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What's Love Got to Do With It?
Wedding vows are words that are recited by two people who have decided to commit to a life together through the bonds of marriage. Great pains have been taken by both participants in order to carefully choose the words that best describe their love for each other as these two lives are joined into one matrimonial pact. Powerful words such as honor, cherish, respect, and yes love, are used very freely with little regard as to as what the utterance of these words really means. But alas, they are in love, and surely their marriage will be the one that goes down in the annals of history as the perfect marriage. We all hope for such glorious results. Some have attained it. But, often and sometimes very quickly, these couples discover that love really does not have anything to do with it. We have seen recently how quickly the beautiful trappings of many marriages can reach a level of violence that can speed out of control.
In fact the space once occupied by love is replaced by control, power, jealousy, mistrust, and finally violence. Domestic violence is not something that is contemplated on one's wedding day. No one in their right mind would enter into a life with someone that they knew full well had violent tendencies. How is it that some of these relationships go from beautiful vows to sad eulogy's based on lost lives in a domestic related death? The answer is most often complicated. As with many sociological diseases, domestic violence tends to be generational. It should come as no surprise to us that children who have spent their entire childhood with a parental batterer, in fact become batterers themselves. It is a way of life that can only be changed with early intervention, as this type of behavior first raises its ugly head. However, more often the behavior is suppressed and not dealt with. By the time it reaches a level that is noticeable to others outside of the home, it is often too late. One verbal assault becomes a push or shove, which becomes a black eye or a bruise, which becomes a bloody nose and then ultimately becomes a headline that speaks of another victim who has been killed due to an incident of domestic violence, killed by a husband or a wife that literally loved them to death.
As our homicide rate has grown over the past few years, domestic violence has been an active part of these increasing numbers. We are taught that violence is something that we should fear from people who are involved in criminal enterprise and randomly pick their victims. This is a proposition that while still vile in its concept, pales to the reality of having to worry if your own spouse may be even more of a threat. In a recent week, three people were killed based on domestic violence. Even though this is an unusual circumstance in our area, these numbers do not startle those who deal with these type of crimes on a daily basis. According to statistics, a woman is physically abused every 9 seconds. Domestic violence related deaths have become a large majority of reported homicides in our country. Keep in mind, right in the middle of all this mess are our kids who hear the violence and sometimes they see the violence, as we saw recently when one of the recent homicides was committed in front of the child. What are the chances of those children having anything that resembles a normal childhood?
Our criminal justice systems have responded as best they can with protective orders and enhanced penalties, but remember these are reactive measures. At this point the violence is well under way. We must figure out a way to become proactive and install preventive measures that take effect well before the first punch is thrown. A daunting task indeed! But, the results of ignoring the problem are now obvious to us all. What has love got do to with it? Everything! We simple have to figure a way to get folks to remember why they got married in the first place...or maybe why they never should have.
For further information, please contact the Domestic Violence Hotline at (770) 963-9799
For further information, visit www.voice4victims.com
If you are interested in having Mr. Hall speak at your next club or group meeting, please email contact information to:
SHallBadgeNotes@aol.com
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