Abusive relationships, brazil nut praline plus some recommendations

My Guardian and Observer columns

This hasn’t really got anything to do with this post but it’s of the seaside I visited this week in North Norfolk.

This week’s column in The Guardian is about a mother worried about her daughter’s relationship. These letters aren’t uncommon, they either come from the person being abused themselves or their loved ones. I had no idea how wide-spread domestic abuse was when I first started writing my column. Domestic abuse (DA) can be physical, emotional, financial, sexual. It can be about the withdrawal and retention of things like money, sex, information - just as much as it can be about active things. It takes a while to see it but when you know the signs to look for it’s prolific. I often get readers writing in saying they’re having a difficult time and how can they be different, ‘better’ but when I read the letter, the signs of coercive control run through it like the proverbial stick of rock.

I try to publish a letter about it at least twice a year (heart-breakingly, I could fill the column ever week with these letters) and whenever we do publish a letter on this subject I get a slew of other letters that are almost identical. But although the readers recognise something of themselves they don’t really see their situation as one of domestic abuse. “But he doesn’t hit me” is an refrain I hear often. But as my mother used to say “ti fa crepare in altri modi”.

Abusive relationships can happen between partners, parents and children, children and parents and siblings. As a colleague who works in this field said to me once:

“It took me years to realise that my relationship with my sister was abusive but it came to me as I was describing the traits to someone else, that my relationship with my sister was abusive. I just hadn’t seen it.”

What are those traits? The phrase I hear a lot is “treading on eggshells” the moment I hear this one eyebrow goes up. This isn’t about occasionally having to tread lightly around a grumpy family member it’s the constant feeling that you can’t say things without fear of having to then deal with their stuff. It’s about the subtle but corrosive stuff of being gas-lit, not listened to, put down, ignored, wrong-footed, as well as the big stuff of being told you look shit in what you’re wearing, not to wear something on a night out or “did you have to be so loud/funny/flirty”, being hit, pushed, shoved, putting up with sexual behaviours you don’t approve of or want to take part in, having money controlled, being told your friends/family are shit and don’t care about you so you shouldn’t really see them.

But also if you feel responsible for your partner to an overwhelming degree, having to constantly make it okay for them, you may be in an abusive relationship. Perpetrators like to isolate, they can’t take responsibility. It’s always your fault. But - and here can be the sting, they can be charming and care a lot about what others think of them, this is to isolate their victims further (‘what X? But he’s soo lovely’). I hear again and again how perpetrators like to charm people in authority, including the courts.

Unfortunately what I see a lot is men with a low self-esteem who can’t deal with strong, independent women and try to bring her down to their level. As discussed there are other dyads but this is the one I see the most.

I wrote a piece about domestic abuse a few years ago, because I wanted to know how to protect my daughters. Sandra Horley former CEO of Refuge and author of Power And Control, Why Charming Men Can Make Dangerous Lovers taught me a really important thing which is that in trying to protect my daughters I somehow thought it might be their/our fault:

”I now realise that in thinking that I could have any influence over whether my girls might get into a DV relationship, I have played into perhaps the greatest myth of domestic abuse: that it is somehow our fault. It isn't. It never was. But we can all learn more about it so that if it does happen, we know what to look for and what to do. Domestic abuse is everybody's business.”

This doesn’t mean, of course, that knowing the signs - education - isn’t a good thing. I had a letter from a fifteen year old girl this week which I’ll publish soon, who asks how she can work harder at her relationship when all I see is coercive control from her boyfriend. I think she senses something is wrong but is internalising it instead of seeing his behaviour as what it is and certainly not her fault.

That’s all very heavy but DA is, and whilst it’s very hard being in it, it’s also very tough watching someone you love in a DA relationship. The phrase I also hear a lot is “why doesn’t she just leave?” which is so facile and ignorant. Of course if she could just leave she would have. But not only is it not that easy, when a woman leaves a DA relationship is when she’s most at risk, as we see every week in the news.

Changing pace.

This week’s Observer column is about a rather wonderful Brazil nut praline which I discovered and is just the right size for a chocolately snack.

Two recommendations this week for the hot weather that’s incoming.

One is for these linen mix trouser from Uniqlo. I really rate Uniqlo clothes as they last so well and these linen trousers are ace and a really good price (better than M&S whose clothes don’t, in my experience, last that well). Me and my girls have them. To orientate you on size: I’m a size 10 and have the small but the XXS also fit if a little snug getting them on around the booty. I also have a medium as that’s the only size they had in one colour and they also fit fine. So sizing is a little random.

Second, whilst I hate guns, despite what I put on my army recruitment form, I’ve had this salt gun for a few years and it really comes into its own in the summer to kill flies and bluebottles. Just get the basic model, you don’t need any of the fancy sight add-ons (which IME are useless) and it just uses fine-grade table salt.