The Spots of the Leopard

For some hours I have been cogitating memories that have accrued over the past hundred and twenty years. From time to time there have been little blips on the smooth passage of time through my head that give pause for thought.

One of those blips is this.

Partners are abused. This seems to happen more often than it should and there is very little reason for it.

We cannot say that there is no reason because somebody, somewhere, will be able to justify violence—physical and psychological, using some context or other.

Let’s start with the distaff side of this.

A young lady, or, perhaps, a lady who is not quite so young, meets a male person with whom she desires to spend the rest of her life. She is aware of his shortcomings, usually, before they enter into any sort of long term relationship but, like most women, she will entertain the idea that he can be changed.

All women do this.

I have had many wives over the years and all of them, I am certain, have decided that I do not fit that fine mental mould that they have imagined for me. Nevertheless, it is a shape that, they are certain, I can be modelled into over the coming months or years.

They fail.

It cannot be done.

Leopards, as they say, do not change their spots. External appearances notwithstanding, the basic mindset of the average human male stays precisely where it was when they attained the age of seven years.

Their proud male personage now entertains himself by abusing her. He might, for instance, pinch her ears with a pair of pliers or he might try to strangle her. Maybe he will just go for a good old-fashioned punching.

On the other hand, he may use psychological terrors. He may, for example, take her out to a function and then, on arrival, abandon her to go and mix with his male friends.

He may deprive her of cash or he might use her cash and thus render her helpless financially so that she requires to beg for money to feed herself and their offspring.

One wonders why she tolerates it. Very often, it is my experience, the woman might leave him only to return fairly soon afterwards because ‘he needs me’ or ‘I love him’.

Do they forget the pain? Do they imagine that he has learnt some sort of convoluted lesson from this and will not be nasty to her any more?

She is misled. This reformation will not happen. Very likely it will only become worse.

This is not a life for her, it is an existence; a poor one full of pain and misery.

What about him?

He has decided that he wishes to spend the rest of his life with this woman. She is the one for him without any doubt at all.

Yet, soon after the union is made official, he decides that it is time to teach her a bloody good lesson. For what?

I have interviewed and counselled several couples who have been involved in this type of situation. I have asked the man what it is that he hopes to achieve by his treatment of her. He doesn’t know.

What is it that she is doing wrong to promote this treatment being meted out? He doesn’t know.

Is she bad at cooking? Does she iron his clothes imperfectly? Is she hopeless in bed? No. None of these things seem to apply

It is my thought that he is objecting to a loss of independence. That he is suddenly tied down and being made responsible for her and, usually, a child. His yearning for his pre-marriage freedom triggers this response and will be accompanied by a lack of responsibility for both wife and little one(s).

I agree that sometimes a husband is abused by his wife. Occasionally his response to that is violent. Sometimes his wife may be unfaithful and that will set off a physical reaction.

Sometimes he will be unfaithful and that, too, will set off a similar reaction from her.

Alcohol and gambling are serious causes of marital unhappiness because both will drain the finances. Since most causes of unhappiness are either financial or seeing ‘greener grass’ in the shape of another person (especially after drinking!) then these two addictions should be addressed at square one—before entering into a marriage contract.

The scenarios are multitudinous but they all, invariably, have an unhappy outcome.

One wonders why people do not split up? If they are unhappy then they should separate and live apart. This would be, by preference, before there are children involved.

Of course, it is always easier to be a historian than a prophet but, sometimes, surely, we can learn from the mistakes of others.

How often (clue: very) do I say to my students that people hear but they do not listen; they look but they do not see; they think but they do not analyse.

Love just makes it worse. We stop seeing, we stop listening and, worst of all, we stop thinking.

The cure? There is none. Again, from experience, beating someone who is maltreating his wife in order to show him what she is feeling is a failure; he will believe that his wife is the cause of the beating because she has ‘ratted him out’ or shown her bruises to someone and he will respond by renewing his ill treatment of her as perceived revenge.

The only answer is to get the recipient of the bruises, mental and physical, to stand up for themselves and make a new life—one that they will enjoy.

Or, at least, one that they will enjoy more than the one they currently have.

Leopards do not change their spots.

Ever.