Abuse and Attitudes...

FROM GARLAND: This is the first time that Chuck or myself have decided to use our Q&A blog for a sole personal opinion. Chuck may add a comment of his own, or he may not - but I really want to take a moment and get something off my chest.

I'm sure that many people have heard about the Chris Brown and Rihanna situation. Obviously, very few people TRULY know what happened. I, like you, have my own opinions.

But, this post isn't completely about Chris and Rihanna. It's about something I heard last night on the radio and what I see as a dangerous shift in attitudes.

One of the local radio stations had a "call-in-line" where people called in to talk about the C&R situation and I'm going to paraphrase a bit here, but the majority of calls went like this:

• "I don't think Chris hit Rihanna, he doesn't look like the kind of guy that would do that,"

• "She must have really made him angry to punch her like that,"

• "Everybody has their limits and she must've made him real mad to hit her like that,"

• "Females have to understand that if you hit a man, he's gonna' hit you back,"

• "She had to have hit him first to make him hit her like that,"

• "Chris Brown is too nice to hit a woman,"

• "Rihanna, obviously provoked Chris to beat her up,"

• "Let's not be mad at Chris until we find out what Rihanna did to him first,"

The vast majority of callers were African-American women and most of them sounded youngish, in their teens and 20's from my guess. Sadly, they all leaned towards defending or sympathizing with Chris Brown and virtually blaming Rihanna for what may have happened to her.

I was simply stunned. I assumed that man on woman violence would rally women behind the alleged victim, but quite the opposite. They solidly stood behind the man. Maybe it's because Chris has a squeaky clean image, maybe it's because he's cute, maybe it's because he can sing and dance pretty good - but don't all those qualities apply to Miss Rihanna too?

So, why have attitudes shifted, and when did these attitudes shift? Honestly I don't know and I guess I'm floating my thoughts out to the universe to see what floats back.

I always assumed and believed, and still do, that a man NEVER lays his hands on a woman. A man, even when provoked with the gravest of circumstances, NEVER hits a woman. He can yell, he can scream, he can walk away, he can file for divorce, he can go get drunk, hell, he can pack bag and go stay at a hotel for a few days, but he NEVER hits a woman. I thought that was the way MEN did business when things got bad.

Now, I'm not just sitting here passing judgement from on-high in cyber space, I've been there and done that. I've been THAT MAN. Years ago, this woman I was dating brought some nonsense to me and started this intense argument, it went on for 5 or 10 minutes and she decided that she wanted to make her point by punching me in the face. I didn't touch her, I stepped back, furious. When she saw that I wasn't going to strike her back she became emboldened and grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to stab me, I caught her arm and knocked the scissors from her hand, she then bit down on my hand and fell on the floor trying to kick me off my feet. It was intense for a few minutes. But I never hit her, I never smacked her, I never did anything physical to harm her. If this was a man doing this, I would have beaten him bloody, but I have always believed that a man NEVER hits a woman.

I guess that attitude is gone now in most folks. Sadly, I think it's gone in most women.

But, I want to say, right here, right now to anyone reading this blog... THAT NEW ATTITUDE OF ACCEPTANCE needs to change. The standing policy should still be, "A Man Never Lays His Hands on a Woman." Women of all ages and colors should make that a Universal and Un-Breakable policy. It is completely unacceptable that a man should beat up a woman and then have people... and not just men... but have OTHER WOMEN rally around him and help justify what he did! And, I don't give a damn about how much money he has, how cute he is, how nice you think he is... a man that hits a woman is a straight-up punk! A sorry, sucker-ass, jive-time, low-down, no-good, punk!

If a man hits you, get help, call the police and leave his behind in the dust.

Demand more, Ladies! Stand together, and don't accept anything less than you truly deserve!

-Garland

CHUCK: See, and people like to laugh and say to me, "You've had some bad experiences with women."

I'm with Garland here in large part. I've had some pretty angrry confrontations with women I've been involved with, but it's never gotten to a physical level. Still, I've got some thoughts on this whole Chris Breezy/Rihanna business I want to share with you in the form of some bullet points, as follows:

A) WHY DOES CHRIS BROWN HAVE A GIRLFRIEND... if he's not going to be faithful to her? I call this Bow Wow's Conundrum. Chris is young, rich, and apparently attractive to females. He also, by most reports, is lacking the emotional maturity to be in a monogamous relationship right now, like his peer, the former Lil' Bow Wow reportedly was when he was dating Ciara. Fine. He's 19. What would I do if I was in his shoes?

