Phenomenology Online: How much subjectivity is needed to understand our lives objectively?

It is March 17, 2001. Robert [i] and I are driving up to a popular tourist attraction � Rainbow Lake, with a friend. Ahead of us, one lone person on a mountain bike pulls out onto the road. His black tights have blue knee inserts � the same as I bought my former husband. The biker is wearing a blue cowl. It is identical to the one my former husband bought himself in 1991. I see the biker�s shoes. They are black with yellow stripes. I have seen these same shoes on the shelf where I once lived.

I look at the man�s face. It is �him.� His cheeks are thinner than they were three years ago.� My mouth begins to sour. I turn to Robert, �You aren�t going to believe this,� I say, � but that is �him.�� I think to myself what an easy target he is. How can I still think this? The steering wheel I am holding gives me a sense of power over his fate. One small jerk of the wheel and I could run him over. I stop myself form thinking these thoughts. I feel as though I am entering into dangerous territory. �It is a very unhealthy place to be,� I tell myself. �You have moved beyond this.� Where does such anger come from? It lies dormant and then it all comes back. It is all so clear again. The pain that I try to leave behind is ever present. Why can�t I let all of these feelings go? Is it because I have seen him?

Doug rarely spoke about his father other than when he told me stories of hunting trips he and his father would go on. He said that hunting was the one escape that his father had from Doug�s mother. Doug once told me the story of having to �carry out� a ram for his father from the place where it had been shot to his father�s truck. He told me that the journey took two hours and that he carried the animal out by himself. He had slung the carcass over his shoulders and had not stopped to rest even once. To this day, Doug is unable to stand either the smell or the taste of mouton � He told me, �The smell of tallow remains engraved in my memory. Every time that you cook it, the smell drives me from the house. I never thought that the smell of food could make one so violently ill, but lamb does it to me.�

The body remembers and brings back to the surface that which you try or do not wish to remember. It is not uncommon for people to forget unpleasant experiences only to have the memory return in later years.

As I enter this work, I am continuing to face the same words that have plagued me for the past ten years. If there are no fixed �meanings� ascribed to particular words, how is one to know what is �normal behavior� in the post-modern world? The phrase �abusive behavior� is frequently used to refer to violence that can cause serious injury and death rather than to the �normal� conflict and stress that occur in all close relationships. If a person does not consider name-calling and put-downs personally, is there no abuse? How does subject-position shape the meaning of words? When does an �I-didn�t-see-you-there� bump turn into an abusive shove? How can conflict be circumvented when one person relentlessly considers his behavior to be normal and the other person adamantly does not?

The pages that follow resonate my uncertainties about what it means to be �abused� as opposed to what society decides constitutes �acceptable/unacceptable.� This text representsa conversation between the tissues that weave the fabric of the academic discourse and my experiences and memories as one who lived in the spaces marked as �victim.� Heidegger (1971) writes

Language of labeling helps us come to terms with atrocities inflicted on some persons by others. I do not feel like the �abused� or the �victim.� I do, however, feel that I have been violated. It is not just my body, but also my mind, my being. There is no boundary, but rather an interconnectedness that allows the emotions to permeate my every fiber. I am as the child who Metcalfe and Game (in press) describe. A child who has been abused is asked to tell where it hurts. The child is unable to articulate the pain; rather, the child points to her heart. I do not feel that the words of my writing can adequately convey what I feel.

The recollections of my experiences do not knit together in a linear way much in the same way that abuse is not always linear in all its facets. Nor do they weave into a coherent text, as does the scholarly discourse of the academy. Such is the predicament of a subject (me), being subject to a word like �abuse.� My memories remain as fibers that, as they work along side the scholarly discourses of abuse, might begin to weave a richer less �certain� text. It is in the ambiguities and ambivalences that I remain the author of a story that is told alongside the attenuated discourse of the scholars who study �abuse.� I have attempted to engage a number of tissues/issues that are the areas in which I wanted to gain insights. In particular, I would like to find answers as to what constitutes abuse through to what are the facts and the effects of abuse one particular woman who endures it.

Within these pages unfolds memories (those written in a journal and those that this writing has made resurface) and my struggle for coherency in the present, which can be situated along one axis. Along the other axis lie the public and private spaces. The public being that which is open to others and the private that holds our secrets. I cannot situate myself along the axis, as I cannot �button� myself with a label. In part, it is my ineffability that drives me to write as well as my body�s inability to contain its secrets. Van Manen and Levering (1996) hypothesize that we are unable to keep secrets because secrets act as a mediator that separates us from those around use. Our secrets give birth to our feelings. Through the act of keeping secrets, I increasingly became a stranger to myself as I increasingly cut myself off from the world.

