Customer Reviews

The Battered Woman's Survival Guide: Breaking the Cycle

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No one should stay in an abusive situation, physical, verbal, or otherwise.

At the same time, couples can get into normal conflictual situations that may even end up in separations or divorces. Not all of these situations go violent. They are not pleasant, but not necessarily uncivil. This book is dead on if the man is abusive. It's dead wrong if he is not. And it offers no objectivity, assuming the former without sufficient justification.

I am a man, separated, and still very good friends with wife. She was given a copy of this book and she panicked. It was horrible. Outside of court, we found and chose to allow a forensic psycologist diagnose our family. We have a son that was 11 at the time. We are ALL much better for this. While separated, we are still a very tight family.

Unfortunately, this book, along with many of the women-oriented anti-violence advocacy groups out there, almost destroyed us. I would submit to anyone reading this that there is no "divorce 101A" class in college. All are vulnerable, hurt, confused, scared, not sure how to proceed. Sure, there's yelling and arguing. That doesn't mean that it is necessarily habitually abusive or physically violent, or will become so soon, or at all....as this book contends.

Please don't hand this book to someone in a separation, potential divorce sitation unless you KNOW the relationship is abusive. An impressionable woman could actually hurt herself by jumping to conclusion proposed in this book. Her ex could be destroyed if she were successful in convincing all concerned that her ex is a dangerous man when, infact, it's just a seeded idea that is sensationalized in a book like this one.

Of course, look for signs of violence...but be objective. To default that the man is potentially violent and throw him to the dogs is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Couple separations are not easy. This book has good intentions but is just not at all objective enough, or detailed enough, to address the sensitive and complex subject it is about.