However, instead of openly playing the field, he's in a public relationship with another pop star. Why? Publicity. Chris is gonna get a lot more press if he shows up for award shows and the like, with another star rather than a random jump-off. Magazine covers, videos, these kind of showmances can be beneficial to the principles' careers if people don't go off the deep end and start to think of the relationship as anything other than a business tranaction. Rihanna, Breezy, maybe you should have called Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman before either of you did anything rash.

B) WHERE IS THE LOVE FOR RIHANNA? I know, she's not from America, she supposedly tried to "steal" Jay-Z from Beyonce, she's supposed to be really jealous in relationships, and all that gossip-blog stuff. And I didn't like that song with Ne-Yo, either. But any expressions of concern for the woman allegedly assaulted here have been few and far between. They're basically along the lines of, "Boy, Rihanna must have really done SOMETHING to get Chris to rough her up like that." Sigh.

Granted a lot of the opinions I heard about this last week were from numbskulls calling in to radio shows, but still. If the alleged assailant is innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't the reported victim be shown at least the same discretion? And the fact that a lot of Chris Brown's most fervent defenders were female only bolstered my belief in something I've said for years: No man can show as much disrespect and lack of concern for a woman as another woman.

C) THE BITES Garland and I were discussing these the other day with some friends. Striking a woman with a hand or a fist is dreadful, but it seems to be historically the way a man will try to display his power over a woman. But biting? Where the hell does that come from? One of our female friends said to me, "Oh, you'd bite some one," and I had to disagree. That would never occur to me. I told her, even in a fight to the death with someone, I would fight with my hands, or whatever I could grab. And if my only way out was to bite, I'd bite hard and take a chunk out of my opponent.

The fact that Chris allegedly laid a number of bites on Rihanna gives me a little pause. Maybe this dude wasn't as Doublemint clean-cut as we were led to believe.

D) PARIS HILTON: WTF? One of the more outlandish stories of the past week concerns the source of a number of suggestive texts to Chris Brown that supposedly kicked off the melee between Chris and Rihanna last week. One report is that the source of those texts was one Paris Hilton.

Let me say this: As mad as my wife would be if I was getting texts from any woman seeking to get with me, she would probably be infinitely more enraged if those messages were coming from a say, woman of loose virtue, like Paris Hilton.

That's all I have to say about that. I don't believe it.

E) THE WHOLE SORDID MESS. The election of Barack Obama as President led most of us to rersolve to do better, as individuals, and as Black people. But here, it's barely been a month, and the new Prez's economic plans for the Nation are fighting it out for headline space with this mess. Domestic violence is a very important issue that I feel is becoming trivialized by the he-said-she-said back-and-forth on this story. The rules were simple when I grew up: You do not lift your hand to strike a female. If Chris Brown did this, and is guilty as charged, he should go to jail for it, And good riddance.

A Bad Man

Question: Hey there Chuck and Garland...Awesome blog and the posts are very insightful and full of good candid information. This is a long post, but please bear with me. I'm trying to give two sides not just mine.

My question is about my husband. I asked for a separation about three months ago after three years of dealing with his verbal abuse. We have 15yrs together and 3 children.

Every three months on the dot I dealt with criticism and his work stress that he took out on me. If he had a problem with his health or work, I was the "punching bag" he'd focus on something that irked him (the house not be clean, me not handling the children more firmly, not keeping my car clean (because he's paying the note mind you), and so on) He left out of the country for a year and I spent that whole year happily doing my thing. The kids and I did a great job functioning, although we missed him. He got back home and I kid you not, two months later, I endured a round of criticisms and attacks on my "flaws". I bawled like a baby. My self-esteem was shot.

Finally, he left on business for two months and on the phone he started telling me that I don't pay enough attention to him, don't do the things "his boys" do, and so on. So finally I asked him, "well with all of these problems I seem to be having, do I even make you happy?" His response? "Sometimes". I asked, well can I get a percentage (because I could not believe it and I deal with hurtful things by laughing it off). He gave me percentages (I asked for it right?) I hung up totally feeling like crap on the bottom of his shoe. Worthless and not much of anything.

When he got back home, I confronted him. I told him that what he had been doing to me was abusive and I should have recognized it sooner, but I guess I was denying that this was happening to me. He thought I was being sensitive. That pointing out things that I need to work on is not criticizing. It's reminding me to "straighten up my act" so to speak. Well, I asked for a separation, because I did not feel good about myself or our marriage. I asked for counseling for himself as individuals and us together. I wanted promises that this would not happen again. He said he could not promise me that and he was not cool on doing therapy on his own. So I told him I would leave the house and go home to my family for a while.

