Oh it's most definitely unfair. Had I raised my hand to her, even to defend myself, I would have been immediately transported to the nearest holding cell here in town.

Meanwhile, she would have been sitting nice and comfy in the house that I, alone, paid the rent and all the bills for her to be in.

Lots of women wonder why a guy is reluctant to be in a relationship. Well...let's see here...

Fall in love, get married, start arguing, wind up getting divorced...woman gets half ( if not more ) of everything you worked your whole life to get. Whether or not you owned said stuff before she ever came into your life means exactly nothing. Whether or not she actually did anything in the marriage, such as help pay for the things gained during said marriage, has no bearing. She gets it anyway.

Fall in love, don't get married, but live together. Wind up arguing. Woman grabs knife from kitchen with every intention of using it. Call police because of physical threat. Cops take woman's side of things once she convinces them that she didn't really have a knife.

Look at it this way, folks. The decks are stacked, from the very beginning, against the guys.

An awful lot of guys have seen this going on, and simply say " Screw that ".

PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!

Been there.

My advice to help you over come this is that you are in a position of still feeling the victim. it will haunt the back of your mind until the day you die unless you come to terms with two things: One: You are not powerless, and Two: It happened. Time to move on.
Inside you do not want to be beaten and verbally tormented like many abusive relationships have in them. You feel weak and powerless. You need to change your behaviors adn you need to change your mind set.

Here is the advice I would offer and why.

First of all and foremost, focus on yourself more than dating! You need to do some mental house cleaning. The reason is you can spend money trying to see a head shrink and never make any ground or you can understand that you have to help yourself. This is where self empowerment begins.
I STRONGLY and I mean VERY STRONGLY recommend that you enroll in a martial arts class. I very highly recommend Judo for starters and not Karate. You are not taught to hit back but avoidance and how to not get hit. Later if you are good at it you will learn to tie men into knots and not break a sweat or a finger nail doing it. I also recommend Kendo. It is one thing to know how to smack an assailant with a broom stick but with Kendo you will learn to use that same broom stick to break bones.
This will help repair your confidence in yourself. A strong body will help strengthen your mind.
Next: Get the hell out of your house more. That is the one place where bad thought will repeatedly infiltrate your mind. Taking a class in college may help or getting involved in local theater. Do something OTHER THAN RELIGION to help get your mind off of the past. Diving is a good way to help because you are immersed in a wholly different environment.
Also: Do not look to others for what you need to do for yourself. YOU have to be the healer right now.

Try to keep in mind bad **** happens to good people all of the time.
Still, that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Use the experience to learn from for as bad as it was. Once you can come to terms with the guilt, anger, hatred, pain, and emotional scarring the real healing begins. It is easy for people to say let it go but they are not the ones hanging from the tree limb you are (metaphor). There will be no instant gratification. Part of the process is the self hatred for being weak. It is an illusion but a good enough one to screw with us all. Build yourself and look as you go along the way for that special other.
Diving head long into a new relationship right now is not the answer at all for you! It will be short lived and end in tears for you. Repair your foundation before trying to build another one made of two people!


This is your brain on PTSD !!

Just so you know I am not some closet psychologist:
Teenage child of a divorce,
SUPER manipulative Born Again Christian a father who
Was extremely abusive and a back stabber.
Mother and I never really seen eye to eye.
Went to Lutheran Grade school then to Catholic High school (3 1/2) of the worst years of my life.
I had my share of emotional baggage but since I let it go I feel a world better for it and life goes on.
I hope you can open the closet and sweep out the skeletons that plague you. Coming out of an abusive relationship is harder because of the pain inflicted on us by the ones we are supposed to trust.
I wish you good luck on the journey you must take.

mine was physical. mental. emotional.. and finaly ended after about 6 years of hell.. when i kicked him out. he returned, raped me, found out that hte rape had gotten me pregnant.. came back tried to cut out the baby and then tried to make it look like i had commited suacide... finaly he pulled a gun on me one night.. and by some miracle the gun misfired.. and he realized what he had done..

ive been rasing my 4 children alone ever sence...
wish i had been strong enough at the time to call the cops and turn his azz in.. but i wasnt.

he will drop me "pitty me" emails every now and tehn.. tryin to get me to take him back. but not even i am that stupid..

best of luck to all!!

I've been their also,mine was into the mental abuse and when i had my second child,i left didn't want my boy's to see that and think that it's ok to do so.

don't give up,just remember what goes around comes around,he will get is,just sit back and see

well said

you say that your sorry but what you say is so cold,maybe one day,hopefully not if you'r ever in a situation like these then you'll see what we meant.

i'm sorry for your pain,now i can see where your coming from.

Damn,I did it all wrong when me and my ex hubby split. I left, I walked away from everything. I took my son's things and my clothes when I left. He got everything. I eventually got the appliances because there was a loan on them in MY name and he refused to pay the loan so he gave them to me.

He pulled the knife on me and the cops were ready to haul me away because when they were talking to him and letting him tell his side of the story, I called him a fu**ing liar and the cop standing in front of me said that if I said another word I'd be the one that would be taken out of the home. Then when it was my turn to tell my side, he sat in the other room crying his freaking eyes out that he didn't want us splitting up. They let us both stay until I was ready to move out, which was only 3 days later. They said to stay civilized until then, but if they had to come back, that whoever started the fight would be gone for good.

Yes I was married 17 year and suffered mental torture from my wife over many years.

Yet even as a lecturer i had no redress to this at all she when on to be a Dr in Psychology and still works on me today or through the kid.
But that is a woman not all violence is by men to women.
What man is going to admit that he is beaten by his wife