Did I Assault Her?

[PradaChanel]

I know Im late on this. However, I will admit that I have a real short temper. It has been times when I was the aggressor in a relationship or in situations period. It didnt take nothing for me to curse anyone out in stores, school..I just didnt care. Its crazy because I always carry and present my outer apperance well but my inside was real messed up. Even when it came to relationships, Lord dont let me catch my man in a lie or something. I would go to where ever he was and flip. If he wouldnt come outside I would kick his cars until he came. I mean, I would flip out. Thats just bits and pieces.

However, I went through alot of emotional issues growing up and a I really dealt with a lot and I remember I would use it as my reason for flipping out at times but then I came to the conclusion that i was just using it as manipulation, not intentionally but it was easy to play the blame game. So once, I seen my current boyfriend out and I felt like he had sort of pushed me aside that day and sort of ignored me so to speak, but anyway I was already pissed and I seen him at this club and I went to him to hug and kiss all over him and he sort of dismissed me and I remember I was a little wasted but I lost it on him. Like in front of everybody I was pushing him and he was trying to walk away but I was VERY aggressive that they kicked me out. Anyway, he left me for awhile and he was done with me b/c he felt like if I act like that at the beginning it would just get worst. I felt like he was full of it that night but it didnt give me the right to touch him. My point is, I had to make the decision to change my ways and my attitude and it can be pattern, for me it was until I got with someone who wasnt going to tolerate that. So you have to take control of what you allow to happen and if she love you like you love her, she will change and try hard to. Just speaking from experience. I learned that Im not touching anyone b.c I dont want to be touched.

[VincenzoG91]

Good points, Wakeup. She might be reluctant to get help at school, though. It's a small university, where almost everybody knows everybody, and she has a very positive reputation there due to her involvement with various campus organizations. For example, she recently joined a newly-formed committee to address environmental issues on campus, and she's the only student on the committee. Still, I will ask.

You're probably right about the stepdad. We rarely talk about that, and I never bring it up.

[HeartIsAching]

The primary reason why she never got therapy was because of cash flow concerns.

You said she was hostile to the idea.

[HeartIsAching]

Good points, Wakeup. She might be reluctant to get help at school, though. It's a small university, where almost everybody knows everybody, and she has a very positive reputation there due to her involvement with various campus organizations. For example, she recently joined a newly-formed committee to address environmental issues on campus, and she's the only student on the committee. Still, I will ask.

You're probably right about the stepdad. We rarely talk about that, and I never bring it up.

So what if people know that she's seeing a therapist? Nobody will ever know what's said in there, or what it's for. At most she could say she's getting over some old trauma.

One thing that's worked for me in the past is to simply say "It's none of your business."

[Wakeup]

Knowing you and respecting your contributions here, while not knowing her, naturally we will be looking to advise you and what we think is best for You. One thing is for sure. She shouldn't be allowed to continue to be vervbally and physically abusive to you and that it's important to both of you that you don't enable her to do so. She won't get the help she needs if she knows that you'll always be there to forgive her and bail her out financially. Why do the hard work it's going to take her over the years of therapy she'll likely need if you stick around no matter how poorly she treats you?

I think, if nothing else she needs to know that it ends if she doesn't work on herself. You did it when she saw things in you (whether actually there or not is irrelevant). Now it's time for her to step up and try to be the best her she can be.

Good luck.

[VincenzoG91]

I'm surprised to hear from her so soon. Here is her side of the story, copied straight from email:

"Today, you can continue to feel like the violent winner you are after last night's show of strength. An hour after I left the bleeding evenutally stopped. However, the area around my piercing is swollen so much so that I may need to have it removed. It's painful to talk. My lip is fat & bruised and my mouth and left cheek look like I got punched. Oh wait, I did. By you.

"Here's some articles that I obviously created to support all the ideas that lead to pissing you off enough to start grabbing and violently throwing me around. I hope next time someone tells you something you ignorantly refuse to believe that you take it out on your cat. You'll truly be even more of a winner then.


"Narrow-mindedness is the negative quality of having very restricted views and opinions. Narrow-minded people fail to recognize or accept ideas outside their limited views. They are bound by their limited experience, place, and time. They consider only the short term and ignore the long term, focus on immediate results and ignore strategic results. They cannot judge consequences unless very apparent. Intolerance is the unwillingness to acknowledge, accept, or respect other opinions, beliefs, or behaviors. Intolerant people fail to recognize other people's opinions when they differ with them. They fail to understand and analyze different views or to accept them when they are better. They fail to cooperate with people who differ with them. They cannot tolerate, or sometimes, coexist with people whose behavior they disapprove of. They tend to be perfectionists and expect the same of others. Both narrow-mindedness and intolerance are negative qualities which build on one another; they are two faces of the same coin. People who are narrow-minded are often intolerant. Narrowmindedness will result in intolerance and vice versa."

