colliric wrote:I'd put a billion bucks on your husband never having been the victim of an abusive violent woman in his childhood given he is presumably younger than most men of that baby boomer generation.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nuns ... -bd3zktvx7
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-gla ... t-41273549
This happened everywhere to some degree in Catholic orphanages and Catholic Schools..... And in most other schools too.
To Baby Boomers. The generation that the man whom attacked you was from.
These were all Women abusers. Women tend to abuse with physical violence over sexual violence.
There is no vacuum. Abusers often become abusive themselves.
No, Colliric. My husband grew up in a very bad drug infested ghetto with violence, gangs and all kinds of crap. He always made excellent choices. His mother was from another generation. Old Fashioned Boricua woman from a central rural town called Utuado. She moved to San Juan. She was a hotel maid for a small hotel. She was a black woman or mulatta and good looking. She worked hard for low wages and raised my husband with very old fashioned Puerto Rican values. She emphasized things like manners, helping the older folks for free in the barrio, she was Roman Catholic but Caribbean style. Santeria part of it too. She was also a woman who kept her house clean as can be and she was very poor. She had little crochet doilies all over the house. Embroidered her own towels and had porcelain figurines in her china cabinet. Cheap plastic red vinyl furnishing. Picture of saints and the last supper on the wall. And she never got on the dole or public assistance. Proud of working for a living and not depending on government handouts. She was strict as hell with my husband. He had to be home before dark every night. She chained smoked and drank very dark coffee full of caffeine named
puya coffee. Married two husbands. The first one was a gambler and became a womanizing man, she divorced him. The second one was a good man who was a
bolitero he was my husband's father. They divorced because she would work doing other people's laundry and cleaning houses and her husband eventually started drining and spending his money on drink and gambling. It got so bad he gambled the house away and they were homeless. Had to move in with relatives. She divorced him then. She then did the rest of raising my husband on her own. By herself. Though my husaband always loved his father.
Old fashioned Puerto Rican mothers who were born in the early 1930's? They use physical punishment on their kid. No, 'stop talking to me like that'. They are not Anglos by any means. She loved my husband dearly, but she was tough with him because she knew that the barrio was dangerous and if her son made bad choices? He would wind up dead or in some illegal activity in jail or shot in some drug point corner. She was strict as hell. But taught him by example. She did what she said she would do. Was consistent with discipline and never tolerated my husband disrespecting women ever.
When she died in 1985--she was only in her fifties. Too many cigarettes, overwork, and stress. My husband found out finally that he was adopted. Never was her 'natural' biological son. She had tried to have kids for years....but lost them all in the first trimester. A defective uterus or something like that. He never was told he was adopted. Both his parents told him the reason he was white looking and tall and did not look like either parent was because he took after a long lost Uncle in the mountain town...or some such lie. The truth? That we found out much later? He was illegally adopted. His biological mother never signed adoption papers and just took off from the hospital without signing the papers for adoption as was agreed upon. Some relatives of the adoptive father of my husband named Virginia and Angel, faked some heart attack and the maternity nurses went to save Angel while Virginia snatched my husband out of the hospital bassinet and fled out the back door of the Hospital in San Juan. 1960 Puerto Rico. His mother never trusted fully that his biological mother would not come back for him so she never said anything about him not being her biological child but an adopted baby. For her? My husband was her child. Period.
He did not find out he was not their biological child til both parents were dead and he was 25 years old and married to me and I told him, "We are going to the states. Got to get a copy of your birth certificate. " He tried and the search came up with 'negative' you don't exist result.
Why am I telling you this? My husband had every excuse to become some kind of a criminal or a man with problems. What I love and still love about my husband that my husband can have the worst circumstances in the world and yet he makes excellent choices with his life. He studied, finished high school, his high school was a performing arts school, studied acting, theater, dance, music, and poetry and learned to play the piano. He is a lover of classical music. He wrote great poetry. He also went to the university and did not disappoint his hard working mother and graduated from a the university. A year and a half after he graduated his mother died. He was devastated. Credited her the kind of man he became in life. That humble, hard working, prideful and beautiful old fashioned Puerto Rican woman who was a hotel maid and housekeeper.
In that barrio that was a very hard barrio in Santurce, he made very important
choices. He did not smoke, drink, do drugs, or drop out of school. He worked a lot part time taking any job he could get to support his mother. Would help her finish her shift at the hotel if she was tired.
He practiced sports, went dancing, did yoga, meditation, walked on the beach, half the city knew him. He cared about a lot of people. He was a great man then and a great man now. He had a fine character. Never believed women were inferior. He thought he was black since his mother was African looking Puerto Rican woman, even though he looked very tall and white like. Lol. No one questions that shit in an island like PR because most of us are mixed race people and people there have kids being born with every imaginable skin tone to parents who might look white, black or indian or mixed. No one pays attention to that shit in poor barrios in San Juan. So? He was not a racist or a sexist. Not his character. He just was a man who always chose to do the right thing. And conducted himself with dignity and respect. And he did not like snobs, class conscious discriminators, racists, sexists and UNJUST behavior. All his life? He is just down to his last cell.
That is the kind of man I respect. Equality believers, justice believers, poor people who struggle and work their asses off for a formal education. Arstistic, and great.
Not assholes, not rapists and not elitist fools who think they own the world and own women like chattel. Those are not for me! Unjust men are not for me!
, but treat women respectfully otherwise. 
- By Pants-of-dog
- By Deutschmania
- By FiveofSwords