This segment originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
First comes love, then comes marriage, but what happens when domestic violence comes along?
New York Times bestselling author Leslie Morgan Steiner joins In the Moment to discuss her own experiences, also documented in her memoir "Crazy Love."
Leslie will be the keynote speaker at Augustana University's free domestic violence awareness forum on Feb. 25 at 3 p.m.
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Leslie:
Well, the patterns in abusive relationships are almost always identical to what happened to me. Also, the fact that it happened to me when I was 23 years old is also typical. Women and girls between the ages of 16 to 24 are three times as likely to be abuse victims as older women. I was a typical victim even though I went to Harvard and I had this exciting job at Seventeen Magazine in New York. I was still very typical.
What happened at first is that I fell in love with him. He was smart. He also had just graduated from an Ivy League school. He had a great Wall Street job. He was funny, he was self-deprecating, and he was really emotionally intelligent, which I think is the most charming thing of all. He could practically... it felt to me, Lori, like he was seeing inside me in a way that none of my friends or family members ever had before.
It was really intoxicating. That's always the first step and abuse victims will tell you what I just told you, the beginning is like a fairytale. Then, the second part is always isolation because you cannot abuse somebody unless you isolate them first. There are many ways to isolate somebody. A geographic isolation is a very effective way, but financial, psychological, emotional are also key components of abuse.
What is really important is to get the victim so that she's not telling the truth to family members or friends or employers or medical professionals, the very people who could help her. That's what my fiancé got me to do. He got me to keep secrets from my family and it drove a wedge between me and them, and it made it much easier for him to begin abusing me. Once he was abusing me, it made it much harder to reach out to them because they had warned me.
They had said not to marry him, not to be with him, that he was dangerous, that he was very angry, and I had insisted that I knew best. When he did start to hurt me and the first attack came five days before our wedding, I already felt this distance between myself and the people who loved me the most. I was reluctant to turn to them for help.
Lori Walsh:
You say in your very famous TED Talk and in your book that you didn't know he was abusing you, you really thought that you were a strong woman in love with a troubled man. He had this background of being abused. He had put his own life together, and you really thought your love was going to hold him up. That seems so noble and yet.
Leslie:
It's so much the way women in this country, maybe in every country are raised to be... that the most noble thing we can do is to help a troubled man and protect a troubled man. I really fell for it hard. He had been terribly abused as a little boy, and I have a big heart and my heart broke for that little boy. I wanted to show him what true love was all about.
That kind of intense love mixed with pity and psychological denial that you're being abused by someone who you love and trust is a really potent cocktail. I could not admit to myself or to anybody else that I was being abused. We lived in a tiny town in New England that was part of my geographic isolation. There was a retired sheriff who lived two houses down from me.
If he had knocked on the door in the middle of one of our beatings, when Conor was holding loaded guns to my head and doing all the other awful things that he did to me, I would've, with a straight face, said to the sheriff, "I don't need help. Please go away. I'm not being abused." I believed that. I believed I was a strong, smart, independent woman in love with a troubled man.
I didn't think I was a battered wife. It took me a long time even after the relationship ended for me to say those words that I was an abused wife.
Lori Walsh:
Your abuse is so stark and so specific and so life-threatening that it makes me wonder... people who are experiencing all forms of abuse, the things that our brain does to protect us from that reality. How did that intersect, Leslie, with this idea that it is incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser? You say one of the toughest questions, the saddest question I think you called it, is when someone says, "Why doesn't she just leave?"
Then you point out how life-threatening it could be to leave. Did you know that too? I mean, part of it is I don't think I'm being abused because I think I'm strong and I can navigate this. When does the awareness creep into your mind that actually taking action could put your life even more at risk than it already was?
Leslie:
Well, in the beginning, in the earliest phases of abusive relationships, quite often we don't want to leave because we don't want to abandon the man who we love and the person that we love because sometimes it's not a man. Sometimes this abuse happens in all kinds of relationships and women can abuse too. What happened to me is that because he was beating me and threatening me with guns on such a regular basis, I became afraid all the time.
