Hide This Book

If you’re encountering verbal abuse … do not … tell the abuser to read this book (even if you really want the abuser to read it, it may not happen in your lifetime. And, if the abuser does read it, don’t be surprised if his response is “This is all about you!”.

– Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship

Don’t leave this book lying around.

– Ann Silvers, Abuse OF Men BY Women

When I started reading about verbal abuse a year ago, I started with a hardback copy of Robin Stern’s The Gaslight Effect that I checked out of our local library. I disguised the book under a plain paper cover, only read it when I was alone, and hid it in my desk when I was not reading it. I was pretty sure that my abuser would become very angry and possibly abusive again if she saw me reading the book. I based this judgment on what she’d told me earlier when I mistakenly brought up the topic of verbal abuse in one of our “discussions”.

After that, I only read books on the subject that I could download electronically. Even then, I made sure that I never left the books open on my ebook device when I wasn’t using it.

I feel a little twinge of guilt about all this hiding, but I’m terrified of being the target of another angry outburst.

Today I happened to mention to my wife something similar that I did in my first marriage many years ago. My then-wife, who was non-religious when we married, became a fundamentalist Catholic, and was terribly disappointed that I couldn’t follow her in this path. I tried to attend church and bible study, but I couldn’t shake my life-long agnostic skepticism, and I eventually stopped trying to be religious.

During this period I read two books that gave me the confidence to leave religion behind: Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell, and The Mythmaker, by Hyam Maccoby. (The latter book, I understand now, was based on shaky scholarship, but it was convincing to me at the time, and I don’t think that recent scholarship would change my beliefs.)

I kept these books hidden from my then-wife, out of fear of her reaction, and to avoid hurting her. In retrospect, this was arguably a cowardly act.

When I mentioned this book-hiding to my current wife during a conversation today, she told me that she hoped I would never do something like that to her, and that doing so would be a marriage deal-breaker (not her exact words, but that’s the essence of it).

So now I have a new batch of guilt to experience. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, apparently.