One in Three Campaign
One in three victims of family violence are male

Men's stories

MEN’S PERSONAL STORIES

If you are a male victim of family violence – intimate partner violence, violence from other family members, child abuse, elder abuse, sexual assault, or other forms of family violence and abuse – this page is available for you to tell your anonymous story. Please click here to tell your own story. If you feel like you need support, please click here. Stories are moderated to prevent the posting of spam, so it might take a little while for your story to appear on this page.

 

James' personal story

Domestic violence cannot be fixed until the whole picture is seen, which includes a ton of female violence towards children and their partners. My story is very long and involves more than 6 abusive female relationships. I'll focus on the first with my marriage. My wife was constantly verbally abusive – highly critical, demeaning, and cruel. She especially delighted in ridiculing me in front of her close friends. She left the worst behaviour for behind closed doors, so most people thought she was nice.

She regularly punched me, and criticised my sexual interactions with her (comparing me unfavourably with her past conquests), and any task I performed around the house as well as my appearance, posture and mannerisms. She always wanted money to follow her latest desire and promised to repay me in the future – which she never did. If I challenged her about abuse she would threaten to leave or run off with another guy – leaving me to cover all the debts she'd accumulated.

When she got pregnant everything became 10 times worse, and after our child was born I became suicidal because I was working full time and getting no sleep at night (looking after our child) and being constantly yelled at. I organised and paid for a year of marriage counselling, but she was resolute in maintaining her position which was that everything was my fault.

After we split up her games began. She used our child as a pawn and made her unavailable when I wanted to see our child, and dumped our child onto me when I was flat out with work. She promised to stay nearby for our child's easy access to me and my family, but she moved several times further away. She wanted me to sign passport papers for our child to go on holiday to Fiji and promised she would never move overseas when I questioned that. Not long after she moved overseas for what she promised was a few years, but ended up staying indefinitely. Many years later my child returned as an adolescent and she came too. Her games continue to this day, our child is now an adult and living away from her, so I have some contact but she still manages to interfere and influence our offspring negatively towards me.

One in Three Campaign