The Husband Abusers
This week we’re taking a short break from running excerpts from my book in progress to look at a frequently ignored but painful issue in the church: abused husbands. I’ve written frequently about domestic violence as it impacts wives, including adding an appendix in my book A Lifelong Love, and subsequently mentioning it in the main portion of many other books, as well as writing about a dozen blogposts pleading with the church to take marital abuse more seriously and to protect women and even help them escape. Until recently, I had completely forgotten that I had also written something about abused husbands.
After New Man Magazine published a cover story on domestic abuse against women in 1998, the editors were shocked to find themselves inundated with letters from anonymous husbands begging the magazine to tell the other side of the story. A survey of these men’s letters suggests that abused men are pleading with the church to take their plight seriously. One anonymous man said, “Our society must realize that some women can be just as cruel and violent in family relationships as some men.” Accordingly, New Man assigned the article to me in 1999.
While going through back issues of magazines I had contributed to over the years, my assistant found this article and suggested we should post it for readers today, as she hasn’t seen anything else like it out there. The statistics are dated, but the testimonies are timeless. I want to also add that since this article was written over two decades ago, it has nothing to do with the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, which I haven’t seen and haven’t paid attention to. I literally have no opinion on what went down or any judgment rendered as I don’t know anything about it other than some sensationalized headlines that no one could ignore. This is instead about an often unaddressed but extremely hurtful issue that we in the church need to pay a bit more attention to.
The Husband Abusers
It was late at night and “Alex” (not his real name) just wanted to get out the door. He and his wife “Cindy” had been fighting constantly, but this fight had taken a particularly nasty turn. There had been no physical violence but plenty of hurtful words. Alex was afraid that if he didn’t leave, something terrible would happen, so he opened the door and turned his back.
That was a painful mistake. SLAM! Alex felt the heavy, exterior door bite into his shoulder blades, pinning him against the door frame. It was like somebody had nailed him with a seven-foot-long sledgehammer. He lost his breath, regained it, and looked at his wife.
She insisted it was an “accident.” Alex felt all the frustration of being in a no-win situation. When he just took this abuse, he felt weak, like a coward whose wife could pummel him with impunity. If he fought back and the police showed up, there was no doubt as to who they would arrest-him. Feeling furious but knowing he was without any options, Alex trudged toward his car in a blind rage and drove off.
Inside the house, Cindy was shaken. Though she denied that the door slamming had been intentional, she knew privately that she had thrown it shut on purpose and with all her might. And though she was initially shocked when she realized the blow’s violence, she was now grateful that the same heavy door pounded her husband’s back was a barrier between them. He was gone, and at this moment, that was what she cared about most.
“It hadn’t really mattered to me what the method of achieving that relief was,” Cindy says today, ten years after the incident. “The feelings of frustration and anger overwhelmed me to the point of irrationality.”
When spousal abuse is mentioned, it is almost universally assumed that wives are the objects, not the subjects, of that abuse. But such incidents in which the men are on the receiving end-occur more often than you might think. While many men are tempted to snicker and laugh when anyone mentions the words “husband abuse”-the phrase itself sounds like an oxymoron-the men trapped inside its claws endure a unique brand of misery.
Just how common is it?
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