My wife once hit me in front of my kids because she didn't like my pointing out a double standard in how she was treating them. The one she was favoring recently started hitting the other one in a similar manner--basically just to silence her when she said something he didn't like--and when I pointed out the similarity to my wife's actions and suggested he had learned it from her she got mad and claimed that rather than hitting me she had "hit my hand away" which is a lie and she knows it. It is 100% classic spousal abuse and gaslighting, and yet due to the sheer size difference between us--I'm a foot taller--I feel ridiculous calling it that, and don't want to find out what else my son learns is OK from his mom if I'm not around, so here I am still married to her, mostly trying to forget the abuse when it's not actively happening. She's been abusive, but I'm not really in any physical danger, so staying seems like the rational option in my situation... I imagine that's relatively common among men.

I am a 6'6'', 280lbs man and my ex-wife was a 4'7'' 97lbs woman. She would hit me and psychologically abuse me a lot, and nobody would give a shit because "how can she hurt you? You're such a big guy!"

She would use weapons, you bastards! She would hit me while I was asleep! She would hit me in the nuts! And even if it didn't always physically hurt, it definitely hurt in other ways. Fuck off with that mentality.

Al..right. Let's do a little sanity check and let's see how up or downvoted is gets.

1. It is absolutely true that violence against women is structurally endemic in our societies and they represent a large majority of domestic violence
2. It is also absolutely true that domestic violence against men is clearly under-reported, to an unknown but significant extant
3. It is absolutely true that abuse is abuse

Those assertions do not contradict each other.

I have been abused by both my mom and my partners. They took advantage of my insecurities, because of their insecurities. No one ever acknowledged it until recently. I have no trust in ever getting a relationship with someone who treats me equally. According to my therapists, I responded by turning into myself instead of developing a personality disorder. Apparently I'm too sweet.

I have a friend who I haven't been able to hang out with for several years because his wife is insane and posessive, and he's decided to just ride it out until the kids are all 18 so he can divorce her without having to pay her child support.

He'll still support his children, but he'll do it directly instead of through her.

My ex-wife was arrested for slapping me and breaking my glasses.

Like many other victims of abuse, I stayed married for several more years. Been away from that nutjob since 2009.

This reminds me of the Heard v Depp case, on the two X chromosomes subreddit there was this long ass comment from someone who experienced abuse and said she wasn't the "perfect victim" because she fought back and hurt her abuser back and how because of this it was harder to get away from her abuser.

And when I asked how does she know that in Heard v Depp case it isn't Depp who is the imperfect victim? Because he had multiple partners testifying to his character of being a kind man etc, while Heard had the opposite (AFAIK).

All I got was silence and downvotes.