I could not be intimate with him, because he associates intimacy with everything being okay with us. But also, because I was still to hurt by his words to connect to him on that level. We continued to live in the same house and talk, but he kept pushing me to make a decision about us. Although I was trying to get through this hurt that he'd caused me, he was doing nothing but wanting to know if we were going to make up soon or was I going to ask for a divorce. I told him I just wanted a separation, I didn't want to make a decision like that.

Well, over the holiday, actually before then, I found out he had been seeing another woman. He began staying out late on the weekend, coming home the next morning, and having intimate conversations. I found his cell phone bill and called the woman. She said he told her that we were getting a divorce. When I confronted him, he denied they were seeing each other and that they were just friends. Well, he didn't' know I talked to her already and I knew he'd been sleeping with her for over a month. It hurt me very deeply that he had done this to me. I told him that it was over and I was leaving for good.

Well, not less than 24hrs later, while I'm packing up the house, he's now asking me to not leave or divorce him. That he doesn't want to lose me, that he can't see his life without me. He was sorry for the hurt he caused. I can see he is sorry and regretful, but is he serious Chuck and Garland? That he was trying to fill a void because I wasn't touching him or being intimate with him. This is over the space of a month and a half before he actually slept with another woman. Another month and a half that he'd continued sleeping with her until I found out.

I had to ask him, if he was me what would he do? He said, he would try to work things out because we have time and had been through allot together. I'm scared! I am seriously hurt and frightened being in this relationship. How am I supposed to be in this relationship feeling like this? What is wrong with him?

Bewildered on the West Coast

GARLAND: Thanks for your question!

Please keep in mind that Chuck and I are not trained professionals when it comes to this kind of stuff. So, please think about what we say, but don't base a life changing decision TOO HEAVILY on our advice.

You said you were going to try and give both sides of your situation, yours and your husbands, but that is rather impossible since you really don't know the REAL cause of his actions. I doubt if what he tells you his causes are anything close to whats truly going on inside his head and heart.

Personally, I'm a firm believer in the fact that just because two people get married that doesn't mean they were meant to get married nor that they have to stay married! If your husband is killing your self esteem and treating you like a child [because he sounds like an angry father scolding his child about cleaning the car, and the house, and the kids] then maybe you and he aren't meant to be together. Frankly, you are putting up with a hell of a lot of nonsense, and this cheating mess really raises my eyebrows. With HIV and AIDS quietly running rampant across the country, cheating is more than an emotional or fidelity issue, it is major health and life risk! Whatever you do, you should make any long term decision on your marriage contingent upon him taking an HIV test and allowing you to read his unopened results FIRST! He may be killing you in more than just an emotional way.

Can he change? Can he really want to turn things around? Yeah, sure. Maybe. Technically anything can be possible. He could turn around and become a stellar husband, then again he could flip the script and show you a darker side of him that you never even dreamed of.

Through all of this, no matter what your choice is, you have to make sure you don't become "A Mission Woman." A Mission Woman is the woman that latches herself to an unworthy man and finds it her Mission in life to take his abuse and take his cheating and take his beatings and take his shortcomings and take his insecurities all in an effort to make him a better man; all in an effort to let her suffering be the price to pay for chance that some loser could become a winner. If your man is ain't worthy, then your choices are fairly clear.



CHUCK: Wow. Just wow. I got a mental picture just now. It's like this man's mission in life was to destroy your self-esteeem, and I just pictured him on the deck of some aircraft carrier, with a big banner flying behind him saying: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Some questions are hard to answer. For this question, the hardest thing for me will be containing my outrage about this man.

Garland is on point with his answer, except in one respect. If you were a "Mission Woman," hopefully by now you would have seen that there is no redemption for this creep, he has taken no opportunity to improve himself, and would have aborted that mission by now.

Where do I begin? Let me try here: The phone conversation you had with him, when he decided to open up about his unhappiness with YOU, should have been your cue to vent your unhappiness with him. Rather than hanging up feeling beat-down and drained, you should have told him how you felt then. You couldn't have asked for a better time.

But I guess it doesn't matter when you wake up. The important thing is that you did. Ultimately, The best statement of his feelings for your marriage was not his obligatory pleas that you give him another chance. It was that he sought out another woman for sex after A MONTH AND A HALF of separation. That's what's called adding insult to injury.

