Sad Bastard of the Week: The tight-lipped abuser

Posted at 4:24 PM Oct 13, 2009

By Andrea Grimes

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This week's Sad Bastard totally used to beat his wife, but he went and got counseling and now he is like so over it and ready to date again. Trouble is, some people seem to think that his new girlfriend deserves to know he might smack her around a little bit, maybe, on the off chance that that therapy didn't totally take. Downer! It's all in Since You Asked, in a letter from "Ex-Abuser":

On half a dozen occasions, during the first few years of my decades-long marriage, I physically abused my wife. This abuse, and the years we went without discussing it, was one of the factors that led to our recent divorce. The divorce itself led me into therapy where I was able to understand my reasons for the abuse, and the effect it had on both my wife and our relationship ...

Currently, I've started seeing someone else and this woman means a lot to me. Our relationship is at a point where we've started talking about sharing a future together; however, I haven't told her about the abuse in my previous relationship. I want her to know because it's part of my past -- albeit a very painful, unflattering part -- but I believe that she may leave me once I tell her. To complicate matters, my ex-wife, in a bit of uncharacteristic malice, has announced her intentions to tell any woman I might be in a relationship with about the abuse at their first meeting.

So, I'm scared and confused. I want to tell my girlfriend about my past, but also want her to understand that she's not at risk of being abused. And ideally, she would choose not to dump me.

• Anyone with a history of abuse who thinks they are an "ex" abuser is a holy-cow-you're-pretty-much-about-to-do-this-again-abuser, not dissimilar to the "ex" alcoholic who believes she can have "just one."
• Not disclosing a violent (and probably controlling) past to someone who has a vested interest in knowing whether or not you're violent and controlling is ... violent and controlling.
• Not wanting to "get dumped" is a bad reason not to tell someone the truth about a history of abuse. Because she will find out, and then you will definitely be dumped.
• An ex-wife who refuses to stay silent about your abuse is not exercising "malice." She's "refusing to continue be a victim" so that you can "bone some girl."

To tell this story will require a truthful understanding of what actually did happen and how you changed. Perhaps you acquired some knowledge of that in therapy: a functional understanding of what abusive behavior is, what triggers it, what your state was, how your state changed, and why this won't happen today.

You also need a daily program, some set of real-world actions you take every day. Just saying that you think about it every day, or that you are a different person today, is not what I mean. These actions must be physical and they must be repeatable.

Readers, would you want to know if your new partner abused other partners? Or is ignorance bliss?