by Levi Bradley

Created on: May 20, 2008

Some people might say I'm not qualified to write authoritatively on domestic violence. I was never abused in any way as a child, and I've never abused any of my children or my wife of 25 years. But I have seen how domestic violence can destroy a life. I've seen it first hand, and I've been fighting against its effects for my entire adulthood.

When I married the most wonderful woman in the world, I knew she had experienced a difficult childhood. I knew there were scars, but thought naively that if I took her away from the environment, the scars would heal and we would create newer and happier memories. In our early years, she would often push me away and not let me touch her, or awaken in the middle of the night screaming, or simply be gone from our bed when I woke up in the morning. Many times, she would unintentionally awaken me when she crawled out of bed. I'd wait for her to come back, and when she didn't, I'd find her crying in another room. I'm not sure she has slept more than an hour or two without medication in over 30 years.

Like any married couple, we had our disagreements. Ours were different, though. She would turn trivialities into major issues and be verbally cruel in her comments. It was like she was intentionally baiting me to make me angrier, while not at all trying to affirm her side of the issue. If I could calm her down and hold her, she would cry and apologize. Over the years, small snippets of her childhood came out, events I hadn't been aware of. The picture grew uglier and uglier, and the way it haunted her intensified.

My wife had times of relative happiness, but has never escaped the self-loathing or lack of self-esteem. She has told me a thousand times I'm too good for her and I deserve better. She says I married damaged goods and if I were to leave her, she wouldn't blame me. She has told me she expected any day that I would leave her. I believe during some of our arguments that she subconsciously attempted to sabotage our marriage because she felt she didn't deserve me.

Despite her lack of confidence, she has been spectacularly successful in every endeavor she has attempted, but those successes, in themselves, have caused her to never attempt the same thing more than once. She is horribly afraid of not being capable of repeated success.

It took 15 years of our marriage for her to see her first therapist. More memories surfaced, more ugliness was revealed, and the torture was relived over and over again. She began to self-mutilate, and

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