He had three loaded guns that he kept with him all the time. He had been a victim of strangulation as an abused child and so he used that on me too. He strangled me on a regular basis. I was really in a heightened state of fear all the time. I knew that I was in danger staying, but I also knew that if I left him, it would trigger even more rage. Then, he would have nothing to lose by killing me. That does something to you.
If a victim tells you that she is really afraid to leave, you've got to listen to her because she knows what she's talking about. Seventy percent of domestic violence homicides happen after we've ended the relationship, usually within the first week or so. It's very, very dangerous to leave an abusive person. You have to be really careful. I was in some ways fortunate because the final beating was so severe and he came so close to killing me that I really knew that if I was alone with him again, he would kill me.
When I finally called the police that night, they confirmed that. I say that I was lucky because it was so black and white and I really knew I could never be with him again. I knew I was in danger and I knew I had to be very, very careful. I got a restraining order. The police knew, the police who... there was a police station very close to me and they were aware of it. Also, I was at business school at the time, and all of my classmates and professors and the university personnel knew about it too.
I fortunately had a lot of protection right after I left and then until I graduated from business school and was really able to leave and go to another part of the country where he couldn't find me.
Lori Walsh:
You told everyone. You told everyone, which was the opposite of what you were doing before. What was that like for you? What did it feel like to tell people? What happened in your body when you told people this is what's been happening in my life?
Leslie:
Well, I saw the lying to other people as a way... what I needed to do in order to protect him, because I knew if I told people the truth, they'd make me end the relationship. I wanted the abuse to end, but not the relationship. When I finally, that night after the final beating when I got home from the police station, and I spent all night calling my friends and family, I tell you, it felt really good actually because I was finally telling them the truth.
Also, I knew I needed their help, and I felt really lucky to have such good friends and family and nobody judged me. It was hard to tell them that I'd been lying to them, but I just got it out. No one was angry at that point. I think they all knew how much help I needed. In so many ways, it was an enormous relief to finally break the silence. I also instinctively knew that it was the best thing I could do to protect myself.
Abuse thrives only when you keep it quiet. Abuse thrives only in silence. I knew I was putting myself first by telling people the truth.
Lori Walsh:
I want to go back to the guns and what was he telling you the guns were for. He needed to have these guns in his life because again, I think so many families in South Dakota have guns for hunting rifles or for protection of the home or just because it's their Second Amendment right. I'm curious to know what kind of language was used around the guns that sort of tested what your response to a threat of violence would be?
Leslie:
Well, I just have to stress that he had a very distorted view of the world. He was paranoid, perhaps because of being abused as a child. He was very dismissive of me. He thought that I had grown up in a very privileged, artificially safe environment. He was really derogatory towards me and the fact that I felt safe without guns. What he said to me is that he was going to get guns and keep them loaded, and teach me how to shoot them, so that I could protect myself.
Essentially, because I was too stupid to protect myself. His nickname for me was retard. It was part of the emotional abuse and the gaslighting in that kind of approach. The guns, he said, we live in a rural area and you work alone. I was a freelance writer and I traveled all over New England interviewing people. He said, "You need to be able to protect yourself." I had never felt unsafe.
I'm good at protecting myself from strangers, not so good from the people who I'm in love with. None of it was true, and the guns were for him to increase his dominance and control over me. To try to make himself feel safe. He really wanted to feel safe and he didn't feel safe. The guns were part of the elaborate trap to keep me under his dominion. That is why I titled my book "Crazy Love" was because it was love on both of our parts, but it was really distorted and crazy.
I think there are legitimate reasons to have guns. If you like to hunt and shoot and if you feel like you need to have a gun to protect yourself in the case of a home invasion. We were living in a suburban part of it, it was a somewhat rural but really suburban. We had neighbors. We did not need to have guns. We lived in one of the safest parts of the country. There was absolutely no need to have a gun. The guns also were to alienate and frighten my friends and family and keep them away, and it did that too.