Is he serious about wanting to get back together with you? Sure. But don't think it's for selfless reasons. Your husband has not demonstrated himself to be very altruistic person. He seems concerned with his own needs above all else. So he may have realized that it won't be as easy to find someone as willing to take his crap as you have been over the years. He may know that having been caught cheating is not the best way to go into a divorce. Either way, Bewildered, life is too damn short to spend any more time with this bad person than the 15 or so years that you already have. Cut him loose. Don't give it a second thought.

Awfully Wedded Husband

QUESTION: I need to know what to do or to figure out if I need my head examined.

There's a lot to my story but I'm going to squeeze it all together for you. I have a girlfriend, I'll call her Jill. Last year Jill introduced me to this guy named Deke. The first night I met him he sat in the club with us with his hat and sunglasses on, drunk. He was very unimpressive. I knew that Jill had a couple of guys on the side, so I didn't think much of him.

But she seemed to keep him around for awhile. He stayed drunk and treated her shitty for the most part, but she would not leave him. He actually punched her in the mouth one time busting her lip and drawing blood. She thought about leaving him, but days later he was right back in her home and in her arms and she was acting like nothing happened. On a few ocassions, I tried to encourage her to really ask herself if she wanted a man who stayed drunk, hardly worked and didn't mind hitting her. She stuck with him. A few weeks ago she showed up at a gathering of our friends wearing an engagment ring! Deke popped the question and dumb-dumb, I mean, Jill said yes. Our girlfriends have been falling all over her and the ring and Deke since he popped the question. I tried to ask a few of our friends if they thought Deke was good for Jill. But they seem to be just as giddy and stupid as she is is. A few of them have even hinted that I might be jealous because Jill has a man (???) and I don't. That's not my issue at all. I'd rather be alone than with a man that hits me and treats me bad.

But it gets worse. Now, my girlfriends and I have been invited to Jill and Deke's wedding which is taking place in the Bahamas. They have some kind of deal where if they can sell out 10 rooms for 3 days, then their wedding and reception are free. So basically, I'd be covering 10% of their wedding expense. I don't want to go! Am I crazy? Is Jill crazy? Am I a bad friend? Tell me what you guys are thinking!!!!!


GARLAND: Uh, you-crazy-NO, Jill-crazy-PROBABLY, bad friend-NO.

Are you crazy for NOT wanting to go to a wedding that you don't believe in? Not at all. Personally, I think this is a type of integrity that many people are reluctant to show. I think that going to a wedding where you honestly don't feel like the two people should be married is wrong. I'd like to call it criminal, but that might not be the right word for this moment. When two people are making promises of love and enternal devotion to each other, they are doing it in front of God, their families and their friends. And in turn, everyone there is given a chance to stop the show if they know of any reason these two should not be wed... I am yet to attend a wedding where someone actually did this, but I've been to some where time has proven that someone should have spoken up.

You may find yourself, in a bad spot when this point comes up. I mean, we all want our friends to be happy, and we all want what is BEST for our friends [at least we should] and you know or have strong feelings that this Deke guy, is NOT the best for your friend. I say don't go! Because if you go, and you still don't trust this guy with Jill's heart - then your attendance will be "signing off" on something that you believe is bad or wrong. And I'm not even taking into account the whole "paying for 10%" of this event. That's a whole other issue...

Thanks for your question, and good luck on you decision.

CHUCK: I agree with Garland completely that if you do not agree with this union, you should not support it, let alone subsidize it. But you also need to realize that you may be costing yourself a friend. Because if you tell her you will not be attending, she's going to ask you why. If you tell her, she'll get mad at you. If you don't tell her, she'll get mad at you. In no way I'm suggesting that you should participate in what you obviously view as a farce, but just be prepared for the reaction.

Unfortunately, that is all you can do. Nobody wants to see their friend married to a drunken, abusive bum. But she may feel that she can (sigh) change him. He probably told her that he'll be different after they're married. But seriously, if anyone out there ever knows of a situation where a guy like this has changed for the better (without a jail sentence being involved), let me know. Drop us a comment. Call me cynical, but I don't see this happening too often. Or ever.

One last bit of advice: On some day in the future, a couple of years after they get married, when they've had a kid and Deke's true colors REALLY show themselves, and she's moaning to you how she never should have married him, etc., etc., resist the urge to say "I told you so." It's always better to take the high road.