Nicola Vincent-Abnett

Nicola Vincent-Abnett
"Savant" for Solaris, Wild's End, Further Associates of Sherlock Holms, more Wild's End

Saturday 29 June 2013

I Say Thee Brava, Nigella Lawson!


So... Nigella Lawson has left her husband.
Nigella Lawson looking glorious

Good.

There has been a lot of talk about the incident between her and her estranged husband, or, more correctly put, the assault perpetrated on her by him. I thought Juliet McKenna quite good on the subject in her blog, and there were endless column inches everywhere.

Domestic violence is a subject that you might expect me to wade in on loudly and at some length, so some of you are probably surprised that it’s taken me this long.

It’s a tricky subject.

Put simply, if one person is abusing another, mentally or physically, he or she is not demonstrating love. He or she is demonstrating any number of emotions and showing a form of weakness, but he or she is absolutely not, and I cannot express this strongly enough... he or she is NOT demonstrating love.

I was once assaulted by a man. The relationship was short. The man was volatile, and the assault occurred when I vocalised an opinion that I knew he wouldn’t like. Some would say I provoked him. I would, categorically, not say that.

There was a part of me that always knew this man could hit me. Until he did, I was always a little afraid of him, I think. When he did, I was bloody furious.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone take the action I took, and I suppose that it takes a surge of chemicals and a certain sort of control to pull it off, but I did what I did, and I got lucky.

My assailant knocked me to the floor. From somewhere or other, I reasoned that I was in a position of strength, because my legs were where all my power was, and I had the chance to use them. Shouting at the top of my lungs, I started kicking. 

He backed off long enough for me to gather myself together and pack a bag.

He didn’t want me to leave, and came at me again. I got in first, the second time, with one, open-handed strike to his face.

I slapped him.

It doesn’t sound like much does it?

For a woman, I have big, flat hands, and I was pretty keyed up on adrenalin, and very, very pissed off.

He tried stepping towards me once more as I tried to leave, but when I lifted my hand a second time, he begged me not to hit him again.

I left, and I never looked back.

People who assault the men and women they claim to love have got all kinds of problems, and some of those problems might be legitimate and they might be treatable, but, even if those people need help, they also need to be separated from the people they are assaulting. 

The people being assaulted, and I’m reluctant to call them victims, because, mostly, they’re just people; they’re you and me; they’re men and women with jobs and families and ordinary lives and responsibilities... The people being assaulted need to be separated from the people who are assaulting them, but they also need to know that their assailants are bullies and cowards.

I was lucky enough to see my assailant for what he was, at the time of the assault. I was lucky enough to get angry and to stop my assailant in his tracks. I was lucky enough not to react with the natural freeze response that most people react with. I was lucky enough not to be sitting across a table with a man’s hands around my throat. I was lucky enough to be lying on a kitchen floor with the full use of my vocal cords and my, frankly, athletic legs, and I was lucky enough to be incensed by what was happening to me.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone fight back. I would recommend everyone get out of an abusive relationship at the very first opportunity.

Ms Lawson was married to her assailant for ten years, and I think it’s unlikely that this was the first time that she was mistreated by her husband. A build-up of misery, verbal abuse and small acts of cruelty break down a person’s spirit, giving more and more power to the abuser, and sapping the esteem of the person being abused. 

Clever people are often more subtle abusers. I don’t remember, for example, Ms Lawson’s husband ever discussing his food preferences before becoming involved with his wife, a woman whose professional status revolved around food. He undermined her constantly on the subject, talking about liking nursery food, and not eating her dishes, when he might have supported her, or simply not spoken on the subject, in public at all, particularly given his reputation as a taciturn individual.

I wish Ms Lawson well, and I hope she finds some peace in the future and some way to restore her confidence and rebuild her self-esteem, but I suspect her recovery might take some time.

5 comments:

  1. And brava to you for sharing your story.

    The more evidence people have that accepting abuse is not the right thing to do the better.

    ReplyDelete
  2. People in general need to be more supportive of the victims of abuse, and understand how hard it is for them. In my experience, the perpetrators of abuse are usually quite weak people emotionally, and often the victim is an otherwise strong and capable individual - or at least, they were until the abuse started.

    I was never hit.

    I did suffer the other three types of abuse though, and my family and friends had to watch me completely disintegrate as a person and develop a whole heap of issues and neuroses that I still battle with seven years later.

    It was always my fault, you see, because I am an opinionated, stubborn, loud mouthed and argumentative individual. If I just tried a little harder, been a little nicer, been a better person, then things would have been fine.

    But I was never hit.

    Even when I started to realise that actually if I was such a terrible person why on earth would my partner WANT to stay with me, my self esteem had hit a point where I didn't know if I could actually function without him there, because he'd been gaslighting me for years and I was genuinely afraid I was crazy.

    He didn't hit me though.