And then she posted a half dozen links to online articles that support her side of the argument last night.

I did not punch her, or in anyway strike her with my hands. I did grab her wrists, spin her around and force her to sit down hard, and that was only after she struck me repeatedly and knocked my glasses off. I know what happened, I was there, too. The fact that she is revising events to suit herself suggests that this isn't going to work out for us. She is going to blame me 100% for last night, and any suggestion of therapy in the near future is going to be rejected. I'm going to wait and think things over some more before responding to her. For all I know, she probably has friends telling her to call the cops now.

[HeartIsAching]

Yup. She's denying she did anything wrong, what she can't deny she's minimizing, and what's left she blames on you. Unless you want to wind up in jail, walk away.

Think the cops'll believe your ass? Guess again.

[Wakeup]

No, it doesn't look like it will ever work out. ... and guess who the cops will believe ...

Particularily since she has documented proof that you've already been to anger management classes. What a mess.

I don't know what I'd do. I'm thinking I would just write back with a detailed list of my injuries and I'd add in there the scars on my forearm from her raking her nails down my flesh. The I'd send her a link to articles on anger transferrence. then again, maybe not answering her at all would be the best way to handle it at this point.

Careful what YOU put in writing, V.

[VincenzoG91]

I started to draft a response to her, but checked here after a bit. I'm glad that I did. I saved the email in draft form, but I probably won't reply. I will wait and see if she wants to meet up in person to talk, but even that might be a bad idea. It really depends on her tone of voice. She isn't subtle. If she sounds nasty on the phone, I know that meeting will be a bad idea. If she sounds pleasant or worried or sad on the phone, then it's going to be a worthwhile conversation.

[smackie9]

You said "a bad idea" twice in that Vince, that's your subconscious tell you to call it quits......

[smackie9]

This is how the cycle starts over...you wait for the "I'm sorry the way I acted" "It won't happen again" she pulls you back in again. I have been there...there isn't an end, it's a loop that plays over and over...the only way it will stop is if you leave her.

[VincenzoG91]

One thing that has really bothered me is that our accounts don't match up. My initial reaction was that she was lying, but that doesn't make sense either. Why would she lie to me when she knows that I was there? I started thinking about the Rashomon effect. Also, I have finally noticed that my finger has been sore all day, and now that I'm paying attention to it, I can tell that it's the knuckle area that hurts. And I'm starting to think that we're both wrong about what happened. Here's my new scenario, trying to fit both sides in:

We had the dumb argument about germs, and then she called me an idiot. I told her to leave. She refused to leave and I reached for her while gesturing towards the door. But she perceived only that I was reaching for her, and was afraid that I was going to grab her and choke or shake her. So she flailed at me, not trying to specifically hit me, but to keep my hands off of her. She did knock my glasses off, but that wasn't intentional. That part had to happen in that order, because she wouldn't have been able to knock my glasses off once I held her wrists. But I didn't get ahold of her wrists the first time that I grabbed, and I sure didn't get more accurate after my glasses got knocked off. So I think that I might have jammed my finger against her face on one of my misses, and since I couldn't see, I failed to realize that I struck her face with the finger instead of one of her hands like I thought. If I connected with her facial piercing, that would have definitely hurt.

And when I spun her around and made her sit, I can now easily visualize how I could have struck the side of her face with an elbow, so that might be how her piercing got hurt. It definitely wasn't my intention, but if she got an elbow in the face, I can understand how that would have come across as a violent attack. Jeez.

I don't care about proving anything, and I understand that this long relationship might have reached the end. But I still want to clear up this misunderstanding. So I texted her. I said that I read her email, and that I believed that we were both mistaken and need to talk soon. Knowing her, that won't be any sooner than tomorrow night, and that's probably still too soon. Hard to understand what she might be feeling right now. She thinks that I punched her last night, and today she is still trying to win the argument about germs.

About those germs. I read her links, and they were both persuasive and fit with the argument that she made last night. The main reason I couldn't admit that last night was because her method of communicating was so rude and insulting. I can be swayed by facts and a solid argument, but calling me an idiot is a lousy way to persuade me of anything.

[HeartIsAching]

I kind of figured when I read your first account that things that happened in your perception were different than hers. When I read hers, I figured that the truth was somewhere in the middle. Congratulations on owning that.

Guess what? Name calling isn't argument, it's abuse, and it never persuades anybody. She definitely needs some classes... but that's not your problem.

[ashley89]

she sounds like a psycho

[smackie9]

I'm so sorry Vince..I know what has transpired is all confusing and your mind is going in all directions trying sort out what happened, BUT that's the problem here...no one can recount to what happened clearly..that's pretty scary. You both were in a blind rage. It's like an alcoholic that can't remember anything because they had a black out.