Because of my own subject-position in relation to family violence, I have decided to limit my investigation to violence against women. I do, however, acknowledge that women can equally impart violence and that there are hosts of ramifications concerning females abusing males and that the results can be equally as devastating for men as they are for women. This text resists simple categories like abuser/abused and victim/ perpetrator. As you enter into the text that follows, remember that the words, at times, come after much consternation. At other times, they flow with ease. Gadamer�s (1989) work acts as a canvas for me:

Everything that is experienced is experienced by oneself, and part of its meaning is that it belongs to the unity of this self and thus contains an unmistakable and irreplaceable relation to the whole of this one life (p. 67).

This text remains as a witness to violence, a maker of an experience that is one woman�s story. It is divided into two columns, the left representing scholarly works and researched data while the right holds sections of the journal I kept during my abusive relationship with Doug. Following each section of research/journal is a section of reflection. All three texts act together to create the tension of reaching an (im)possible space where meaning, experience, and thought intersect. As with life, contrasting realities do not fall into one specific pattern, however, a pattern of sorts does suggest itself.

Even though I am now part of these statistics and am no longer physically in the situation, part of me remains in my old life. I will forever lose that part of me just as do the faces of all the women who make up these statistics become lost and meaninglessness in the numbers and statistics that act as indicators of abuse. What I did not realize at the time was the power and control that I had given up to Doug � this makes me no less of a person than who I am. It does not make me stupid or na�ve. The change happens so slowly for the person living in the situation and far more quickly for the observer. As I lost control, I garnered a different type of control. It was as though I had information that no one else had that I could use. It was my secret. Why does abuse become a secret? For me, perhaps it was the loss of dignity, the sense of violation, the sense of shame that I felt that made keep my secret to myself.

The word �secret� can be traced to its Latin root secretus meaning alone, special, retired, solitary, hidden, and secret. Secrets allow us to keep our sense of being our very own. People choose that which they wish to divulge as �dark secrets are often repressed because they make use feel shameful, guilty� (van Manen and Levering, 1996, p. 50). These feelings are ones that I have lived over and again. Even as I write these words, as I attempt to write this paper, these feelings evoked from my experiences are undeniable. Does divulging my secret wash away the associated feelings? No. Why then do we feel compelled to tell our secrets? Is it a hope for catharsis? Is it the hope to come to terms with the meaning and significance of experiences?

�� Finding a hiding place for my secrets was an attempt to �make myself invisible� (van Manen and Levering, 1996, p. 21). I believed that if I did things the way that others wanted, I could �keep the peace.� My submission forced me to become an other person. The blow was multiplied by becoming yet an other for my colleagues and peers. The resulting fa�ade was my attempt to present a woman who was in control of her own destiny. A woman who had it �all together� and �knew how to get what she wanted.� When does a secret become a lie?

I was not able to find research that addressed the likelihood of one abuse being linked to others being manifested. From my experience, all three types of abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual) were linked together and used, but always within a given, predictable pattern from the verbal/emotional onto the physical (but not always) ending with the sexual. This was a realization that I made as I wrote this paper. Perhaps it was something that I was aware of but that I refused to acknowledge before. The awakening screams at me as I write these words. What I realize is that every abused woman experiences it in uniquely different ways. It is the language that we use that makes it all seem the same.

Family and relationships enter into the circle of abuse. The etymology of the word �relationship� is that which we return to. It is a derivative of the word �relate� (relatus) to carry back (Klein, 1971). The shadows mentioned as the journal heading represent that which we do not want to acknowledge, that which we suppress, that which we live but do not let anyone else see. It is the secret that remains hidden in the relationship, between those implicated, as a �dirty little secret.� The light is that which is positive, that which draws us back to the relationship. Things were not always bad in our relationship. Before the abuse began, the relationship was strong, loving, and nurturing. As the relationship became abusive, the good remained as a glimmer of hope. I hoped that things would, that they could, return to what they had been. When do we know that things cannot be returned to?

Even though viewing the types of violence as events that fall into cycles might be a stretch at best, the abuse that I experienced did fall into the three distinct stages. I was aware of the cycle before I had read work done in this area from work that I have done in dealing with student violence. When the cycle of abuse would start over again with Doug, I was always filled with dread; I knew what to expect next. As with the research, the cycle we went through was quite predictable. Every time the cycle hit stage two, the violence intensified. When I was hit, I was told that I deserved it. I was told that I was the one responsible for pushing the envelope. How much of it was I truly responsible for? It cannot be looked at in percentages, but, yet, I cannot help myself in my attempt at trying to assign responsibility. Can patterns become familiar and then acceptable? Can reality be formed within our mind�s eye and is then distorted by influences external to us? One seems to see clearly at times, but it is like a kaleidoscope, always changing rapidly leaving the viewer with little time or energy to recognise the pattern.