Lori Walsh:
I want to make sure listeners understand that this is a huge part of your story, but it's only one part of the full person that you are. That, again, expands our ideas of what survivorship looks like, about what people can go on to do. You had another marriage, you had children, your second marriage ended in divorce, you went on to write another book. You're dating. You teach women about leadership. How do you look at this?
I don't know, let me ask is it a chapter in your life that you've turned the page on? Is it part of who you but it's like a small part. How do you look at this story and say, "That is not all who I am."
Leslie:
Well, let's just say that when I was a little girl growing up in Washington, D.C., and sitting in the front row of every class, I'm like studying really hard and being a real goody two shoes, I never thought I would grow up and have my career be as a domestic violence advocate. I didn't know that men hurt women, and I never thought a man would hurt me.
It took some getting used to that this had happened to me, and it took a resiliency and optimism to say, "This awful thing happened to me, but I'm going to turn it into something great because I'd always been a writer."
I realized that it was a great story because it had a beginning and middle and an end, and "Crazy Love" explained to people something that they didn't understand, which is, "why would a woman stay with somebody who was hurting her?"
What kind of inner strength it took to leave and rebuild your life. It is just one chapter of my life, but it's a really important chapter because it led to this really fulfilling career that I love, which is speaking and about my domestic violence story and also connecting with victims all over the world.
Lori Walsh:
Go ahead.
Leslie:
Go ahead.
Lori Walsh:
How many women-
Leslie:
Go ahead. How many people have I talked to?
Lori Walsh:
I want to know, how many women interview you come up to talk to you and then secretly say, "Yeah, that's me too, but I haven't told anyone yet. This happened to me and you are maybe the first person they confessed to." How do you handle that?
Leslie:
Hundreds, it's happened hundreds of times. I'm really matter of fact about the fact that I was abused, and I'm not at all ashamed about it. I'm very open about it. I think it makes it easy for people to tell me. People tell me all the time, taxi drivers, Uber drivers, people on the airplane. When I give talks there's always one person in the room who didn't intentionally come to a domestic violence talk, and that is the audiovisual person.
Almost every time I speak, they come up to me afterwards and say, "I think I grew up in an abusive home, or I think my cousin is being abused, or I think my wife was abused in her first marriage." People just don't really understand until they hear a survivor talk what abuse is really like and how mundane it is and how it hides in plain sight all the time. People are always confiding in me.
I also get hundreds of emails every year, maybe thousands of people who I'm the first person that they've told, because part of my message is so strongly that you've got to tell somebody to get out and that I'm happy to be that person. It's a real honor to be the person that is the first person that people have told. Also, I'm really open with my children. My children are in their 20s now, and I've always been open with them and their friends.
It happened many, many, many times over the years that my phone has rang, and it has been a friend of my kids, usually a teenage girl, but sometimes boys too, and they want to talk to me about their relationship. That too is a big honor and it's exhilarating because this is how we end abuse is one person at a time breaking the silence. Turning to another survivor and saying, "I need some help."
Lori Walsh:
One of the things that freaks me out when I hear the numbers is that if there's that many women and people who are abused, that means there's that many abusers. How do you date? How do you go into a new relationship after that has happened to you when you know statistically there are an awful lot of people who think that it is okay to take their rage out on another person who they perceive as less strong than them, or that they're entitled to hit, to abuse, to withhold money from?
Leslie:
The point that you're making is the most important point of all, and that is that we are never going to end domestic violence unless we get at the core of why so many millions of men think it's okay to hurt the women in their lives and they hurt the women who love them. They also think it's okay to hurt women who sexually reject them, to kill women who sexually reject them.
We live in a really twisted society, and we think it's normal because we have a lot of mythology wrapped around men's fragile egos. It's just part of being in a paternalistic society. I have a friend who's a domestic violence advocate as well, and she says something that chills me every time she says it, that the reason men hurt women is because we let them, because they can do it.
