to think abuse is normal. I can’t deny that I thought it was too, for a long time. How many other women out there believe the same?
Why don’t women report? Because we are not believed. We are blamed and victimised. The system that’s supposed to help us only marginalises us. The people you are supposed to call for help, do not help you. The abusers and their enablers get away with everything.
The hardest part for me now, is that he is using family court to continue his control. He is using our children as pawns in his game, and the system allows it. Years of abuse means nothing, because our children deserve a “meaningful relationship” and they tell me that abusive husbands aren’t abusive fathers.
Because he was never charged, my years of abuse don’t count. My children don’t disclose anything because he manipulates them. My PTSD is triggered over and over, every time I have to deal with him or the court system. I have to retell my story over and over. I have been divorced three years, but I will never be free of him.
I can’t identify myself or my children because we are in family court and this would be seen as influencing proceedings. But I won’t be silenced anymore. Read my story. See the red flags. And if any of it applies to you, get the hell out. And if there’s one thing I can give you to take away from this – have him charged, no matter how hard you have to push. Especially if you have children.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or family and domestic violence, you can call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
If you are in immediate danger, call 000.