15% of domestic violence victims are men. I’m one of those 15%. I have never struck another person ever. I didn’t even get into fist fights as a child or teenager.

I suffered physical violence almost beyond recounting by an alcoholic mother. Like so many victims, I found myself marrying a person who was also abusive. My wife actually hit me with her fists seven times in our marriage.

It wasn’t until I got into therapy in my early thirties that my counselor began to confront me on [this]. For three months, I resisted even thinking I was being abused by my wife. Sadly, it wasn’t until I was threatened with a hot iron while almost fully unclothed one morning that I realized, my counselor was right – this was inappropriate and getting worse.

The worst of it was that as a “man”, who had always been very athletic, I just didn’t think it was “violence” unless I was being “really” hurt. Of course, my wife lacked the raw physical power to give me much more than a fat lip - until the hot iron incident. Further, being socialized as a male in this society, I was trained not to ever say anything about this because, what man would complain about a woman hitting him?

It took years of therapy for me to even see that it was violence, let alone report it as such. Men just aren’t allowed to say “I’m abused” and still feel they are “men”. Men are doubly silenced in this regard.

All of these were issues that my therapist had to confront me on. Since that day some 16 years ago, I have accepted the fact that violence of any kind, whether by men or women, is strictly unacceptable – in any form whatsoever. I haven’t had a single incidence of such abuse [since then].

50 year old
Northern European male
Kaiser Permanente employee