It's the numbers of the stain for abuse and for rapists that if somebody were to abuse or rape a woman today, there is less than a 4% chance that he would ever spend a day in jail. Both of these crimes are extremely underreported and under prosecuted, and that's got to change. It's another reason I speak out is that there's a lot of strength in telling my story and saying that I'm not damaged by it. I'm not a damaged woman because of it.
I'm a more valuable woman because I'm wise and I'm living the greatest life ever because of the things that happened to me and how I had so many friends, women in my life, including my mother who supported me and said, "Just get up and go. Keep going. You just got to get up and rebuild your life." I've done it so many times because like every woman I've had sexual assault, I've had domestic violence, I've had heartbreak. I've had men betray me, and it's just made me stronger.
I have to say, even though this sounds like it's too good to be true, it's made me happier because I'm so independent now, and I am really skeptical about the men I date. I'm really skeptical about being vulnerable to men. I date all the time, I always have. I love men, but what I am skeptical about is giving men power over me.
What I have seen many, many, many times is that when a man wants to convince me to be with him, he's very charming and he's a different person, but once I'm with him and vulnerable, sometimes a very different personality comes out and I am never doing that again. That's the promise I made to myself when I left my first husband, when I was sure he was going to kill me that I would never let a man have power over me again.
I think that it's actually something that it's worthwhile thinking, every woman thinking that it's not a good idea to let anybody have that kind of life and death power over you, no matter how much you quote unquote "love" them.
Lori Walsh:
Does the trauma response, the jumping at every small noise, the flinching when something happens, does that go away for you? Did you have to do some kind of therapy or body work to help yourself feel physically safe again?
Leslie:
Yes, I did. It took a long time, I have to tell you. Now, you think I'm talking about it so openly now, but it took years. I did therapy and body work, and I also just let time heal me, and I gradually began to trust myself again. I do not flinch at loud noises anymore. I could hear a man screaming and I wouldn't get triggered or traumatized by it.
The good thing that I have is I have a real radar for abusive personalities now. I can spot that really quickly to keep myself safe and also to intervene in other people's relationships. I have done that more times than I can count too. Strangers on the street, if a man is screaming at a woman or threatening her physically. I've gone up to couples in cars many times. I've talked to couples on the sidewalk.
It's not for everybody because it's dangerous, but I just can't help myself. I have to go and I never talk to the man, I always talk to the woman and tell her that I got out too, and that she deserves better and that she could leave right now, or anytime that she wants to because it's an important message.
Lori Walsh:
Do you think it works when we go up to someone and say, "Tell someone. Take the first step. Be safe because it's about to get even more dangerous, but here's how you navigate that."
Leslie:
Hell, yes, it absolutely works. It might not work in that moment, but I promise you that those women and the men have never forgotten the fact that I intervened.
Lori Walsh:
It is a fantastic book. You are doing fantastic work, and I feel like you have been so warm and open with me and we've never met, and I'm just so grateful for that because you just never know you know how someone's going to come to an interview. No wonder that you're doing this remarkable work in the world because you're just a remarkable person.
Leslie:
Well, thank you, Lori. A lot of women are killed by their partners. Over 500 women and girls are killed in this country every year by men who say they love them, and I wasn't one of them. I lived through it. I want to tell the story on behalf of all the women who didn't make it, and all the women who've been in physically or emotionally abusive relationships for years and are afraid to get out. I got out. I built my life, it's a great life.
I'm strong and free, and I promise everybody listening and everybody who comes to hear me speak at Augustana, that you can get out too. You don't have to get out today. You can have a safety plan and make sure that you are ready to leave, and it's a safe time to leave. I promise you that you can leave. I also promise you, the abuse always gets worse, and that if you want to have the kind of life that I have, you have to leave.
It's also the best thing you can do for the person who's abusing you because you need to communicate very clearly to them that this is not love. That abuse...that's not love and that they deserve better too.