In my diary, I use the term �incident� to describe being raped. One of my peers questioned my use of this word. She stated, �It is a tragedy, not incidental to life or feelings.� I cannot speak or write the word. Language minimizes the pain. Is it possible to minimize our pain by renaming events? Merleau-Ponty writes that �we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history� (p. xix). It is in this regard that I have softened a very painful memory. In the writing of this paper, it has become labeled an �incident.� My original diary did not include the word �rape.� I could not write it. To me, being raped by my own husband was one of the worst experiences that I had lived through. Today, I look at the experience as part of a cycle that escalates and oscillates over time.

How is it that I did not leave when Doug first verbally abused me, struck me, and sexually abused me? Are we not told that we are individuals and that we must stand up for ourselves, take care of ourselves? The statistical research discusses �learned helplessness.� This seems so overly simplistic and patriarchal. When the �research� asks why abused women stay, the explanations seem so cold and one-dimensional. The situation is filed with ambiguity. Doug was the person whom I loved. He was my husband. Our lives were intertwined in many deep and complicated ways. I didn�t want to believe that this was happening to me. It wasn�t much, just a push. I wasn�t fighting fairly either. I was embarrassed. Who would ever believe that a partner could do this to someone he �loved?� Leaving is not as simple as walking out the door of your home and never returning. You can physically leave a place, but you can also leave a place in an emotional sense. In order to survive I found that slowly, over time, I was leaving. With every verbal slur, with every missed and connected blow, with every act of sexual abuse, I was in the process of leaving. To me, it became a survival strategy. Each act, each incident caused the rift to deepen. In my last few months with Doug, these incidents became a source of empowerment. I knew that in a very short while, he would never be able to hurt me in the way that he was at that moment. I continue to find it quite bizarre that, despite of the repression and vulnerability, unimaginable strength grew.

�� Home is a place for us to return to. My mother�s home is the place that I returned to after leaving Doug. It embodies warmth, comfort, and security. As a child, we return home for consolation when we are hurt � we know that there is a parent there to mend our wounds. After being away from home, whether it is to play with friends, go to school, spend a few weeks at a summer camp, the return home to our familiar surroundings returns a sense of peace to use. When entering our house, we are reassured by its familiarity to us. Even the old strive to live independently, in their own homes, for as long as they can. My adopted grandmother was 101 before she moved to a nursing care facility. My cousin who died of cancer insisted in dying in his own home � not in the hospital; so did my aunt. What is the attachment? What gives us this sense of belonging? Why do abused women �return� home? How does this translate to an abusive situation?

�� The house becomes a front that hides and screens the inhabitants from the outside world. People cannot see or know what goes on behind the locked doors and drawn curtains. These act as barriers stopping passers by from seeing in and the inhabitants from looking out. They act as a metaphor that underscores the abused person�s willingness to look at life beyond the immediate of what is happening. We close ourselves off to the possibilities that lay just beyond, just far enough out of reach. The house holds many secrets.

Bachelard (1969) writes, �the inner space of an old wardrobe is deep� (p. 78), but only when its door is closed. The door acts to create a container that accommodates its emptiness. The space is secure � the emptiness is only as large as the wardrobe. It creates an inside versus outside space. In C. S. Lewis� The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the wardrobe contains a world accessible only through its back wall. It holds within it all of the possibilities and secrets of a world separate from that which we know. It is the same way that a house separates the outside world from that which occurs within the confines of a house.

As an abused woman, I always believed that I was in part responsible for the responses that I provoked from �it.� It was the name that I chose to call Doug for the first year after I left him. I could not mention nor think of his name without having a flood of memories come rushing back. I have moved beyond �the name� but I have yet to be able to stay in a room where people are having a disagreement � I feel as though the walls are closing in on me and I cannot breath.

I feel badly for Robert. Sometimes, when he moves in a certain way, I totally �lose it;� the body remembers�I am sitting at my computer trying to remember a particular incident that happened two years ago with Robert. It was something that Robert did that made me cower into a ball on the bed. I cannot remember what he did, what was said�my bodily reaction reverberates through me even now. It is twelve thirty in the morning. I want to get this piece written. Robert pops his head into my �office.� He asks, �Are you coming to bed?� The colour in my checks drains. My heart rate increases. My lips draw in. I snap back, �Yes. In a minute.� I hear myself utter the words. I stop myself. I explain to Robert that I am just going to write this anecdote and then I will join him in bed right after I am finished. He asks me what I am writing about. I tell him. I explain that Doug used to ask me when I was coming to bed, using the same words as he did. I would respond, �Yes. In a minute.� When approximately five minutes had elapsed, Doug would return from upstairs and pose the same question again. This predictable routine would continue until I would present myself for bed. My body remembers the request.

