Member-only story
Why Did We All Pick Violent Men?
A multi-generational puzzle I badly want to solve
My first serious relationship was with the man who I would go on to marry, and who fathered my first child. I was smitten with that man. I loved him with pure, fierce devotion, a feeling I haven’t ever had since and had never felt before. I just adored him. Even after he started to hit me.
Yes, I adored him — even after he started to take my personality apart, turning it into a pile of small, jagged, painful-edged pieces. I lived my life for the whole time we were married on the white-hot edge of his moods, but for reasons I still can’t explain, I felt that was exactly where I ought to be. And despite all the therapy I have had, all the psychological and emotional explanations I have learned about and tried to tailor to my own circumstances, I still cannot understand why it felt so right to me.
One Sunday in October of this year, I woke up early and my phone screen was bright with a single text glowing at its center. It was from my youngest sister. She lives a ten-minute walk from my front door, but for what have always seemed to be innocent life-stage-related reasons we see each other very rarely, so for her to text me so early set off an alarm bell in my mind straight away.
