Domestic violence must be stopped. The Hell of living in a violently abusive relationship

Beware of an abusive relationship.

Domestic disharmony as a forerunner to violence.

Having children in the house won’t stop the domestic violence.

Domestic violence makes marriage a "living Hell".

A victim of domestic violence speaks out.

Quivering in the corner is not the solution. I have to do something, if not for myself, at least for the children who shouldn’t have to hear me screaming in the evenings after another violent attack. There must be some way out.

The pain in my left eye, where the scalding water, was thrown is excruciating. My fingers, the ones that got broken when the hammer was brought down on them with the maniacal strength that my "life Partner" possesses during a frenzy period, are starting to swell to twice their natural size. I say natural rather than normal, for this is not the first time that they have been broken. I won’t be able to use that hand for some time.

I feel so useless and defeated. I pray to God, if he exists, to take me out of this nightmare situation.

Things were not always like this. Oh no, when we first met everything was sweetness and light. The small attentions and the compliments that were showered on me in the early days really did convince me that I had met my soul mate, the one person that I could spend the rest of my life with. I had a difficult upbringing, with a father that was seldom at home, as he was in the merchant marine, and a mother who was probably not as faithful a wife as she should have been. We children had to listen to the sounds of lovemaking coming from the big master bedroom, and know that it wasn’t "our Daddy with our Mummy".

When our father did come home, most of the time seemed to be spent arguing, although I don’t think he ever found out about the lovers. He may have had a "girl in every port" himself.

Anyway, with this background, it was easy for me to fall head over heels in love when I started to get treated as special. There were some warning signs that I should have noticed. The most obvious one was the almost obsessive jealousy if I got chatted up by any other person, and there were sometimes massive sulks, if I wanted to go for a night out with colleagues from work.

Rather than being made wary by such demonstrations, I took them as reassuring signs that I was loved. I could still remember the loose nature of my parents’ relationship, and I felt good that that was not what I had.

After three months we decided to get married. Money was not a problem. I had been left a house by my grandmother, who doted on me. I was the only one of us working, but there was no mortgage to pay, so that seemed to be not a problem.

About a year after we were married the children came along. Twins; a boy and a girl. I loved them from their first second of life. If truth be told, the love that I felt for those babies and their need for my love that I could sense every day, strengthened me to deal with the problems, that were starting to become more apparent in the marriage.

There had been some outbursts before the birth of the children. The exact time that it should take me to get home from work had been calculated. If I were five minutes late there would be an inquisition. I would be accused of seeing someone else. There were some pictures on my "Facebook" taken at some work outing.

"These are the people you are putting ahead of me" was the complaint.

I began dreading if there was a transport problem. I knew that my evening would be one of unalloyed nagging then.

It was when the twins were around a year old that the violence started. I think things were leading up to an explosion from when I had gone back to work after the birth.

The jealous outbursts were becoming more frequent. I once had the newspaper snatched from my grasp, and thrown out the front window. I was accused of looking at dating ads.

Several times cups would be thrown at the wall, or plates smashed on the floor. Once some hot cooking oil was thrown all over my best clothes.

"That will stop you shagging around" I was told.

The first time I was assaulted was on a Friday Evening. There had been a signal failure on the trains and I was about forty minutes late in getting home. I had the usual sinking feeling as I approached the house. I put my key in the lock, and opened the door. Before I got to the living room all hell broke loose. The crockery was flying again, but this time, not to the walls or the floor. A plate hit me just above the eye. Before I could properly react, I was hit with an iron, wielded with full force. The blood coursed down my face.

The verbal abuse was as bad as anything I had heard before.

I won’t repeat it all here; but I was accused of sleeping around, and told I was a "useless piece of shit", and more of the same.

Upstairs the babies started crying.

I didn’t need to go to the hospital this time. The cuts and bruises, although they looked awful, were not so bad as to need medical attention.

Of course there was plenty of crying afterwards.

"I'm sorry"

"You know that I love you"

"I hate myself when I hurt you"

"I can change".

This is the kind of thing that was said and because, on a certain level, I was still in love, I believed.

I felt that we could put the problems behind us, and move into the perfect relationship, that would be so much better than the one I saw my own parents put up with.

I was wrong. Things have got steadily worse since. I try to pretend at work that the bruises and cuts are accidental.

It is too shaming for me to admit that my perfect marriage is a "living Hell".

Twice I have had my fingers broken. Once, when I was asleep, I woke to find my fingers being crushed in an electric nutcracker. The second time was today. I was doing washing up at the sink, when I was sneaked up on from behind, and a lump hammer was brought down with full force on my left hand. Three fingers were broken. The pain is agonising. Why does it always have to be those sneak attacks?

That is why I am sitting quivering in a corner. The twins, who are toddlers now, are at the top of the stairs. They are in so much shock that they are not even crying.

Oh God above, how can I get the three of us out of this living hell?

The police are not always known for their understanding in my situation.

My wife is gone out for a while.

Lord God. Please give me the resolution to be gone, with the children, before she returns.

If you are affected by the issues in this story, or if you need to find out more, visit this website.

http://www.mankind.org.uk/

While the above account is fictional, it does represent a true picture of what happens in homes throughout the world. Over thirty per cent of violent incidents within the home involve attacks on the male partner by the female. The police are often less than sympathetic to the victims. The result of this is that a large proportion of such crimes are unreported. This is not a situation that should be allowed to stand.

Violence and bullying of any sort is despicable. It should never be allowed to happen.