A fifty seven year old business acquaintance of mine, who once worked as a domestic violence counselor, decided to lecture me about all the supposed disservices I was doing to myself by being single. He even asked me, “What do you do?” meaning for sex. Then he crossed the line further and asked if I masturbated often. I looked at him and asked, “Why is my genitalia on your mind?” That shut him up on that topic, but he kept preaching about how great his life was with “the right woman.” He had only met her about six years earlier, when he was in his early fifties and she in her early forties.
She lived in Los Angeles with their son, age five, while he bounced between there and New York City. I had seen him call his wife for permission to do things in NYC. I never want to live like that, asking permission to live my life. I had seen him hang up after speaking to her and complain that she treated him like a child. That is not my idea of a great time. If he was late calling her, she tore into him. Again, not something I would ever tolerate.
After chewing my ear off, he started talking about his past counseling work, how he used to counsel men in prison for things like pushing their wife’s face into a grease fryer. He wanted to convince me that men were the problem, that men were mean and abusive. He talked about his wife’s ex husband and how “abusive” he was. The look on his face was priceless when I told him that one side of a story does not make a conclusion. I told him that his view of men as inherently mean is just the flip side of women only choosing vicious and violent men, the same way a lioness seeks the most vicious lion in the wild.
He shifted slightly, talking about domestic violence laws. He said that even a simple argument could be labeled domestic violence if, during it, the man walked closer to a perceived weapon. His example was a man arguing with his wife and walking past a gun cabinet on his way to the bedroom. Or sitting near a butter knife. Or leaning toward a broomstick. Any of these, he said, could escalate the situation into a domestic violence charge. I told him I had no interest in living under a system where one wrong move in an argument could put me in prison.
Three years later, I heard the update. The “love of his life” had been cheating on him with another woman. He later learned that “his son” was not his, but he refused to believe it and never took a DNA test. Eventually, his wife turned on him, had him arrested for domestic violence, and showed up with bruises and a black eye. He swore he never touched her, but she was granted an order of protection. He finally got proof that the boy wasn’t his, but it didn’t matter. He was still ordered to pay child support for a child that was not his, while his ex lived in the house he had to keep paying the mortgage on.
Too bad I haven’t seen him since our last conversation. I could have told him this story years before it happened, because I have seen it play out over and over again.
