“Please remember that it is not only women who suffer abuse, often they perpetrate it themselves and also direct it at other women. I wish you would address that wives can also abuse husbands. I have two brothers who are in very problematic marriages and to see their spirits diminished to nothing is heart-breaking. Their wives manipulate them and their children, shower them with guilt, forbid them to see their families, and feign constant illness, while my brothers slave away at their jobs and have to take care of the entire home as well.”

Thanks for the reminder. Of course you are correct! I have counseled with many woman and only a handful of men who have been victims of the abuses you mention – and thus, I believe, my focus on women.

It remains true for men and women that, as difficult as it is, all victims have to reach a point of taking a stand, of finding a smidgen of internal strength to begin the process of ending the vicious cycle.

I certainly do not want to blame your brothers or any victim for being victimized, but a perpetrator is most unlikely to reach any point of insight or change while the abusive behavior is rewarded.