Monday, September 17th - Dear Miss Pearl...

Dear Miss Pearl,

Well, the one thing I thought would never happen in my relationship of almost 6 years, has happened. He hit me. Not once, but twice. We had been drinking and we were arguing, but this is not new because we have argued before, but he has never put his hands on me. I know the rules, "If he hits you once, he'll do it again."

I just don't know what to do. The bad part about it is, he keeps saying it was all my fault. He is not at all apologetic for what he did & everybody else is walking around like nothing ever happened.

I don't have any family where I live, so he knows he has nothing to worry about. I don't see him the same anymore. Growing up, my mom was a total b*****, but not once did my dad ever lay a hand on her.

What should I do?

Woman on the edge
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Woman on the edge,

You never said whether this man that you've been in a relationship with for the past six years is your husband or your boyfriend, because it will make a difference in how I respond to your quest for advice.

For arguments sake, I'll assume that he's your boyfriend and then I'll ask a couple of questions that only you will know the answer to. The first question is, do you believe that any man who put his hands on you not once, but twice is worth your self respect?

Once you've decided to get honest with yourself and answer yes to that question, the next question that I suggest you ask yourself is why? Why do you believe that you're self worth is so low that you have to tolerate a man putting his hands on you and then allow him to blame you for the fact that he has no self control?

You've said it all in your letter, he hit you while you both were drinking, (so I'm only getting one side of this story) but he isn't even apologetic about what's happened and that leads me to believe that you were right about the fact that he knows that he has you in a city where you are totally alone, and he's making you totally dependent upon him by manipulating you into believing that his issues are somehow your fault.

Whatever his reasons are, there is no excuse for a man to put his hands on a woman (and, incidentally, no reason for a woman to put her hands on any man, either). Personally, if a man put his hands on me and refused to even acknowledge that he's done so, he'd be sitting in jail thinking about what he didn't do, and I'd be packing a bag before I'd be sending an emailed request for "advice".

If you decide to stay in that dysfunction, then you need to sit your boyfriend down, look him straight in the eye and explain to him that, the very next time he puts his hands on you, you will begin a chain of events that will forever alter the course of his life.

The first step is to find something to try to knock his spleen loose. The second step is to call an ambulance to stop his bleeding. The Third step is to dial 9-1-1, to press charges and have him arrested and put in jail and hopefully that time away from his job will cause him to be fired, giving him even more reason to think about the consequences of his actions - and then you're packing up your things and you're going back home, in that order! The most important thing here is, you have to mean every single word of what you tell him, and he has to know that you mean it. All it takes is to lose your mind on a woman beater one time. And he'll never feel comfortable sleeping next to you again (unless he has one eye open). Sometimes you have to make a bully afraid of you.

You say that you don't have any family there, you'd better find a church so that you can get some counseling. Sometimes we think that we can handle things on our own, but oftentimes you need guidance from that "other" source.

If you want advice from Miss Pearl, send me an email to: misspearlswindow@yahoo.com