Question #169: My dad hit me.
Posted: January 9, 2012 Filed under: Abuse, Families, Personal Safety, Reader Questions, the gift of fear | Tags: abuse, child abuse, domestic abuse, domestic violence abuse, domestic violence resources, emotional abuse 149 Comments »I really, really need commenters who have experience with domestic violence/abuse counseling to weigh in here, thanks. This Letter Writer needs help from someone who doesn’t have to Google “domestic violence resources” to answer the question.
Captain Awkward,
Hi! I’m a 19 year old college student and I live with my parents. It’s not an ideal situation, but I figure my relationship with them is alright; I’m closer to my mom and I fight a lot with my dad, but they’re not horrible. I know they love me and I love them, yadda yadda. I’m one of the lucky ones, all things considered.
But today my dad hit me. Repeatedly. Not with a closed fist or anything, but he sort of held me by the neck while he smacked my face with his other hand. My mom and sister had to pull him off me. Background: me and my dad will get into huge, screaming fights, but he has never been physically violent. I do not enjoy these screaming matches, to say the least. Lately these arguments have actually been happening less frequently because I’m getting better at knowing when to walk away, but everything just happened so fast this time.
Question #82: The violent roommate
Posted: July 28, 2011 Filed under: Abuse, How Not To Be, Mental Health, Personal Safety, Reader Questions, Roommates, the gift of fear | Tags: domestic abuse, roommates, scary roommates 33 Comments »Dear Captain Awkward,
I recently moved in with two of my good friends from college. Two of us are attending the same graduate program in the fall, and the other is graduating next spring. The two guys I moved in with have been living together for the past three years, and since moving in several very awkward situations have developed.
One of the guys, lets call him Undergrad, has been treating me very differently since I moved in. I think he may be viewing me as an intruder into their relationship. He has been very passive aggressive and obviously trying to assert his authority over me and my other friend (Graduate student). This has escalated rapidly and frictions are developing between graduate student and undergrad student. Undergrad has taken to randomly walking in to Graduate’s room without permission, and refusing to leave. When Graduate asks him to do something he doesn’t wish to do, like leave his room, Undergrad either ignores him or gets angry. Now this is awkward enough, but I’ve been brought in to mediate these disputes. I have talked to undergrad, but he refuses to acknowledge my suggestions or give any confirmation. He won’t even assure Graduate and I that he’ll leave the room when Graduate asks.
Then last week things escalated even further. When Graduate yelled at him to leave his room Undergrad responded by attempting to choke him. I was forced to break it up. since then I have seen undergrad shove Graduate student aggressively. I have also talked to Graduate student and he says this has occurred before. Normally I would just kick Undergraduate out of the apartment, but we’re all supposed to be friends. The domestic abusive stuff is difficult to handle because we are all guys and are expected to handle this on our own. I really could use some advice.
Sincerely,
Abusive Relationship?
Variations on a theme: How can I get my “friends” to stop touching me? (Question #76)
Posted: July 16, 2011 Filed under: Abuse, Feminism, Friendship, How Not To Be, how to say no, manipulation, Manners, Personal Safety, predators, rejection, saying no, the gift of fear | Tags: enforcing boundaries, Friendship, Inappropriate touching, saying no 39 Comments »
HULK NOT DONE HELPING LADIES FIND INNER HULK
This came into the Captain Awkward mailbox last night. It seems like we’re all in the mood to Hulk out and get people to stop touching other people, so have at it, commenters.
I have a recurring problem when it comes to friends. It’s been a problem from the very beginning, as far as I know, and I’ve never been able to fix it. For now, it’s gone, but I know it’s going to come back.The problem is, essentially, that my friends will not stop touching me in ways I don’t like. Granted, I don’t like being touched at all.
But these people insist on doing things like stealing my hat every time he sees me (which led to me not wearing my favorite hat for several years until he graduated), poking me every time he sees me (this guy actually admitted that he A) only pokes women and B) waits until a woman puts on her angry voice to actually listen to her; I wish I’d had the guts to punch him in the face), and hugging me even though we’ve had a conversation about how I don’t like it when he hugs me and I want him to please stop AND I’m standing there doing the awkward trying-not-to-touch-you-back-pat. These are three different guys, three examples of people who won’t stop even though I’ve asked them to, told them to, and finally (in one case) yelled at them to. They’re also just three in a lifelong line of people who won’t leave my body alone, and who won’t listen to me. Read the rest of this entry »
Reader question #75: Guest post! My “friend” is making me very uncomfortable with his touching and sexual comments.
Posted: July 15, 2011 Filed under: How Not To Be, Manners, Personal Safety, predators, Reader Questions, saying no, the gift of fear | Tags: addressing bad behavior directly, feministe, Inappropriate touching, shunning 110 Comments »
We're going to solve this one with a little help from Feministe's Jill and The Incredible Hulk.
Dear Captain Awkward,
This one might be a little long, and I am frankly afraid there might not be any good solution for it.
My senior year in college, I shared a house with wonderful friends and an additional guy, A., who most of us didn’t know, but he was a friend of one of my roommates and we needed another person on our lease, so we welcomed him aboard. While him and I were never the best of friends, we got along okay for the most part, and developed an inside joke about how much we hated each other. Unfortunately, my “joke” hatred for him has since evolved into actual repulsion.
We graduated two years ago, and I moved out to another city, but I would occasionally see A. whenever I came back to visit other friends still in town, because we are part of the same social circle. It used to be fine until a year ago, when his girlfriend and him split up. Ever since, he has been making me and other women I know extremely uncomfortable.
Read the rest of this entry »
Story Time: Don’t Carry It All
Posted: April 10, 2011 Filed under: Personal Safety, saying no, Social Interactions, the gift of fear | Tags: don't carry it all, fuck yeah lady writers, gertrude, hamlet, kindness, mary oliver, street harassment, the decemberists, wild geese 10 Comments »
Ophelia & Gertrude, from Slings & Arrows
A few years ago I was walking home from a really great production of Hamlet and thinking about how my reaction to the play depends chiefly on the decision the director makes about Gertrude. As my brilliant high school English teacher, Mr. Taylor, pointed out, when Gertrude says this:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.-Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7
It tells us that Gertrude watched the entire thing without yelling “Stop!” or “Guards!” or “Hey, don’t drown yourself!” A great director will realize how deeply fucked up and dysfunctional and creepy that moment is and make a decision about it that tells you who Gertrude is. Is she:
a) So cold-blooded that she simply wanted to make sure Ophelia is dead? Is the drowning story a lie?
b) Was Gertrude following Ophelia to try to take care for her and talk some sense into her but was too late to stop a tragic accident? Especially since the opening lines suggest that Ophelia’s fall into the water was an accident and not a suicide – she climbed the willow tree (maybe an old childhood haunt), and made clumsy by madness and grief, she fell into the water. Or was Gertrude chasing her and that’s why she climbed the tree? How would Gertrude know where to find her?
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