JustPearlyThings - November 17, 2023


Modern Admits To Abusing Her Husband


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

207.10246

Word count

1,526

Sentence count

115

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how I used to hit my husband and how I felt ashamed of what I did. I also read an article by Florence Terrell talking about her experience with domestic violence and how she dealt with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You know, and this increase in violence I have seen from both men and women in my lifetime.
00:00:05.660 Growing up, I really did not see this violence every, you know, it was kind of something that
00:00:11.240 happened. Like, I'm from Chicago. I lived in the suburb. And all of the violent stuff would just
00:00:16.020 happen in the city. Like, we would know, okay, there's one part of the city, all the crazy stuff
00:00:20.860 happens in. We're in the suburbs. We're kind of avoiding that. But more and more, I see the
00:00:26.600 violence seeping out into the suburbs and happening in more places that I know, and also happening in
00:00:33.240 more relationships. You know, we've talked a lot about how I believe that women are more violent 1.00
00:00:37.320 than men. And I saw an article recently of a woman talking about how she used to hit her husband.
00:00:42.980 Let's pull it up. I used to hit my husband. I felt scared and ashamed of what I'd done. I apologized
00:00:50.220 and thought it was a one-off, but it was a pattern that would carry us on for the next 10 years.
00:00:55.740 So I wanted to read this article. A lot of times we act like female violence is rare and not common. 0.53
00:01:02.860 But through interviewing thousands of people, I actually couldn't believe how common it was
00:01:07.760 for men to be in abusive relationships. It actually blew my mind. The amount of men
00:01:13.420 that I have met that have camera rolls on their phone dedicated to protecting themselves from the
00:01:18.720 women. They never want to be accused of abuse, so they make sure they keep videos of what the 1.00
00:01:23.340 chick is doing. I was also shocked and surprised by the amount of men that have told me they've been
00:01:29.280 hit by their partners. I've even had a guy say that a girl tried to hit him with a car. I've heard women 1.00
00:01:35.740 laugh about that on podcasts. And there is an article by Florence Terry talking about how she used to hit
00:01:42.460 her husband. And I wanted to read it to you guys to give really a little more insight from the female
00:01:48.020 point of view of an abusive woman because it's never talked about. It's always the abuse of men. 0.96
00:01:53.040 It is never the abuse of women. Experience. I used to hit my husband. The first time I struck him was
00:01:58.120 during an argument over money. He decided to pay off a loan without telling me and we'd gone overdrawn.
00:02:03.420 I was worried and tried to discuss it with him, at which point he left the room. I felt we hadn't
00:02:08.280 talked it through properly and followed him. The next minute I was hitting him around the head. I remember 0.96
00:02:13.700 losing control of my limbs lashing out. Afterwards, he was upset and I cried. I felt scared and ashamed
00:02:19.440 of what I'd done. I apologized and thought it was a one-off, but the pattern carried on for 10 years.
00:02:24.380 I met my husband through mutual friends at Durham University. I was 19 and he was five years older,
00:02:29.760 more worldly and mature. He was less serious too and made me laugh. We were married five years later.
00:02:35.520 He had a job in IT and by then I had started working as a divorce lawyer. The early days of our marriage
00:02:40.780 were steady, but as the stress of my job and responsibilities grew, I took it out on him.
00:02:45.380 After the first time it happened again, about 18 months later, I felt a surge of rage I couldn't
00:02:50.320 control. My anger would escalate during arguments over household chores or my husband coming to bed late.
00:02:56.740 I remember feeling I was out of my body watching myself and telling myself to stop, but I couldn't.
00:03:02.120 I would hit him hard, hitting to hurt. One time I picked up a table and crashed it down so hard on the
00:03:07.640 ground. I left fight marks on his arms a couple of times. It was similar to the way siblings fight,
00:03:12.520 yet he never struck back. He'd hold up his hands to shield himself, which made me feel even worse.
00:03:17.980 I know my husband felt emotionally hurt at times. It was upsetting for him to think the person he
00:03:22.860 loved wanted to hurt him, but he never threatened to leave me. He felt there was more to me than my
00:03:27.380 behavior and that we still had a strong marriage. I'm a petite woman, a little over eight stone,