�� I find it far too easy to read through the list from the American Psychiatric Association and to say, �That�s me, that�s me, that�s me,� as a way of trying to rationalize and understand why. It is the cold and detached words that are used to clinically describe situations, instances, and statistics that render the scholarly work cold and meaningless. Perhaps it is this notion that remains in the back of my mind when I use the term �making love� rather than �sexual intercourse� or �sexual relations.� These terms are as lifeless and distant as scholarly and clinical data that describes abuse. Why not use words like �fucking� or �screwing?� I cannot allow myself to use those words to describe an act of intimacy. To do so eliminates the possibility of being able to ever feel close to another person again; it strips away the beauty of tenderness that envelops the words �making love.�

How do I look at this objectively? How much �subjectivity� is needed to understand our lives �objectively?� Doug was anorexic as a teenager; he was hospitalised when his weight fell below eighty pounds. His sister explained to me that she and her younger brother were only told that Doug was sick, the illness was never explained to them. Doug told me some of his childhood stories. He always told me that he hated his mother. He described her as a �person who always wanted to control my life.� He explained �I never thought that I was �good enough� even though I got straight A�s in school.� He felt that he was the most responsible of his parents� three children. He explained, �I went to university, worked every summer, went straight to work after completing university�but it was never good enough.� When he and his first wife were divorced, he labelled himself a failure. Doug always told me that his marriage breakdown was not his fault. �The marriage failed, it was all �her� fault�� How can a person believe that they are a failure if they blame their failure on another? I, like Doug, look for causes, but doing so is problematic, it leads to ambiguity and contradictions.

�� From where does a sense of guilt emerge? Some would label me as a martyr. For me, when one appropriates the feelings of another, it compares with Merleau-Ponty�s (1979) description of how one embodies the experiences of the other. To illustrate this, I draw on a recent experience. I do not enjoy gory, violent movies. They do not disturb Robert. On occasion, he will rent a movie that I find disturbing. When I find the movie disturbing, my body cannot help but react. I will close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears when the �worst� of the parts are playing. Robert will then insist in turning off the movie. He replaces his desire for watching the movie with mine that are to not watch the movie. If we are not able to empathise with the other people in our lives, how can we appreciate others?�� 

Many people have told me that leaving Doug took courage. Others have commented that it has taken courage for me to write this paper. �Courage� is derived from the Middle English corage, from the Old French cuer for heart, and from the Latin cor for heart (Klein, 1971). The OED describes �courage as mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. I do not believe that either, certainly the former, takes much courage. How can I be labeled courageous when I opted to leave? Is that not cowardliness? If this is an act of courage, are the women who return to their former relationships cowards?

Aristotle defines courage in relation to pain. For me, a courageous person is one who maintains their humbleness when they encounter positive situations and maintains that same integrity when facing painful situations. A coward is someone who cannot or does not act with integrity because of the threat of pain or the fear of pain. For Aristotle, courage was framed within the context of battle. Cannot all sorts of pains, losses, and risks be considered?

The questions will forever remain as echoes of my past. On one hand, I can tell myself that I had no choice but to leave. This makes me courageous. I left everything behind to start anew. I have been battling for three years to be granted a divorce and to recover my belongings. I am able to give myself my blessings as I continue to face Doug�s irrationalities. Every time I receive a letter from my lawyer detailing our (lack of) progress, I am vindicated for leaving. On the other hand, I admonish myself for being so fickle. How could I have left so abruptly? Is this not the act of a coward? How does one reconcile the self?

How then does this paper in some way marginalize me? I have opted to divide each page into two sections � one for academic discourse and the other that reflects my life in an abusive relationship. How has discourse of academia altered that which I have become and that which I will become? What of my former life and its influence on my future? As I first started writing this paper, I had looked at only the research and what others had written. Not wanting to lose my voice, myself, in that of academic discourse, I returned through my work and allowed myself to re-enter it with the hope of not becoming an (im)partial person writing from a world removed from my reality.

[vii] The Desk Reference to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (1987). (Third Edition), Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association (pp. 146-148).

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Sources: How much subjectivity is needed to understand our lives objectively?