I AM NOW truly convinced that men are dogs. I am also convinced that when men have a woman who loves them unconditionally, they treat her with total disrespect.That happened to me, and I want to talk about it because other women need to know that no matter how much in love with a man they may be, they should never lose their individuality or allow him to disrespect them. This is important because if men get away with not respecting you once, they will do it again and again. I know this because I lived it.My husband disrespected me, physically abused me, and embarrassed me publicly through the years, but I hung in there with him as I always hoped that our relationship would improve and he would change back to the loving person I first fell in love with. Though month after month and year after year I kept hoping for this, it never happened. But as I believed that when I got married it was for better or worse, I stuck it out.I stayed with him, too, because I felt that if you believe someone is worth it, you should work hard to develop that relationship, and even harder to maintain it. That means taking the good times with the bad ones, and always working on improving the relationship by learning from each incident that occurred between you. The problem is, these concepts only work when the man you love believes in them, too. When he doesn’t, as I grew to find out, then these ideals mean nothing.What happened to me still makes me wonder how I could love someone so much that I became foolish behind him. That is, for 11 years I stood by with little complaint as he did what he liked and disrespected our marriage. First, he started with another woman, and when I told him about my suspicions the blows started. At first he would only hit me when we got into a noise and he could not win the argument – so for him might became right. Then it got worse. He started beating me at the slightest thing. I used to be literally his punching bag. What was worse was that he began hitting me in front of our young son. After a while my son would strike out at me when I said no to whatever he wanted. So my husband’s actions had an impact on our child’s behaviour. Yet, through it all, I never told anyone what he was doing, not even my family as they believed in him.The other thing he used to do was to just have sex with me. Gone was the lovemaking, kissing and caressing that I had become accustomed to. I was just his sperm bank for him to deposit in whenever he wanted to. It was often a short, painful experience. And whenever I resisted, he would beat me.Things got so bad that after a beating one night I decided I had enough and called the police. He was charged and later placed on a bond to keep the peace after I explained everything to the court.We had been together for nearly 11 years by then. I had cried more in those years than in all my years growing up; it was that traumatic.As we were renting, he just moved out his things and started living with a woman. I have been getting on quietly with my life. To this day, though, I can’t place my finger on what made him change. When I sit down and study the hurtful things he told me, and how he treated me, I just cry.Given what I have been through, I feel if somebody nice came along right now that I might treat them the way my husband treated me. I hate men that much now.