00:03:32.620 and my husband is a big man. Yet he said he didn't feel emasculated and that I never physically
00:03:37.440 hurt him. While I exploded, he remained calm and I was thankful, but I was also frustrated that he
00:03:42.500 wasn't communicating fully with me. What is there to communicate? Okay, sorry guys. What is there to
00:03:51.900 communicate? So she's beating him and she's frustrated that he wasn't communicating. All right. All right.
00:03:58.460 Sorry. I was using violence to get a reaction. I was verbally aggressive too. I'd make demanding
00:04:03.740 comments, sarcastic and personal attack. All things that erode love, I'd blame him preaching,
00:04:09.200 criticize. I couldn't understand why I wanted to be so aggressive to someone I love. I lacked
00:04:13.680 self-awareness. I now realize the anger I felt was to do with my stress and low self-esteem. I was
00:04:19.340 packing my life too tightly, working long hours a day as a lawyer, volunteering the citizens and vice
00:04:25.260 brew and doing soup runs for the homeless. I had what I felt was a privileged upbringing. My family
00:04:30.800 was middle-class and I went to private schools. I felt I had an obligation to repay this to society.
00:04:35.900 I thought I should be superhuman and I felt my husband should be too. To other people, I seemed
00:04:40.140 calm and accommodating, a kind of peacemaker. But inside, I was pent up and deeply ashamed of myself.
00:04:46.540 And I wanted to point this out too, because you never know what happens with women behind closed 1.00
00:04:51.620 doors. Many women in public are perfectly pleasant. Many women to everybody else is a nice 1.00
00:04:58.880 person, but behind closed doors, you have no idea how they treat their husband. And this is why a lot
00:05:04.040 of men are afraid of marriage because women switch up. And she admitted that she did. And if she's 0.61
00:05:10.100 admitting this, guys, how many people has this happened to? Eventually, I accepted something had
00:05:15.240 to change. I'd heard about domestic violence groups, but only for men. I felt my behavior carried an
00:05:20.300 added stigma for women. Women weren't expected to be violent, especially high-powered working women 1.00
00:05:25.320 who volunteered for charities. Then I found an anger management course on the internet. It was
00:05:29.540 nerve-wracking at first, and I knew I'd have to face up to the aspects of my life I'd prefer to
00:05:34.040 overlook. Yet, the course was a turning point, and by the time it had finished, I felt confident I
00:05:38.540 could control myself. Then, two years later, I hit my husband again. I had become complacent, assumed that
00:05:43.840 I'd changed. When I slapped his face for the last time, I was forced to confront the situation.
00:05:48.220 This time, I told my family and my friends what had been happening, that they didn't criticize or
00:05:52.580 judge was a huge help. Soon, after I decided to go part-time as a lawyer and a mediator, I now run
00:05:57.600 a course on how to help people deal with anger and conflict. My husband and I are still together.
00:06:02.500 I'm careful not to choose language that is aggressive. If I ever feel angry and feel my
00:06:06.720 heart beat quicken, I leave the room, but that is rare. I wouldn't claim our marriage is now perfect,
00:06:10.780 but it's pretty good. A caring and gentle relationship, which feels like an achievement for me.
00:06:15.200 What if we looked at male abuse like that? You know, she talked about how this was a terrible
00:06:21.240 thing that she wanted to overcome, and yet she's still married. And, you know, I think this story
00:06:26.520 is important because a lot of people will say that women are not violent. A lot of people will say that 0.99
00:06:32.040 women are not abusive. But in my experience, women are more abusive than men. They are more violent 1.00
00:06:36.920 than men. And oftentimes, when it comes to abusive relationships, they are much more likely to hit
00:06:43.440 the husband than the husband is to hit the wife. This is not uncommon. I've heard stories like this
00:06:48.140 so many times. And the issue is, really, we tell women that being crazy is a good thing. Oh, we even 1.00
00:06:56.520 have phrases like, I went crazy. How is going crazy socially acceptable in society? It's not. It should
00:07:02.820 not be. And when these stories like that, it kind of begs the question, if this is one woman that this
00:07:08.560 has happened to, how many women are there that are abusing their husband and their husbands are just 1.00
00:07:13.440 sticking it out because they love their wives? Men are much more likely to work through conflict
00:07:18.220 than women are. Women throw in the towel. Men tend to try to work it out. 1.00