    Domestic abuse is a horrible thing to endure, and it is so slow, so insidious, that most of the time you can't even see that it is happening to you until you are out of it. It sounds a terrible thing to say, but the best thing that could have happened to me was for my ex to punch me, because I wouldn't have been able to hide it any longer, and I would have had concrete proof to show the world that I wasn't making this shit up and that he wasn't this awesome guy that everyone - everyone except the people he had alienated me from - believed him to be.

    He didn't hit me, though.

    Even now there are people who knew me then who believe it was my fault. My ex is such a nice guy, you see, and I am a bolshy, opinionated, argumentative woman. He didn't hit me, so how could he possibly have managed to control me to such an extent? I'm probably exaggerating - everyone bad-mouths their ex, right? Besides, everyone knows I am a bit of a psycho.

    Domestic violence is an unforgivable crime in any circumstance, but domestic abuse is just as dangerous and far harder to prevent, recognise, or stop. I hope that the people around Nigella Lawson are compassionate and strong enough to understand the mess of emotions she will be going through right now - the guilt, the hurt, the shame - and not judge her if she considers going back. With time she will get strong again.

    You know, I almost deleted this. Seven years later and I'm still ashamed of what I went through, even though not one of my friends or family have ever blamed me. I'm ashamed that people will judge me because of what happened. Even though I would swear blind that I am over that time in my life.

    Guess that shows just how deep abuse can run.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment came in, but failed to post, for some reason, so I'm posting it on behalf of the commenter. It is particularly eloquent, I think, and hope that many of you will come back to read it. Abuse is about so much more than the beatings and the bruises. They exist only because of the wearing down of the spirit that occurs in the abused person ahead of the first assault. The psychological scars are often in evidence long after the physical ones have healed - N

    ***

    People in general need to be more supportive of the victims of abuse, and understand how hard it is for them. In my experience, the perpetrators of abuse are usually quite weak people emotionally, and often the victim is an otherwise strong and capable individual - or at least, they were until the abuse started.

    I was never hit.

    I did suffer the other three types of abuse though, and my family and friends had to watch me completely disintegrate as a person and develop a whole heap of issues and neuroses that I still battle with seven years later.

    It was always my fault, you see, because I am an opinionated, stubborn, loud mouthed and argumentative individual. If I just tried a little harder, been a little nicer, been a better person, then things would have been fine.

    But I was never hit.

    Even when I started to realise that actually if I was such a terrible person why on earth would my partner WANT to stay with me, my self esteem had hit a point where I didn't know if I could actually function without him there, because he'd been gaslighting me for years and I was genuinely afraid I was crazy.

    He didn't hit me though.

    Domestic abuse is a horrible thing to endure, and it is so slow, so insidious, that most of the time you can't even see that it is happening to you until you are out of it. It sounds a terrible thing to say, but the best thing that could have happened to me was for my ex to punch me, because I wouldn't have been able to hide it any longer, and I would have had concrete proof to show the world that I wasn't making this shit up and that he wasn't this awesome guy that everyone - everyone except the people he had alienated me from - believed him to be.

    He didn't hit me, though.

    Even now there are people who knew me then who believe it was my fault. My ex is such a nice guy, you see, and I am a bolshy, opinionated, argumentative woman. He didn't hit me, so how could he possibly have managed to control me to such an extent? I'm probably exaggerating - everyone bad-mouths their ex, right? Besides, everyone knows I am a bit of a psycho.

    Domestic violence is an unforgivable crime in any circumstance, but domestic abuse is just as dangerous and far harder to prevent, recognise, or stop. I hope that the people around Nigella Lawson are compassionate and strong enough to understand the mess of emotions she will be going through right now - the guilt, the hurt, the shame - and not judge her if she considers going back. With time she will get strong again.

    You know, I almost deleted this. Seven years later and I'm still ashamed of what I went through, even though not one of my friends or family have ever blamed me. I'm ashamed that people will judge me because of what happened. Even though I would swear blind that I am over that time in my life.

    Guess that shows just how deep abuse can run.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Juliet McKenna2 July 2013 at 13:04

      That new comment highlights the woeful deficit in understanding of those framing the new regulations limiting legal aid in divorce cases to those who can prove domestic violence by means of doctors' notes of injuries, police reports of call-outs etc.

      Not to mention the fact that getting such documentation costs money - for women who've most likely had their financial independence removed as part and parcel of domestic abuse/controlling behaviour.

      Delete
  4. while my ex-partner hit me once, I was probably less aware of the mental and emotional abuse inflicted until many years after I'd withdrawn from the situation.

    unfortunately the subtle but pervasive acceptance of violence in society is just one of the symptoms of our growing collective dissociation.

    victims are blamed for the crimes against them, violence in sports is accepted if not encouraged, it's still considered ok to "teach someone a lesson". some soldiers end up treating their prisoners as less than animals. the person jumping behind the wheel drunk doesn't let the potential damage and misery they could inflict stop them, etc. etc.

    with this dissociation in mind, it's a lot easier to see how, as a race, we perpetuate these cycles of misery and violence. most of us are disconnected from our damage, whether passively or actively ...

    ReplyDelete